My old MAME rig finally died... Questions about using new vs old MAME version

[goldenageofarcade]

My mame rig was built in 2003, it's running MAME V.72, and I was using MAMEWAH as my front end.  One thing I didn't like about MAMEWAH was that the version I was using couldn't create custom lists, which wasn't important to me back then, but my cabinet has evolved over the years and now has many different control panels with layouts set up for specific genres of games.  As such, I'd like to be able to have a game list for each CP that corresponds specifically to that control layout.  I know the more modern front ends can do this, but they don't seem to be compatible with older MAME versions, it appears MAME went through a change sometime between when I was building mine and now.

I think I'd prefer to use my existing MAME version and ROMs, but I'm having trouble finding front ends that work with that old file structure.

Does anyone know of a front-end that will work with "old" MAME as far as custom gamelists go? 

Alternately, is there any reason I shouldn't just scrap my old ROMs and go with the current stuff and "re-learn" MAME again with the newer, different technical considerations?

One other thing is that my old machine is about a P3 1GB with 2GBs of RAM, I really don't want to build a new PC for it, I intend to run either Windows 2000 or XP using my existing ArcadeVGA PCI card.

Any advice would be appreciated! 

[Gray_Area]

Wait a minute.....if your old machine died, you have have to build a new machine. Or at least get another older one. Right?

[goldenageofarcade]

I mean the HDD died, the machine itself is fine.  I want to pop in a new drive, dig up my 30 CDs of ROM and start over again.  When I originally built it I had a single (very large) panel with every control on it, so the 2 MAMEWAH lists (ALL and No-Clones) were fine, but since I'm starting from scratch, I'd love to have seperate lists for my 4-way 3 button panel, my dual 8-way panel, etc etc.  I'm finding things to be very different with MAME now than it was then, a lot of XML files stuff I never have dealt with.

[goldenageofarcade]

Alright, I gave in and have decided to go with the most current MAME version.  I only hope the games I care about play correctly, I've heard bits here and there that some of the old games aren't right anymore.

But dual trackball support for Marble Madness is too cool to not take advantage of!

[6of1]

i re-built my mame PC around the same time (unsure of version) and I am also running mamewah. maybe yours is an older version but i have custom lists.. ill boot up and take a look at version of mamewah if you want..

mame 0.71b
mamewah 0.9.0.7

I looked

[danny_galaga]

I am using V.78 with Mala. I am quite happy with that (",)

[gonzo90017]

You can create custom lists with Mamewah. All you need to do is upgrade to a newer version. I'm currently using 1.62b13.

[goldenageofarcade]

So a few months later and I think I'm dead in the water.  I wasn't able to locate my old ROMs so I had no choice but to go with the current version of MAME, which involved me having to track down a much larger HDD to carry all 80+ gbs (not easy to do on an IDE machine).  I spent time relearning how to configure MAME, and got it working great on my laptop via a 500gb USB drive holding the ROMs and all that stuff, I spent a week or so moving it all back to my primary MAME computer (an old Optiplex 270 or something like that) and just tested it now for the first time, every single game plays absolutely horribly.  I guess that old P4 with 500MBs of RAM just isn't going to cut it.  Which sucks, as I have 2 cabinets set up with similar hardware (the other one failed a year or so ago, but it was only a vertical machine, so I converted it to a JAMMA horizontal for temporary use), so I have 2 AGP ArcadeVGA cards that I won't be able to use any longer...

Unless someone knows of a decent machine I can look for that will run current MAME and also has an AGP slot?

I guess it's not the end of the world, I got 10+ years out of them, just sucks that I'm forced to spend some cash on more powerful hardware to do the same thing I was doing before with old clunkers.

[Gray_Area]

You need 2 gigs of ram. (TinyXP wouldn't hurt, either.) My P4 2.8ghz runs anything not 3D just fine in current MAME, with basic HLSL on.

[nitz]

just sucks that I'm forced to spend some cash on more powerful hardware to do the same thing I was doing before with old clunkers.

There are definitely benefits to upgrading and using new Mame. I love the HLSL effects, and emulation on a lot of stuff has improved greatly since 0.72.

Having said that, no need to drop the cash on new hardware if you don't want to. Download a rollback set of roms and use clrmamepro to revert your set back to an older version.

Mame 0.106 would be a good candidate as that was the last version before the video rewrite, so it should run way faster than current mame, plus it should play nice with most FEs I would think.