Man- I am Sooooo confused

[Wotto]

Can someone please help me out-
I have farted around SUCCESFULLY with Mame for years- I run the following-

Mame version 37b16b and the front end arcade at home...I have 2800 roms that suit it and I have been happy with everything.
I now want to try a new front end that can save a favourites list ( AAH has a bug where it drops games at random from favourites...otherwise it would STILL be fine).

I think Mamewah is the way to go...but it wont work well with Mame 37b16b, so I grabbed Mame version 82 and now that wont recognise some of my roms - like Galaga etc ...so I am pissed at that..

Heres the thing..

Can someone simply tell me if you were starting FRESH today and had never touched Mame at all...

a) What version of Mame would you grab from the Mame site ( please advise the actual number )
b) What Frontend you would run with it ( hopefully Mamewah )
c) Will I need to get all updated versions of the roms?

Please help me out.

Cheers

Wotto
 

[cdbrown]

There have been many changes to roms since 37b16b, so chances are a lot of the roms you have won't work straight out in 82.  But you can get yourself a rom manager (clrmame, romcenter) and update the rom sets to match the latest mame.  The managers will fix the rom files as best they can but you will still need to download certain games that have gone through major changes.

I'm not really sure that going straight to 82 will be any benifit to you as it doesn't seem like you want more games and the fact that every new build of mame seems to make games run slower and slower.  Have a read through this software forum and you'll find people various opinions as to which mame version runs well.  Have you searched to see why mamewah doesn't work well with 37b16b?  It may be a simple config thing and it will save a lot of trouble trying to update your romset.

[Minwah]

I think by 'not working well' he means that v0.37blah is DOS based, so the DOS window pops up on launching a game.  I do not know if a Windows port of that version exists, if it does I would recommend use that...

In answer to the questions:

a) Depends on your PC hardware.  If you have a crap old PC then stick with what you have.  If you have a 1ghz+ (preferably higher) then get the latest version (v0.82).  If you get v0.82 then you will have to update loads of your roms.  ClrMAME will sort some out, I bet you'll have to obtain some new roms in some cases.

b) Up to you, MW is a good start, otherwise Dragon King, Kymaera, 3dArcade, GameLauncher etc...

c) Ooops I answered that in a)  

[wboy]

...

Wotto
 

check your email (listed in your profile)