2026-03-09 - Daily Notes

Projects Worked On

ROM Library Organization

Goal: Organize/categorize ~100K ROM files across multiple gaming systems
Library location: R:\ drive (38.8 TB)
Quick scan completed: 98,601 items, 1,701 GB total

Breakdown by Manufacturer:

Computers (C64, Amiga, etc.): 47,327 items, 61.89 GB
Arcade (MAME, Neo Geo): 12,951 items, 32.97 GB
Atari: 12,399 items, 2.56 GB
Nintendo: 12,017 items, 467.24 GB
Sony (PSX, PS3, PSN): 3,106 items, 672.40 GB
Sega: 2,747 items, 3.54 GB
Microsoft: 1,661 items, 0.05 GB

Top by count: Commodore 64 (24,349), Atari (10,935), ArcadePC (8,750), MAME (8,651) Top by size: PSN ISO Pack (672 GB), Nintendo 3DS (412 GB), TurboGrafx-CD (234 GB)

Scripts created:

tools/rom-quick-scan.py - Quick inventory (completed)
tools/rom-full-scan.py - Full scan with duplicate detection (running overnight)

Output files:

rom-inventory/rom-inventory.json - Quick scan results
rom-inventory/rom-full-*.json - Full scan results (pending)

Phase 2: Duplicate detection running overnight - MD5 hashing files under 50MB

Issues Encountered

Node gateway timeouts when running long scans (30s limit)
Sub-agent reliability issues - spawning background processes more reliable
Script escaping issues with f-strings in Python scripts

Decisions Made

Use folder counts for disc-based systems (PSX, PS2, etc.) instead of file counts
Hash only files under 50MB for duplicate detection (speed vs coverage)
Run full scan as background process, not sub-agent

Overnight Scan Results (2026-03-10 00:02)

Full Scan Completed

Total: 107,069 items (6,103 GB / 6.1 TB)
Duplicates Found: 4,790 duplicate sets (11,160 files)

Worst Duplicate Offenders:

ArcadePC MegaPack: 100 copies of same binary
M.A.M.E: 66 copies of big7.bin
PopCap games: 48-36 copies of various .bin files

Key Insight: Many duplicates are internal game data files (not actual ROM duplicates) - .bin files used across multiple games in:

ArcadePC MegaPack (100 copies of dialog data)
Abandonware DOS (map tiles reused across levels)
PopCap games (UI assets)

Action Items:

Review duplicate report for actual ROM duplicates vs internal game data
Consider excluding .bin files under 1MB from duplicate scanning (noise)
Cross-reference with No-Intro DATs for missing ROMs

Output File: rom-inventory/rom-full-20260310-000245.json (1.6 MB)

2.4 KiB Raw Blame History