don't click here

Load ROMS via NAS/FTP?

Discussion in 'Technical Discussion' started by neonsynth, Jun 15, 2018.

  1. neonsynth

    neonsynth

    Previously 'SonicVaan' Member
    394
    9
    18
    Germany, Stammbach
    gaming and music production
    Hey peeps, first off I'm sorry if this is in the wrong subforum. If it is, feel free to move it. ^^"

    Basically I have a HDD connected on my router with a vast amount of games. When I'm at home I can open ROMS/BIN&CUE via KEGA Fusion just fine. When I'm on the go, I can access the NAS without any problems, since I have set everything up via dynamic DNS.

    Alright so, is there a way I can do it aswell while being absent? I got the idea, because I can stream videos on my Android on the go via a FTP browser inside a file manager. However, on Windows 10 when I'm connecting via the Windows Explorer (i.e. ftp://xxx.ddns.net:12345/) I can't open files, just drag & drop them to the desktop and vice versa. Is there any way I can open/stream ROMS/BIN&CUE when not being home? Isn't there a software that I can connect the NAS with and that it will "act like a normal folder on Windows" i.e. so that I can open ROMs, etc?

    If so, is there an emulator on Android that supports this aswell? That feature would be a godsent, since all you need is internet and it doesn't waste storage.
     
  2. Overlord

    Overlord

    Now playable in Smash Bros Ultimate Moderator
    19,218
    965
    93
    Long-term happiness
    Sounds like you need something that can use FTP servers as a mappable drive letter. http://www.killprog.com/fdrve.html was the first link I found on Google, there may be better ones.
     
  3. neonsynth

    neonsynth

    Previously 'SonicVaan' Member
    394
    9
    18
    Germany, Stammbach
    gaming and music production
    Thanks man! I actually found a way better software, "DirectNET Drive". Now I can play a shitton of games without wasting storage. Shame such a thing is not possible for Android emulators...
     
  4. Sappharad

    Sappharad

    Oldbie
    1,413
    70
    28
    Another option, if your router can do it, is to set up an OpenVPN server on your router. Then you can just connect to your home network when you're not at home and use everything as if you were actually on your network. The disadvantage of this is that all of your internet will be proxied through your home network while the VPN is active on your device, so you're limited by the upload/download speed of your home network. But you can just connect to the VPN when you need it and disconnect it when you're not. Several open source router firmwares can do it, I use DD-WRT.

    I do this for times when I'm traveling and connected to insecure Wifi, because the traffic is encrypted. It beats paying for an actual VPN service when I can just host my own.
     
  5. I did this before.
    I used SoftEther VPN (the server was installed on a box at home) combined with DynuDNS mapping my home IP address to a domain name.
    Then I installed the SoftEther VPN client on my laptop and used that to VPN into the network at home
    Besides ROM images, I was also able to get stuff on network drives at home, while 12,000km away on the other side of the world.
    Helped to pass the time while waiting in hotel rooms for meetings to occur.
    It doesn't obviously work too well for stuff like Dolphin, due to bandwidth/latency. In that case I simply downloaded the disk image locally and ran it in Dolphin.
    Note it was a company laptop, I wasn't too keen to have games on their machine. Also I didn't expect to have so much boredom on that trip to China.
    So by VPNing to home I was able to get to my games.