As many of you have noticed, whenever a newer version of MAME is released, things slow down, even some old games.
What happens is that when more games are added, MAME has to load and deal with hundreds of new processor chips and new features, making even Pac-man run slow on a P133.
It also sucks up the memory.
50 MB for me, even on the simplest games.
What I propose is to simply not load the features that are not needed. When would you ever need to use the latest graphic chips while playing a game of Tron?
The MAME files (CPUs, GPUs, and the like) should be located in seperate files, loading each on an on-demand basis.
This would eliminate using up the ram.
Also, there should be built-in feature blocking. If a game doesn't use 32bit sprites, don't load the code for it.
Alas, I have no experience in either c, c++, or the MAME source.
Unless someone here is feeling generous, we may be stuck with dozens of MAME versions forever.
(Note: Please correct me if I have anything wrong here.)