OK I am pretty proficient at MAME I would say and this should be easy but...
I have just noticed, using MAME v0.88 that I cannot get the 'resolution' setting in my mame.ini file to work. Here is a snippet:
### Windows video options ###
autoframeskip 0
frameskip 0
waitvsync 0
triplebuffer 1
window 0
ddraw 1
direct3d 0
hwstretch 1
cleanstretch auto
resolution 640x480
refresh 0
scanlines 0
switchres 1
switchbpp 1
maximize 1
keepaspect 1
matchrefresh 0
syncrefresh 0
throttle 1
full_screen_brightness 0.000000
frames_to_run 0
effect none
screen_aspect 4:3
My desktop is at 1280x1024 so clearly MAME should switch to 640x480, but it doesn't, it stays at 1280x1024. switchres is ok, and mame.ini is definately being read (I tried turning off hwstretch and it worked).
Adding to the wierdness, if I add -r 640x480 to the mame commandline, it works perfectly (switching resolutions as expected).
Note that I am running this from a commandline all the time, so it is not a FE issue. Is this a 0.88 bug?? Or WTF have I overlooked!?