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[Rayder]

Well, my 2gig Transcend 80x miniSD got full real quick and I figure I should start looking into trimming roms to save space.  Naturally, before I delve into this, I have some questions:

1) Is  "Flash Advance Toolkit Ver.8" (fatv8) a good one to use? If there is a better one, a link? (like maybe one that will do multiple roms at once)

2) Should I run the roms through the SC patcher before or after trimming the roms?

3) Is there a possibility of a rom failing because it was trimmed?

4) Can I use fatv8 to trim non-GBA roms? (NES, GG, SMS roms for example)

5) On average, how much space is saved on, say, a 16meg rom, for example?  I realize it will vary depending on the rom, but a ballpark estimate would be appreciated.

[dantheman]

You know that the Supercard Patcher has rom trimming functions built in, right?  That might be the easiest thing to use.

I've heard that some wifi games may not work correctly once trimmed, but I also read that leaving enough of a buffer (like 300 bytes or so) at the end will let it work correctly again.  I haven't experimented with this at all though, so take it with a grain of salt.

You can trim most roms that are binary multiples in size (256 kb, 8 MB, 64 MB for instance) and if there is a long string of either "FF" or "00" at the end of the file.  NES games cannot be trimmed because they have actual data for the whole duration of the file.  NDS roms can be trimmed because if a game uses up 38 MB, it must be bumped up to use a 64 MB cart, so you can trim away the additional 26 MB.  This situation is unlikely, but it's possible.

On a 16 MB rom, you might save between 1-4 MB, just as a ballpark figure.  For a comparison, out of 488 MB of uncompressed roms I have, the trimmed roms take up 438 MB, so about a 10% savings.  Each game varies though.  For instance, I've got a 64 MB rom that trimmed down to 52 MB, while I've got two others that only trimmed to 63 and 62 MB.  If I remove those two games from the list, the savings percentage increases to 12.5%, and if I then remove Elite Beat Agents, it increases to 17%.  Your results may vary of course.

As far as alternate trimmers go, look at http://scdev.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8782
There is one that zektor made, while darkuni and I both link to trimmers we've made.

[PharaohsVizier]

Usually trimmed works fine, on rare cases they do not.  I don't think what dantheman said is right, usually if they don't work because of the trim, they don't work at all.  But this RARELY occurs.

[754boy]

I trim all my roms, including WiFi games and have yet to have a problem with any of them

[Rayder]

Thanks for the reply...will check out that thread.

The 2.58 patcher software has the compress feature greyed out.  I can't compress them that way.

I guess I should mention that I don't have any slot 1 device yet....no passme or superkey, just the SCminiSD.

At this point, I'm only concerned with GBA roms.  NDS roms aren't possible for me at this time. I'll be getting an SCDS within the next couple months though for that.

Also, any idea on whether they should be patched before or after trimming? Or does it not matter?

[dantheman]

Hm, guess the GBA side of the SC patcher doesn't offer trimming.  No matter, GBA games can be trimmed as well by using an external trimmer.  I don't think the order will matter.

[SukkoPera]

You can read about a user-developed NDS trimmer here: http://scdev.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8710

It takes into account the extra data of wifi-enabled games, so it should work with any game. It is also open source, which means it'll work under GNU/Linux, MacOS X, and every other OS out there.

It's command-line only, though.