It's possible with older versions of Mame, but there's no support for the newer versions, without jumping thru hoops.
In the arcadeos.cfg file there's a line for mame config file. Likely it's 'mame.cfg.' This changed somewhere along the line to 'mame.ini.' The trick here is if you make any changes to the Mame default within ArcadeOS, it'll update the 'mame.ini' file you specify above. And if that happens, Mame won't run at all.
It used to be that Mame used 'yes/no' options instead of '1/0' like it does now. So if Mame encounters this in 'mame.ini' it pukes.
You may be able to get away with it by making the edits to 'mame.ini' manually, then setting it to read-only.
Right now Carlos Santillan is searching the code to see if legacy support is possilble, and what version of Mame started with the '0/1' and 'mame.ini.'