Difference between SMD and BIN

wildonrio · Post by **wildonrio** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 6:48 pm

Some of the Genesis roms are in .smd format and others are in .bin. It seems like .bin is more standard - can I just go to DOS and do a mass rename of all .smd to .bin, or do I need to actually convert them, as simply renaming them will make them unreadable?

Juan · Post by **Juan** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 6:56 pm

I always assumed that smd files are in a copier format (Super Magic Drive), while bins are raw dumps. GoodGen v3 can mass convert and rename them if you wish.

Ex-Cyber · Post by **Ex-Cyber** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 7:32 pm

Exactly right - .BIN is a raw dump, .SMD is an interleaved format designed for copiers. Basically SMD format is designed to be simple to load one floppy sector at a time while running on an 8-bit bus (i.e. SMS compatibility mode, which allowed manufacturers to use a single cheap 8-bit EPROM for the BIOS). An emulator should look at the file itself rather than just the extension to determine the ROM format, but even so it's a bad idea to just rename to .bin because it's misleading.

wildonrio · Post by **wildonrio** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 7:35 pm

Juan, thanks for the help with the new GoodGen, I did have an older version. The mass converting for some reason still doesn't work, I guess it's a bug they need to fix. I type "goodgen convert" just like the syntax says and it scans for like 5 minutes, and then does nothing. Weird.

JohnnyB · Post by **JohnnyB** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 7:44 pm

And here I was renaming them to .bin all this time. What about .gen?

wildonrio · Post by **wildonrio** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 9:51 pm

When I had goodgen do a mass rename, it made a bunch of .gen files. They were all just duplicates of an already existing .bin files so I just deleted them all. I don't know anything about .gen is what I'm getting at here.

Juan · Post by **Juan** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 10:22 pm

.gen are just renamed bins for the sake of GoodTools naming