mame 124, compiling, vista, and MALA = nightmare

[severdhed]

hey guys, i'm having a problem compiling mame 124 with this hiscore diff.  i have never compiled my own mame before, but i can read instructions.  i have started over several times, but just can't get it to work.  i tried both Headkaze's compiler, as well as MrDo's instructions and both times i get the same error. 

i downloaded the mame 124 source, and the hi_123.txt file.  both times, i can apply the diff file with no problems, but when i try to compile, it runs for about 30 minutes, then it errors out at this point:

Emitting obj/windows/mame/osd/windows/mamevers.rc...
The system cannot find the path specified.
mingw32-make: *** [obj/windows/mame/osd/windows/mamevers.rc] Error 1

i don't know what to do. 

i have tried this on two different PCs and i get the exact same error.  (both are running Vista)

as i was typing this,  i tried compiling on xp, and it compiled in like 5 minutes. and it appears to run fine via the command line, but now MALA doesnt work with it.  when i try to tell MALA where mame is, it tells me it is unable to get the file version. 

why is this stuff so difficult?  i just want a working version of mame, with a decent collection of roms.  i would like mame to not have any warnings, and to have high score support.  i have been using mame .116 that is patched for no warnings and it is fine, however my rom set is pretty small.  i have a friend with a full 123 romset, and update roms from 123 to 124, but i cannot seem to get this working.

is there a way to downgrade my romset to work with 116?  or is there a way to get mala to work with my patched 124?

please help.

[severdhed]

ok, so lessons learned:

1. compiling mame on a vista pc doesn't work very well.  use xp pro and all is well

2. if mala doesn't recognize the version of mame you are using, you can manually edit the mala.ini file and get it working.

3. updating romsets is a pain in the butt.  clrmame pro works, but is not very easy to figure out what you are supposed to do with it.

[headkaze]

ok, so lessons learned:

1. compiling mame on a vista pc doesn't work very well.  use xp pro and all is well

I remember someone had a problem compiling in Vista but set permissions for the MinGW folder solved it. Not sure exactly what he did though.

2. if mala doesn't recognize the version of mame you are using, you can manually edit the mala.ini file and get it working.

Sounds like Mala needs to be updated to read newer version numbers of Mame's -help output.

3. updating romsets is a pain in the butt.  clrmame pro works, but is not very easy to figure out what you are supposed to do with it.

It's not so hard using ZipTorrent. CLRMame Pro is quite easy to use I find. You don't even need a dat file for Mame it just reads all the data directly from it's exe and can audit ROMs etc. I don't believe you should use CLRMame Pro with ZipTorrent's though. I think it doesn't use the same zip version.

[loadman]

2. if mala doesn't recognize the version of mame you are using, you can manually edit the mala.ini file and get it working.

Sounds like Mala needs to be updated to read newer version numbers of Mame's -help output.

True