Here we will develop a solution to get only one .ISO file per game. All games work on this model provided that the downloaded .BIN files also work.
A recurrent problem with roms for PSX is that the files are more often in .BIN and .CUE formats than in .ISO, and sometimes roms in .BIN.ECM format are still available.
One of the disadvantages of these files is that they are often several, 2 or 3 files or even sometimes dozens. This can distort the quality of the presentation in the EmulationStation interface (you can end up with several files per game, and the total number of games for this system is also distorted).
This display problem under EmulationStation occurs either :
- If you don't scrape your roms.
- If you have misconfigured your scraping software.
However, .BIN and .CUE roms are functional too.
First of all, the ISO file is a binary disk image, which is the format we are interested in because the whole game is in one file.
The .BIN file is also a disk image, it is a format very close to the ISO. The disadvantage is that the BIN files can be several, sometimes very numerous, and are generally accompanied by another file in CUE format.
The .CUE file is a small text file that accompanies .BIN files. It can be opened with any text editor, its only purpose is to help index the BIN files it accompanies. To tell the emulator that will read it, where the BIN files are, what their names are, their order, and sometimes the different audio tracks contained.
The .BIN.ECM file is rarer, it is the result of a compressed BIN file.
We will see in the last part how to decompress it.
The first remark is that often, a game is composed of a BIN file accompanied by a CUE file. In this case, the CUE file (text), which has the role of indexing the various BIN files that accompany it, is no longer useful. Users have understood this, in fact, in this case, simply delete the CUE file, and then the BIN file is autonomous (like an ISO), you can leave it as is, it works.
You can learn to tell the difference by looking at them systematically, you also have the possibility to convert all your roms to have no problem.
The second remark is to never rename the BIN files that we have just seen.
Indeed, if you open a CUE file with a text editor, you will see that it lists all the .BIN files that it accompanies. If you rename the BIN files, then it doesn't match anymore.
In this case you can rename all the BINs in the CUE file, but this is a step that is easier to avoid by not renaming the files. Once you have obtained an ISO file you will have the freedom to rename it as you wish.
We will now approach the conversion of .BIN files to .ISO. To do this we will use the software IsoBuster, a free demo version.
File menu and click on Open Image File..BIN files to incorporate into IsoBuster, the trick is to use the .CUE file, which in turn indexes all .BIN files that make up the set. This example is not interesting because there is only one .BIN file, but the principle would be the same with 3 or 30 .BIN files: you use the .CUE file.If your rom is in 1 BIN file and you have deleted the .CUE file, no worries, it works by selecting the .BIN file directly.
Special cases can occur as with Rayman, composed of Rayman.bin and Rayman.cue.
The
.CUEfile is much more complete and also indexes the audio tracks of the game. Not all.CUEfiles are as complete, but it is a good habit to always work with the.CUEfile.
Here is an archive containing the CUE files for all PSX roms.
.BIN, .ISO)..ISO) but check that it is selected .ISO underneath, your file will come up as .ISO With IsoBuster this is not the case, your file will have no file extension if you don't write it down. You can add it later but you might also get lost, it is easier to put the .ISO extension in the file name..CUE, click No. Anyway, being used in the software, it can't be overwritten.You have your game in ISO format, which will have been extracted alongside the original .BIN and .CUE files.
And we'll finish with the rarer case of the compressed BIN, in .BIN.ECM format.
To remove the .ECM extension to obtain a .BIN, you have to use a decompression program. For this, there are several methods:
Un-ECM.exe on this page..BIN.ECM file and choose Open with.Find another application on this PC and open it with the Un-ECM.exe program.Always open with this application box, so that in future, double-clicking on a .BIN.ECM file will automatically unzip the BIN file into that same directory.ecm and unecm via SSH:brew install ecm
ecm game.bin
unecm game.bin.ecm
The resulting BIN file is then usable as is or you can also convert it to ISO as discussed above.