The pearl roms I downloaded were around 27 megs (i downloaded two to try) and when unzipped they were around 131 megs... I couldnt get NDStool to work properly (it only flashed on the screen for around a sec) so i cant check the CRC.
Oh and wouldnt i be right to assume that (since MBits are 8 times smaller than MBytes) pokemon pearl would be approximately 128 MBs? Since on the NFO file of one of the Pearls i downloaded it said that the rom size is 1024 Mbits, and 1024/8 is 128.... meh, my emulation experience was, before this, limited to mostly ZSNES, VBA and various N64 emulators so im not all that experienced with this stuff, lol.
Hmm let me explain this better for you....
bits are the smallest possible strings of data that can be made.....they are made up of zeros and ones that I suppose you could say looks like matrix code 001011010....
now there are 8bits in a single byte....there are 1024 bytes in a kilo byte, 1024 kilo bytes in a mega byte and 1024 mega bytes in a giga byte (there are tera bytes but we can just forget about them for now)......
now bits are mostly commonly used when talking about internet connection speeds and other such things.....
whereas bytes are used to calculate filesizes and such.....I mean its much easier knowing a file is 128MB than saying it is 1024 Mbits
also I doubt it would matter however much messing around you do with the rom itself will it make it any better to run on emulators....like I said before, there's a good wait until these come out in other countries so you had best head down to Serebii.net and drool over all the pics and stuff they got there

prepare yourself for when you get it or whatever....
[EDIT]
Hey cyb, I'm viewing this thread in Firefox and there seems to be some display problems but there's like this line through the "Moderator" part of your profile....XD.....makes it look like you retired or something.....I'm also viewing at 1024x768 pixels, wondering if it's the browser or the forums? Might go mention it in the suggestions thread or something....