Updating Mame Collection

[MikeGold]

Hey guys, 
So a good while ago I've set up my Arcade cabinet with merged Mame collection, removed titles that cannot be played on my cabinet, like dancing/shooting games, removed titles that are not emulated great on mame but work fine on other emulators (both sega platforms) and set them up separately. So I had no duplicates and mostly working collection.
Now a year have passed, I've downloaded a new up to date merged mame set, new mame version and I wonder how can I implement it with the least impact to my cabinet. I don't want to go through sorting it out again and finding duplicates as with over 3000 titles it might take me days.

Should I just replace the files from my current set with the new ones and replace the mame emulator exe? Or is there some better way?

[Knowcontrol]

What about using a tool like FreeFileSync? Set the Source folder as the NEW romset, set the sync as Bidirectional, set the Destination folder as the OLD romset.

Run the comparison

Click the icon at the bottom to only show the files that will be copied from the NEW folder. Select those files, right-click and delete.

Run the comparison again

No extra games should be shown because you deleted them.

Change the sync method to UPDATE

Run the Update sync

***I'm not at a computer to verify if this would work, but something along these lines should get you a quick "update".

EDIT: If your romset is much older, you'll find that the new set has ROM names that are spelled differently. You'll need to manually sort that oout ***Keep in mind that you'll need a copy of that full set so that you can manually copy any missing files later since you'll be deleting them in the instructions above.

Edited July 5, 2022 by Knowcontrol

[MikeGold]

Nice one! Thanks.
I was not aware of this soft's existence.


 

[haimbilia]

you can filter out clones, casino, rhythm, mature etc.. using the launchbox importer:

you can also use the most non intuitive software in the world: clrmamepro,
if you want to retain your own list of roms i don't think there is another way.
as every update brings in new games to filter out.

i found the best way to update my rom set is just download the update pack every month from retroroms
it's a bit much if you have a life but it really takes 5 minutes and you have full control of your rom set.