MAME on dreamcast--Any good?

[arcadecab]

I am wondering about the idea of playing MAME on a dreamcast console.  I have no experience with this whatsoever, so I am wondering what kind of quality is experienced with this?  How many MAME games can the dreamcast play?  How different is it from playing MAME on a PC?  Can you use a FE with the dreamcast?  
Is the harddrive large enough to hold that many games? Artwork?
Is the quality of the games close to that experienced with PC?
How difficult is it to get it setup on a Dreamcast?
What is the best website for playing MAME on a dreamcast and downloading the programs?
Thanks.

[F|end]

As i know it, MAME on Dc, works fine!

I don't know if the roms differ from the pc ones but i think not!

I have a friend which's running mame for dc with the roms and he's satisfied!

The question is:

Is Dc processor fast enough for all mame games?

The second question is:

Can you run the games with full screen and tv aspect?

The 3rd question is:

Can i put chd files and run them in my Dc with the games?

And there's a lot more questions that make me quit of even try that...

[AlanS17]

The Dreamcast won't play alot of the newer gamnes, but handles classics like a champ. Im pretty sure you're gonna need older ROMs, though. They update ROMs as newer versions of MAME come out, and I think MAME for the Dreamscast is only available for like v .37 or something like that. At least it was the last time I checked (a very long time ago). Plus people don't have much of an incentive to get newer games working on a Dreamcast since they won't play, anyways. So as far as I know, development has come to a stop for that platform and you may need older ROMs to be compatible.

(This was all the last time I checked a long time ago, though.)

[TalkingOctopus]

This is sort of offtopic but NesterDC runs NES games wonderfully on the DC.  It is probably my most used DC disc.  

I have not tried out the mame for the DC, but I cannot imagine that it does much more than the classics.  Is it hard to make a DC mame disc?  Back when I made the nester one, it was a somewhat difficult and long process.

[Dave_K.]

Is it hard to make a DC mame disc?  Back when I made the nester one, it was a somewhat difficult and long process.

It is not an easy process to make the MAMED disc for DC.  As Alan stated, you fist have to find older images of the roms which are supported (they list I saw had most roms as only "partially" supported, no sounds, or bad frame rate, etc...).  You have to create the disc in a series of steps, copying what roms you want onto the disk along with all the other parts which make it DC bootable.  You also need to use the latest version of disc juggler, or it simply won't boot...toasted several CDs before I learned this.

There is a list of game supported, but most are only "partially" supported (as in no sound or crappy framerate).  Some of the classics play just fine.

[tom61]

You guys haven't been keeping up, MAME on Dreamcast is alot better now than with the old MAMED. The current trend is to release 'single game' versions of MAME that run only one or a few games, and each build is optimised for Dreamcast. Check out www.DCEmulation.com for more info. I haven't burnt any of them yet, but from what I hear they're fairly good. There is now a menu program to launch homebrew games (including the new single game MAME builds) called 'Dream Inducer'. Looks pretty cool, but I heven't burnt anything for DC in almost a year now.

Developers have ported over Mame .71, but I'm guessing that it's more usefull for developers to use as a code base, than for users to run MAME (would take up too many resources, like MAMED did).