Newb Help With Software

[ukchris]

Well I'm very new to this so let me apologise in advance if some of my issues are pretty basis, I would appreciate some guidance though.

So I'm planning on building a cabinet, PC will be a Celeron 2.8, the screen I'd like to use is a Sony LCD Panel with a native 1280x1024 resolution. Before getting far in to building I want to make sure I can get the various software pieces working as desired, here lies my problem.

I figured I could download MAME, get Mawa, a few ROMs, and presto... it'd be all about configuration... no dice!

When I try to play a game using the latest MAME I get errors, something due to compatibility or version of the ROMs, literally none of them will work. Mawa however works, populates the menu etc but still no dice on launching.

If I use an older version of MAME I can get several games to run but it doesn't get along with Mawa as it is the windows version of MAME.

I guess the simple version of my question is how do I assemble a front end, mame version and roms that get along? I'd rather not have to design the cabinet with a rotating screen so I need to be able to configure rotation as games are launched (I assume). Is there such a thing as a compatibility matrix or a way to get the ROMs to work with the latest version of MAME?

Any tips would be much appreciated, I don't want to start putting money in to the cabinet until I know the hardware is going to work. I have buttons, joysticks etc and am waiting for the iPac to arrive but obviously if I can't even launch games cleanly then that's all irrelevant.

Chris.

[Hoopz]

It sounds like your rom version(s) don't match your Mame version.  When they match, you won't have problems launching games.  Use Google to find a trustworthy rom site.  Whatever your pleasure is, Google will help you find roms.  Once you know the version of the roms, you can run that version of mame so you won't have any problems.

[ukchris]

Thanks Hoopz, is there a way to tell from the ROMS I have what the version is then go get the appropriate version of MAME? Is it reasonable to assume that if I have a version of MAME for windows (MAME32.EXE ?) that runs them then I should be able to get the equivalent command line version and hook that in to Mawa?

[Hoopz]

It's not easy to determine your rom version unfortunately.  Depending on where you got them, you may be able to download either roms with a particular version number or rollback roms that you can use to turn your roms into roms that match a previous version of Mame.

The easiest thing to do is just find THE right sight on Google and it will have the rom versions listed so you can more easily match them up. 

Regarding Mame32, it's now being called MameUI.  They changed the name a year or two ago (maybe longer?) to avoid confusion since they have a 32 bit version of MameUI and a 64 bit version of MameUI.  Regardless, you can easily find a command line version of Mame to use instead of MameUI (or the older Mame32).  Older versions of Mame are listed on the Mame website (http://mamedev.org/).

And it's Mala, not Mawa.  Unless your the priest from The Princess Bride.