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Baffling mystery


Bellingham

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Hi all, new here so apologies in advance if this is the world's stupidest question. Got an issue I just can't fathom at all.

I have an arcade cabinet with Maximus Arcade on it, and have been migrating everything to Launchbox / Bigbox as it's soooo much better. Everything's been going swimmingly until this really bizarre issue I just can't work out.

I've been importing C64 roms to use with CCS64. They all work fine in CCS64 when I use Maximus, but when I use Launchbox only the last eight or so I imported seem to work! To make matters even more confusing, it's the same if I try to launch them via WinVice -- the exact same ones work fine outside of Launchbox, but not inside it. I can see no difference whatsoever between the working roms and the non-working ones, but since CCS64 makes no attempt to even run the non-working ones (it just sits there saying 'Ready'), it would seem to be some issue to do with where Launchbox is pointing the things.

All the roms are zipped (which as I understand it shouldn't work in CCS64 anyhow, yet some of them do). They're a mix of T64 and D64 so that's not the issue. The only deciding factor in whether they work or not seems to be if they're the final eight or so alphabetically speaking! It makes no sense!

What's really frustrating is at first *none* of them seemed to work, so I was tinkering with command lines, checking and unchecking the 'unzip archives before running roms' box and so on, trying to work out what was up -- and it seems I must've suddenly stumbled across *something* that worked -- but maybe only for the games on screen at that moment? That makes no sense I know, but I'm at a loss, hence this post. Which is probably boring. Sorry!

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Firstly, don't apologize. This is what the forums are for! 

Secondly, this question is out of my depth, but lets see if we can't clear it up a bit for the next person who knows more about C64.

Point 1: all zipped roms worked with CCS64 and WinVice when launched with Maximus?

Point 2: Imported the same roms into launchbox, but only a random number of them seem to launch through launchbox? Switching between CCS64 and WinVice gets the same results, with the same random selection of roms working and the the same ones not working?

Point 3: You're using the same exact emulator that you used in maximus in launchbox (to rule out some kind of emulator setting)

Point 4: when a rom fails to load, are you making sure the emulator closes down completely? Sometimes a botched loading will keep the emulator running in the windows processes and that can stop roms from loading.

Point 5: Have you tried unzipping the roms and turning off extract from archive?

Point 6: please provide the command lines you're using.  

 

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First of all, thanks for replying, and for helping me clarify what I'm on about! I'll try to be concise...

On 3/19/2018 at 1:00 AM, fromlostdays said:

Point 1: all zipped roms worked with CCS64 and WinVice when launched with Maximus?

They all worked with CCS64 launched with Maximus. Didn't try WinVice w/ Maximus though.

 

On 3/19/2018 at 1:00 AM, fromlostdays said:

Point 2: Imported the same roms into launchbox, but only a random number of them seem to launch through launchbox? Switching between CCS64 and WinVice gets the same results, with the same random selection of roms working and the the same ones not working?

Yes! And tantalizingly, the working ones are all bunched together, in alphabetical order. Everything from 'VE' through to 'Z' works fine -- about 16 games. But there are over 800 titles before that, from the letter A down, none of which work at all. The fact that they're bunched together can't be a coincidence. They were all imported at the same time though, along with titles that don't work.

 

On 3/19/2018 at 1:00 AM, fromlostdays said:

Point 3: You're using the same exact emulator that you used in maximus in launchbox (to rule out some kind of emulator setting)

Yep, same exact path and everything.

 

On 3/19/2018 at 1:00 AM, fromlostdays said:

Point 4: when a rom fails to load, are you making sure the emulator closes down completely? Sometimes a botched loading will keep the emulator running in the windows processes and that can stop roms from loading.

I wondered about that, but nope, it's definitely closing down.

 

On 3/19/2018 at 1:00 AM, fromlostdays said:

Point 5: Have you tried unzipping the roms and turning off extract from archive?

Now I thought I'd tried this before, but apparently I hadn't because when I did this (at least to one chosen at random) -- it worked. So that must be a clue. Now, when extract from archive is turned off, the ones that ARE working suddenly FAIL to work, in precisely the same way as the non-working ones (ie the C64 just sits there saying READY). Presumably because they're zip files which now aren't being extracted?

Another clue: I've alt-tabbed over to look inside the Launchbox 7-Zip Temp folder and once I try to launch a game, it's being successfully extracted into that folder (I'm assuming that's the right place where LB temporarily stores extracted roms). And when I shut CS64 down the temp file is being deleted. It does this with the ones that work *and* the ones that don't!

 

On 3/19/2018 at 1:00 AM, fromlostdays said:

Point 6: please provide the command lines you're using.  

Yes, sorry, should've said. I 've been using %romfile% -autorun. Then I removed the %romfile& bit. I've tired it with and without, tried removing quotes etc. Oddly it doesn't seem to make any difference to the working ones whether I include *any* of those parameters or not! (Likewise, if I turn quotes on or off, they still work).

Anyway, thanks again for listening! I guess I could unzip and re-import everything, but it'd take a while to sort out, and what's driving me nuts is I'm sure I must've just changed something tiny somewhere which should be simple to put right -- if only I can figure out what it is.

Still, getting it all up and running is half the fun, right?...

Edited by Bellingham
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1 minute ago, DOS76 said:

Okay one question as I really have no clue about C64 are the zip files that don't work just one rom inside? I know if you have like a good set with multiple roms in the zip it doesn't work right

Yep they've all got just one inside. It's really weird -- they still work when I launch them via Maximus. I'm wondering if it's something to do with 7-Zip, somehow. I was using WinRAR before.

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  • 3 years later...

Necroposting I know, but I had LanchBox trying to feed VERSION.NFO into CCS64 after extracting the .zip files...

Found a workaround. I deleted VERSION.NFO from each .zip file using this in a .bat file:

for %%h in (*.zip) do "C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" d %%h VERSION.NFO

Worked great! Hope this helps if anyone else has this issue :)

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