bin-cue-chd.en_us.md

Converting your completely legal, disc-based, bin/cue ROMs for PlayStation emulation into compressed, single-file CHDs using macOS

A member of the PlayStation homebrew community has developed a game for users of PSX emulators to enjoy, released under a permissive software license which allows sharing and re-use. After downloading the completely legal ROM of the game, you notice that the game is provided as a *.bin and *.cue file. These instructions will show you how to combine and compress these files into a new *.chd file which saves you hundreds of megabytes of drive space, and is a single file that is easier to share and load into your preferred PSX emulator.

Each step is explained in English with the corresponding terminal command below it. These instructions should work without problem on any modern macOS — with either Intel or Apple Silicon CPUs. Tested on macOS Ventura 13.5 on both an Intel i9 chip, and an Apple M1 Max chip.

Prerequisites

• A relatively recent version of macOS.

  

• Comfortable-enough using Terminal.app (or alternatives).

  

• An application which can open .7z archives. I can recommend:

  • The Unarchiver (free)
  • Archiver (paid)

• You have Homebrew installed. (Installation is outside the scope of this tutorial, but it’s pretty fundamental if you do technical things on your Mac.)

  • This includes installing the Xcode CLI tools (a much smaller download than the entire Xcode).

Decompressing the file

1. After downloading the game from the homebrew developer’s website, you find that the game is compressed as a .7z file.

2. Decompress the .7z file.

   1. Select the file(s).

   2. Right-click with a mouse; two-finger tap on a trackpad; or control-click with the keyboard — and then choose Open from the menu.

      (Or if you prefer the keyboard, type command-down (⌘ ↓) to open files.)

      

Downloading and preparing to run a shell script, for the nearly-absolute beginner

NOTE: If you are comfortable with Git, GitHub, and Terminal — you just need to git clone (or download) the repository, then run the ./convert.sh shell script passing the directory where the .bin/.cue files live as the argument. The rest of these instructions are for everyone else.

1. Download a .zip file containing the source code from the skyzyx/bin-cue-chd GitHub repository. By default, it will save to your Downloads folder.

2. Inside your Downloads folder, find bin-cue-chd-main.zip and double-click it to decompress it into a folder called bin-cue-chd-main.

   

3. Using Spotlight (by default, command-spacebar — ⌘[space]), search for Terminal. When there is a matching result, press enter/return.

4. In Terminal, type cd followed by the spacebar.

5. Using your mouse/trackpad, click-and-drag the bin-cue-chd-main folder from Finder into your Terminal window. You’ll notice that the path of the folder got filled-in after the cd .

6. Press enter/return. You are now inside the bin-cue-chd-main folder in your Terminal app.

7. Install findutils and rom-tools using Homebrew.

   brew install findutils rom-tools

Running a shell script, for the nearly-absolute beginner

You’re stiil in the Terminal app, and still inside the bin-cue-chd-main folder. Right?

NOTE: To check, type pwd and press enter/return. You should see a path that ends with bin-cue-chd-main.

1. Type the following (beginning with a period-slash), followed by a space.

   ./convert.sh

2. Find the Finder window that shows the folder where your .bin/.cue ROM is.

3. Just like before — using your mouse/trackpad, click-and-drag the ROM folder from Finder into your Terminal window. You’ll notice that the path of the folder got filled-in after the ./convert.sh .

   ./convert.sh /example/path/to/your/game/folder

   

4. Press enter/return to begin the conversion.

Converting to a .chd file

1. You’ll see something similar to:

   Will process files on directory: /Users/rparman/Desktop/Legal ROMS/Random Game that is a Legal ROM (USA)
   
   Press enter to continue. Press Ctrl+C to quit.
   

   

   Press enter/return.

2. The files will begin processing, and look similar to:

   Processing file: /Users/rparman/Desktop/Legal ROMS/Random Game that is a Legal ROM (USA)/Random Game that is a Legal ROM (USA).cue
   chdman - MAME Compressed Hunks of Data (CHD) manager 0.254 (unknown)
   Output CHD: /Users/rparman/Desktop/Legal ROMS/Random Game that is a Legal ROM (USA)/Random Game that is a Legal ROM (USA).chd
   Input file: /Users/rparman/Desktop/Legal ROMS/Random Game that is a Legal ROM (USA)/Random Game that is a Legal ROM (USA).cue
   Input tracks: 1
   Input length: 70:37:12
   Compression: cdlz (CD LZMA), cdzl (CD Deflate), cdfl (CD FLAC)
   Logical size: 777,945,024
   Compressing, 72.1% complete... (ratio=62.3%)
   

   

3. When it’s done, you’ll have a new .chd file in the same folder as the .bin/.cue files. The .chd is a replacement for the .bin/.cue files.

   It is now one file that contains your game, and uses less space on-disk.

   

4. When you’re ready, you can copy it to the location where you keep/play your other legal ROMs.