Confused: Upgrading after 6 years, help appreciated

[Kid_Creation]

Hello everyone, thanks for taking the time to read this post, i'll try to be simple and clear but my head is fairly sore from too much thinking, the basic fact is this, i haven't really worked on my Mame Cab for at least 5 or 6 years and have decided that it's time to do a big upgrade on it, both cosmetically and on the software side of business, so here's the current situation;

- The system currently uses Maximus Arcade as a front because it's simple and does what i want
- It also uses Mame32 for launching mame via Maximus, (obviously an ancient build of mame32)
- the reason it uses mame32 is because i found it easy to configure all the light gun games to work with my Topguns, due to the ability to find settings that worked and then apply to all light gun roms
- I've just downloaded the 153 rom set and will also download the chds etc, these will be put on a new HDD which will be installed in the cabinet (not networked so a new HDD seemed the quickest way to transfer such a lot of data between my main pc and my mame cab)
- Naturally i also downloaded the 153 version of MameUI, but here's where my problems begin . . . .
       -MameUI (formally mame32) is now only available as a 64bit platform
       -The decrepit mame pc is 32bit so not compatible
       -yes i could use normal mame but then configuring my topguns would surely be a fresh hell?
       -i assume i could find a less recent version of mameui (one from before 32bit got dropped) but then would the 153 roms be useless?

so much has changed since i've been away from this scene and i feel utterly lost so i'll appreciate any helpful suggestions or advice anyone might have (and no, a new 64bit pc is not an option)
Thanks again for your time and i really hope someone can help, my mind is utterly frazzled

[Howard_Casto]

Did you see my post about used computers over in everything else?

I know you said it isn't an option... but for around 50 bucks you could get you a dual core and stick in there. 

[Kid_Creation]

i really can't, i know it's probably the easiest option but it's just not doable right now

[Gatsu]

If you can't afford to upgrade your hardware, you may want to hold off on dealing with updated software then.

[Kid_Creation]

well further down the line i may be able to but i'm looking for a stop gap to get part of the way

[Haze]

If you must use a UI build then you're more likely to get the latest UI fixes with MAMEUIFX
http://mame32fx.altervista.org/home.htm
although it's not recommended.  The UI codebase is basically unmaintained in any official capacity and falling apart.

I'm also a bit worried about your specs, my 5 year old decrepit PC *is* a Core2.. I get the feeling you could be well behind the performance curve.

A lot has improved / changed / been added in the last 6 years*, but performance is always tuned for relatively current systems.

General tips, if you're on XP and use nVidia graphics then make sure you don't upgrade the video drivers, anything more than about 4 years old will BSOD MAME in D3D mode due to driver bugs.


* I keep getting requests to do further writeups in addition to the 2012 and 2013 ones I already did on my site.

[Malenko]

My question is, WHY do you want to update? If what you have works and plays everything you want, there is no reason to update.

EDIT: Especially if you arent going to upgrade the hardware (as said by others)

[Drnick]

just find the latest version that was 32 bit. Get the rollback roms and you can turn the 153 set back into 146 or whatever you need.   But like others have said I would hold out on doing that unless you upgrade the hardware.

[Howard_Casto]

Here's my main question... why mameui?  You are using a front end.  The ui versions of mame are for noobs who can't configure a FE. 

The others are right though, if there aren't any new games you want to play you were probably better off leaving things as-is. 

[Kid_Creation]

My question is, WHY do you want to update? If what you have works and plays everything you want, there is no reason to update.

The main reason for upgrading is there seems to be so many more roms about these days, i mean the 153 set ive downloaded has 9000 roms while my system currently has nothing like that

Here's my main question... why mameui?  You are using a front end.  The ui versions of mame are for noobs who can't configure a FE.   

As for why i was using mameui its purely because configuring lightgun support in it was so much easier

General tips, if you're on XP and use nVidia graphics then make sure you don't upgrade the video drivers, anything more than about 4 years old will BSOD MAME in D3D mode due to driver bugs.

You mentioned NVidia graphics which makes me curious, i'm pretty sure it used to only be the processor that mattered as Mame just emulated everything in the CPU and a graphics card didn't matter? has this all changed now? (now you know how far behind i am)

Would the new version mean that the new versions of roms i currently have working on my system wouldn't work due to my older hardware then? i really thought my head would untangle after a good nights sleep but apparently this scene is totally different to how i left it

i'll probably be replacing my main pc in a year or so, perhaps the upgrade should wait till then so i can use this quad core system in the cabinet, was just hoping i could do it quicker than that really

[Malenko]

The main reason for upgrading is there seems to be so many more roms about these days, i mean the 153 set ive downloaded has 9000 roms while my system currently has nothing like that

That's a pretty terrible reason to open this particular can of worms.  Of the 9,000 roms how many are games you want to play that you currently cant play? Mahjong isnt worth it 

[BadMouth]

My question is, WHY do you want to update? If what you have works and plays everything you want, there is no reason to update.

The main reason for upgrading is there seems to be so many more roms about these days, i mean the 153 set ive downloaded has 9000 roms while my system currently has nothing like that

Most of those are gambling machines you probably have no interest in.  A lot of them are also mechanical games which originally had no screen and can't be played.  After clearing that stuff out, you'll be left with about 2,200 games including different versions of the same game and games you don't have the proper controls to play.  In reality, there might be a half dozen new games added that you'd actually play.  (depending on what version you're currently on)

I updated to v.146 when the PGM games were added (Dodonpachi II, Demon Front).  I probably won't update again until some long awaited game like Raiden 2 is working.  I do install the newest version on my laptop every once in a while to see if there is anything that would make updating the cabinet worthwhile to me.

If you're on a very ancient version, by all means give a newer version a try.
Just give the official MAME binary a try.  There aren't any lightgun options in the UI version that aren't there in mame.ini   
Plenty of other people have their lightguns working just fine with the official build.

[yotsuya]

If everything works the way you want it to, leave this cab alone.

Save your money, and when you have enough, build a new one and keep the other one solely as a shooting cab. If space is an issue, then consider just buying the new PC and setting it up BEFORE you do anything to your currently working setup. If you set it up years ago, you might find some of the resources that you used are no longer available.

Good luck!

[Howard_Casto]

I have no clue what you mean by lightgun configuration was much easier.  You must be doing it wrong.  Write a ctrlr file, you only have to do it once and you are done.  When you upgrade mame, you copy over that ctrlr file and you don't have to reconfigure.  For that matter, mame cfg files haven't changed that much... probably by dropping in the new exe you are good to go.