Ps2 .Iso Help

[SSG_K]

Good Morning,

First off, thankyou for putting together this great site. I've tracked down multiple "hard-to-find," files and such for years as well as been educated on how to get various emulators working and such. Now, up until now, I've only dealt with PS1 (classifying N64 & Dreamcast in the same "generation," as they were battling it out vs. one another when these consoles were current) and earlier generation console emulators/roms with great success over the past decade. I've come across a bump in the road that I'm trying to make heads or tails of. I see that PS2 roms "hosted," (using the term very loosely) are typically split apart into numerous files (usually .rar extensions). For instance, one rom I'm about done DL'ing is broken into 4 different files, however each and every one is a .iso file. How do I compile them into one file? I don't plan on burning any of these (once they're whole, assuming they can be "merged," into one solitary file) onto any blank media, planning only to play them from a HDD (I believe this is possible, no?) as I already do with my PS1/DC/N64 emulators/roms. I ask because I doubt (again, just guessing) I'll be able to play the rom in my PCSX2 emulator as it currently is (one game/rom broken into 4 different .iso's). Thanks in advance for your help, and please keep up the great work!

[Slacker Magician]

Good Morning,

First off, thankyou for putting together this great site. I've tracked down multiple "hard-to-find," files and such for years as well as been educated on how to get various emulators working and such. Now, up until now, I've only dealt with PS1 (classifying N64 & Dreamcast in the same "generation," as they were battling it out vs. one another when these consoles were current) and earlier generation console emulators/roms with great success over the past decade. I've come across a bump in the road that I'm trying to make heads or tails of. I see that PS2 roms "hosted," (using the term very loosely) are typically split apart into numerous files (usually .rar extensions). For instance, one rom I'm about done DL'ing is broken into 4 different files, however each and every one is a .iso file. How do I compile them into one file? I don't plan on burning any of these (once they're whole, assuming they can be "merged," into one solitary file) onto any blank media, planning only to play them from a HDD (I believe this is possible, no?) as I already do with my PS1/DC/N64 emulators/roms. I ask because I doubt (again, just guessing) I'll be able to play the rom in my PCSX2 emulator as it currently is (one game/rom broken into 4 different .iso's). Thanks in advance for your help, and please keep up the great work!

WinRAR is an archive format, extract the disc image from the RAR archive.
http://www.epforums.org/showthread.p...to-Handle-Them

[SSG_K]

Looking at the link you provided it seemed pretty simple enough, until I tried to apply it myself with my current situation, then I ran into another roadblock. Here goes, I downloaded a PS2 rom which came in two different .rar files. Within each of those .rar files were 12 more files, for 24 files total (well kind of, lets call them rar1 and rar2 both of the files, rar1 & rar2 had contained "game.part12.rar" files in both for some weird reason) I think I'm missing a step here shown in the link you provided earlier. I've come across a few downloads here and there that simply had a file extension of (for bad example) "game.001," "game.002," "game.003," "game.004," and so on and so on. To which the link you posted works amazingly. Now I've gone through browsing each of the individual 24 .rar files and they're all claiming to have the .iso image. What do I do now (outside the obvious of just trying to find the rom in a format my small experiance/knowledge can wrap itself around to figure out) ?

[SSG_K]

**Quick thought: Would it help if I posted the link to the rom file in question to get a better understanding or to "follow along," in a sense?

[Knightshade]

let me ask a question what are you using to extract and if your using winrar do you have it associated with iso files.

personally I use 7zip because these errors can occur in win rar i.e. you can unzip an iso past the playable state for emulators.

[SSG_K]

I dumped winrar after reading another thread on this forum and am now using 7zip exclusively. I found another copy of the game I'm after (gungrave overdose, yeah probaly not as popular as many others however I loved playing it and figured it would be a good test bed for me to work out any/all problems until I got a full understanding), and come across a different issue. Following the walkthrough I extracted the files (using only 7zip) to a folder I created on my desktop. That in tail creates me another folder (one folder in another), double clicking that folder I see the following files:
game.nfo, game.r00 thru game.r47 (as in, as in r00, r01, r02, r03, etc.), game.rar (which contains a file called game.iso strangely claiming it's nearly 4gb's) , and game.sfv . Going back into 7zip I track down the folder I created and right click on the game.r01 and see "combine files," is now available for me to do, so I do it. The end result is a file named game.r Now I tried to extract that file (unsure what to do at this point) and is shows me that its a .iso file as it tries to extract however an error message stops me short that the .iso file is forked up. So I try one last time to combine the files (again starting with the file named game.r01 since the file game.r00 gave me an error message that it couldn't detect a split file) and once more I still only get the following file as an end result: another game.r (literally a file extention of ".r") So I go back to the winrar file that was mention earlier (kind of a long shot, but I'm out of ideas at this point) and try to extract it and get this result: an .iso file that claims to be 3.62GB's. Hoping this is the file I really do need I can only test it out tomorrow and will repost the results. Man, lol, things were so much easier when it emulators required small file sized roms and not much configuration. Meh, guess you gotta play to win and all that.

[SSG_K]

Starting to see a new issue. It seems each uploader is breaking the files up into a multitude of files of their own preference as to how they're packaged and each one is it's own painful adventure to figure out. Does anyone just do single file uploads, instead of breaking each .iso into 4-9 different pieces? I only ask because each one is getting more and more away from the walkthroughs I've read making this extremely painful to figure out. Currently my CPU isn't strong enough to work the emulator, only my Mac is (although I've never been a fan of Mac for other reasons). So for now I'm just trying to gather up all the files so in 4-6 months when I buy a new PC I'll be rocking and rolling per say.

[SSG_K]

Figured I'd give it a shot and strangely enough my PC does run the emulator. I've been able to play FF XII, and r-type final so far. Black, gungrave, and Tekken 5 are stuck on a black screen with no sound, and def jam fight for NY will load and allow me to create a character but will stop right before an actual match starts. It's still hit or miss but I may the MacBook pro a try since its better equipped than the 3 year old PC desktop. I'm still trying to figure out how to get these iso files working right as it's killing me that I haven't figured it out entirely. I've even gone as far as trying to find file hosting (paid or free, I'm starting not to care at this point) that offers the complete and working iso in a single file format and not broken up into a multitude of files which I'm sure is what is screwing me up. Hell lol, at this point I'd pay someone to load an external HDD with working iso's so I wouldn't be so vexed with the unpacking/recompiling formats used (seriously, anyone know if there is a person/group which offers such services?)