Game Problem: 3 straight day of patience, trial, and error. Please help. FF7 BIN FILE MERGING?!?!?!

sterls

New member
Hey everyone,

So I've spent a lot of time researching this issue and have found tons of matter-of-factly stated solutions that just haven't gotten me anywhere for the most part.

So you know where I'm at right now and what I've done so far, here are the facts:

1. I run on a Mac OSX Leopard.
2. I have a Galaxy Nexus Android phone.
3. I have the psx4droid 3.0.5 emulator for said phone up and running games just fine.
4. I have 3 .rar files for FF7 (one for each disc).
5. I have used UnRarX on each of these files.
6. I was left with (for each disc) a folder containing a .bin.ecm file and a .cue file.
7. I used an ECM tool on each folder's .bin.ecm files.
8. I was left with a .bin file and the same .cue file remaining in each folder.
9. From here I have tried adding a second extension to the .bin files (i.e. : .bin.001, .bin.002, .bin.003) and then using the application Split & Concat to "Concat" the three files. (A solution found during my tireless search for an answer)
10. This did not bleeping work
11. Not only that, but the extensions .002 and .003 aren't even recognized as extensions. Though .001 is.
12. I am not an expert on file extensions.
13. If you were just about to say "You have to make all of the file names the same with the only difference being the x in .bin.00x of each file".........wait for it............I ALREADY DID. YOU'RE NOT HELPING.
14. I'm sorry if I sound frustrated.
15. I'm frustrated.
16. I have also read about being able to RAR separate .rar files into one, and then extract as one big file. However, all explanations of this that I have found say things like "Just use winrar" OR "Just use unrarx". Well tell me...how the heck is my unrarx supposed to read my mind when I throw .rar file at it. All it does is spit out a bunch of percentages of completion until it's finished its extraction of each individual file.
17. Better yet! Let's try it in SimplyRar. Here, I at least have some options right? Well none that give me the option in question.
18. Last but not least, I have come to you all....confused....tired....defeated......but still VERY much intent on playing what is probably my favorite psx game ever. All need is that one big honkin' all encompassing .bin or .img file.

HELP

Sincerely with my last dying breath,

Sterls
 

ulaoulao

Controller Man
Staff member
Hey, first I think you got most of the detail answer out of the way. So that said I can just look up there for anything I need to ask to help you. I know your going to hate this but... what is the issue? I get the fact you want to play a game, but it sounds more to me like you need to get the game extracted. I think a lot of this would be easy if you would just extract this on a windows system. Or, maybe you are running bootcamp or whatever? As for the 001,002,003 they dont need to be associated with a file. You just extract the main file ( rar ) and the rar finds the next file to use. I know you have had it at your wits ends here but I can help you jumping in to this, I need to know what step you are stuck at. I will try to help where I can.

oh, what does it matter, what type of phone you have? Are you trying to emulate a game on your phone? If so what does OSX have to do this it, is you phone running OSX? -- Very confused by all of this.
 

sterls

New member
Wow, I replied to this day's ago, I don't understand why it hasn't been posted.

I'll try again.

I'm sorry if I was unclear before. The issue is that the game I want to play comes in 3 discs. Because I'm using emulation, I can't very well just play one disc at a time and load the next one of from my psx memory card. So, to the play the game in it's entirety, I need to find a way to combine the three discs into one. This is what I currently have:

ROM Files: Containing:
FF7 (Disc 1).rom < FF7 (Disc 1).bin + FF7 (Disc 1).cue
FF7 (Disc 2).rom < FF7 (Disc 2).bin + FF7 (Disc 2).cue
FF7 (Disc 3).rom < FF7 (Disc 3).bin + FF7 (Disc 3).cue

I need to figure out, first of all, which three I'm suppose to combine, and second, how to combine them.
 

sterls

New member
Oh, and the relevance of the Mac OSX was just so I didn't get anyone posting Windows advice. I just wanted to make it clear that I don't use Windows. IF IT DOES COME DOWN TO IT, though...I guess I could find access to a windows computer.

The phone I'm running on I guess has no relevance, I was just blurting out all the facts I could lol.
 

Zach

New member
I don't think you understand how discs work with emulators.

There is no way to combine the game discs into a single disc. The actual game itself is contained on all 3 discs anyway, its just 3 discs big because of all the space the full motion videos require.

It sounds like you have successfully extracted the disc images, and run them through ECM, etc to get the final proper images. That is good.

At this point it is up to the emulator you are using. I would think (or expect) any proper PSX emulator would have a menu option for changing the disc.. Even still, if you had to do it manually by using an "Eject Disc" option and then loading a new image file, this should work as well...

I honestly don't have any real experience using PSX emulators (its been years), but for multi-disc games it should be as simple as changing the disc image file that is loaded. If the emulator can't properly swap disc images, then there is nothing any of us can really do for you I think.. I don't have any experience with mobile devices and emulators, and I'm not sure if anyone else here does either..

However if you can load and start a game, save the game, and load it again later on, from the first disc. You should be able to do the same for any other disc. The thing about FF7 is and other multi-disc games is that yes, they have a Disc swapping point, and it may try to verify the discs.. But it should also prompt you to save your game at that point, and with that save game you should be able to continue the game by doing a fresh boot of the emulator with the correct disc in the drive, load your game, and go..


But the bottom line here is, you can't take actual disc images and just concatonate them together into one large file and expect it to work... All that stuff you may have read about multi-part rar files, or selecting multiple parts of an archive and putting them into one large file, does not apply here and has nothing to do with disc images.. Those are just methods of storage for distribution or backup.

If you store 50 RAR files (main.rar, main.001, main.002, etc) in a single file sure you will get one huge file. But the files inside it are STILL compressed in their original multi-part form and are useless unless extracted.
You have to work with the raw disc images (.BIN/CUE) that you got from your original .RAR and ECM operations. Those are the actual discs with the actual game data on them.

I'm not familiar with storing disc images in a "ROM" format, but if anything it would just be some kind of custom wrapper file that holds the images, used by the emulator.. I think in this case it sounds like you need to get support from the emulator programmers on their own forums (if they have one) or web site (if they have one) or wherever you got the emulator / files from.
 
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sterls

New member
I see, well I will try putting all three discs separately on my phone and see how the emulator handles it. It's gonna suck if I get to the end of disc 1 and there's no point of reference left for disc 2. I guess I'll just have to wait and see lol.

The only reason I came to this apparent solution of concatenating the files was through this guide:

psx4droid.webs.com/psx4droidsetuphelp.htm

Maybe you can make sense of this.

Thanks for your help!
 
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