The whole point of the software is to allow you to check/Link your files so you can use them on different device scenarios from: A500 mini, Amiga HardDrive, Internal/External Gotek, Internal Goex or ADF, LHA, ZIP files for emulation it’s really is trying to be a one stop shop.
Once the file has been downloaded and opened "double left click the file windows 10 can already interact with a standard zip file", you should see a single directory, you can place "left click and hold also known as dragging" it anywhere on your system, but for simplicity purposes I'm placing it on the C:\ drive as PC setups can vairy.
The directory should contain the following files:
- Amiga Disk Validator.exe
- System.Data.SQLite.dll
- SQLite.Interop.dll
- Updater.exe
I'm not going to explain here what each file does but we are still missing two important files User.db and Administrator.db, these are explained in the following section. Updater but without these file(s) the main program will not function properly or at all.
As mentioned previously there are two files missing User.db and Administrator.db fortunately, User.db will automatically get created by the program once its run but Administrator.db needs to be downloaded from the website, this is because it's the database file that holds the nuts and bolts of the data including this file will get updated as and when it needs to therefore it makes no sense in providing this file in the zip archive you have just downloaded, as it's more than likely it has already been updated in some way.
The updater has only a single function it updates the system in some way whether this is a new version of the software to updating the Administrator.db database, which is what we are going to do now.
Before we run the updater for the first time, I would like to mention that IF you have antivirus on your system once the program starts to run, this should ask you whether you want to allow this program to access the internet, you MUST allow this to happen or the software will not function, it uses port 80, which is the standard port for website "http" communication.
Now it's time to run the Updater program, once the program loads after a few seconds if all goes well it should start downloading any updates, just leave it to get on with things, once it has downloaded and automatically updated the file(s) it will close automatically. If you happen to have the directory open still you should see at the very least Administrator.db now available.
If the updater does not find any files it needs to update it will automatically close.
After the updater has been run it's now time to run the program, the first thing you will see is it takes up the entire screen real estate, this is because of the data it consumes from the database but allows you not to have to move from dialog to dialog that been said you can make it smaller if you wish "1200x900 minimum", but you might not see as much information.
The software itself is split into four sections, I'll go through these sections one by one and map out further details within them and how they could or should be used.
-- Category Bar --At the top of the program, you will see a category bar this contains categories from All, #, and A - Z, The individual categories marked as A-Z are quite obvious, they will show the available Games/Series in the Rom Tree in alphabetical order, the # category will show Games/Series that either start with a number or do not fit into the A-Z category.
The All will as it says displays ALL categories that are on the system in one go.
By selecting the All category when they are displayed within the Rom Tree they are not automatically expanded where as if you select a single category, it will be expanded for you, but any subsequent categories they will not be expanded.
If you are talking up the entire screen with the program you might see that the categories bar does not adjust its width this is because when not using full screen or not having enough room the bar does scroll by holding down the left mouse button and dragging from left/right to see other categories.
This bar is simplest of the four sections it contains the search, settings and the about buttons
The search button is only active when the Rom Tree has games/series available "white colour". The button itself is where you can link your files ADF/ZIP etc to the available rom data on the system.
Once you select the button you will be asked "by the way of a dialog" if you want to search though a directory or an individual file to compare. furthermore, this is where the User database file comes into play once a file has been compared and found to be the same, this link gets saved on your user database. so, when you select that category again you will automatically see any previously linked data.
All files including zip files and the files within will get a CRC32, MD5 and SHA1 code so a binary comparison can take place, this means that it does not matter what the file is called.
If you happen to select a zip file for example that will automatically get opened "it must not be a passworded zip file or a .zipx file only standard zips are allowed" so each file can be compared to the rom's that the tree can see ONLY.
If any files that are found to be the same they get added to the Rom Tree see Rom Tree for more details.
The settings dialog always you to change a small selection of settings:
Rom Table- Line thickness - increase/decrease
- Lines - on/off
- Default Category - preselects a category to load when the program initially loads Not implemeneted as of yet
- Information: Details of the program and contacting the developer.
- Stats: what records are available and how many of them they are.
At the start when you run the software the Rom Tree will always be blank, as stated in the Category Bar intersection at the very least one of these categories must be enabled/clicked for you to see any games/series.
Talking about that it's organised as Games/Series you should be able to work out if it's a game or a series in several ways games will show an
Rom Linking once you have used the
If you expand that branch by "single click the plus icon" or double click the name, you can see the file(s) that have been found to be compatible.
After using the software for a while or when you return you might see an individual file been displayed in a red colour this signifies that the file is not available anymore this might be because of you deleting it or renaming it for example.
You can activate any of these by right clicking the individual linked item, the software itself will prompt you want you can do by the way of a menu.
Deleting does not delete your file it only deletes the link between the file and the rom record that's contained within the database.
If you select a zip file for deletion all sibling files that are linked will also be deleted.
A zip file is the ONLY file type that gets copied, all other use the extract method but in principle they are the same. If selected a dialog will appear you can rename it when its copied over to a destination of your choosing.
This is for individual files or files within a zip, you can only extract a single file at a time, but again you can rename before giving it a destination, to be extracted.
-- Rom Table --In effect the Rom Table does not actually do anything, or I should say anything interactable by you but there might be two columns of interest:
Emulation- A500 mini
- Linux
- A500
- A600
- A1200
- CD32
- CDTV
As both these columns inform you what the rom works on or the hardware it works on. if none of these Emulation/Hardware are lite up that does not mean that it's not compatible it just that the state of these two columns is unknown.
The rom background colour will show in Dark Green if you have a linked file connected to it.
Lets first get the elephant out of the room on the AMIGA side of things these are called Kickstarters not bios files but as this program can check for different systems I'm using it as a generic term.
Now that's out of the way so basically you can take a bunch of what you think are bios files "the naming does not matter" and the program will check these for you if they are found that they are correct after checking you can then by the way of a button convert these to the correct naming for retroarch.
Imagine the following situation, you have a bunch of game disks that are all in their own individual zip files, and you want to rapidly unzip them easily take Monkey Island 2 for example 11 disks "how long would that take?" with this little program you can select a bunch of zip files and extract them just like that.
If you have multiple disks you can create a play list this play list is a M3U file, it's basically a text file
The File Hasher will display cryptographic algorithms of CRC32, MD5, SHA1 of a file you select, just in case you want to compare files in a binary way.
With a click of the Select button and a Drive/Directory selection you can create a standard directory structure "#, A-Z".
If you want a more complex directory structure there is an "Example - Directories.xml" contained within the zip file that allows you to do that very thing.
Creates game folder structures based on whats selected(checked) in Hardware and Options, including copying the structure to a destination folder but ONLY game folders that include files within the individual game folder themselves, furthermore if you don't like the folder thats created "change it" or want to add a new folder then do so.
Some Examples of folder structures it creates