Newby Q'n - ROM backward compatibility

[whatisk]

I am working on my first MAME project and was wondering how compatible ROMs are with different versions of MAME.

I have gotten a ROM set 'optimised' for version .95 of MAME. As the PC I'm currently looking at is a Celeron 400 with 192MB RAM, Mame32 .95 runs quite slowly. I've yet to experiment with RAM drives, etc however I was wondering how backwards compatible are ROM sets in general. Could I use them successfully with an older version of MAME that may run on the PC better/faster? Or would I be better off trying to source a ROM set for an older version?
I haven't tried running them with MameWah and Mame as yet, as I've been closely following the thread on people experiencing slow loading with the DOS MAME.

Down the track I will be looking at upgrading the PC (also wanting to turn it into a Visual Pinball, etc machine), but until then, I would like the games to be as playable as possible with hopefully quick load times.

[sc1103]

You may be able to use ClrMAMEPro w/ an older .dat file and an older version of mame to get faster speeds.  Wait for better advice tho from someone like Peale or another smarter more experienced member before doing so. Some roms change, some dont, so u may be able to get away w/ some games, but a few of the classics, im pretty sure, and newer dumps have changed between versions.

[EndTwist]

For the love of god don't use anything above maybe MAME 0.70 on a 400mhz PC. I'm using 0.59 on a P2 450MHz PC for my cocktail!

A number of romsets are backward-compatable (I'm using a 0.70 romset on the 0.59 version of MAME). Obviously some roms in the 0.95 romset won't work on an older MAME, since they were not yet either put in, taken out of TESTDRIVER status, or just non-working roms. Like sc1103 said, play around with ClrMAMEPro a bit, and try some of your roms (in their current state) on an older mame -- some may work, some may not.

Someone else may be able to clarify this more, but hopefully I helped a bit

[whatisk]

Thanks for the replies.

I'll have a look around for an older verison of MAME and test it out.

Luckily though, I scored myself a P4 2.4, 256MB RAM, 40GB HDD at an auction yesterday. So that will now become my MAME PC. Hopefully that way I should be able to stick with .95 with a minimum of fuss. Probably look at making the RAM 512MB some point soon.

Surprisingly, load times don't seem too bad (well, better than I was expecting). Though pretty much anything other than the old shoot 'em ups runs pretty doggedly...