I haven't built a cab in about 10 years, but I have the itch again, so I'm starting to get things together. My main use will be MAME, and I would like to have a bunch of classics available without much fluff. I won't be emulating consoles or anything just yet.
I'll be using an older i7 laptop with a busted screen but a good mobile graphics card (it will run Rocket League at around 30fps on low settings), so I don't expect to have much trouble there.
Like I said, it's been about 10 years since I've messed with MAME. I see MAME 0.224 just came out, is this the one to get? How's ROM compatibility if I dig out 10 year old ROMs I still have floating around?
What about a front-end? I'd like an easy way to hide/show games in the select menu and have something nice to look at during the selection screen.
I've been reading but I haven't seen a "starting from scratch" thread in a while.