Well, I love the program Howard.
Methods 2 and 3 work for me flawlessly. I am running AMD 2800, Win2000,mamewah 1.61, and mame 101.
The problem I am having is getting methods 4 or 5 running. I think it mostly has to do with AHK script. MAME pauses and Johnny5 loads, but without labels, then can be unpaused to play again. If i change the script J5=Johnny5.exe %1% to J5=Johnny5.exe berzerk, the labels will work for that game, but without being able to unpuase. Where is %1% pulling from.
Maybe this insight might help. I have also noticed that when unpauseing out of Johnny5, MAME is running and then in 3 seconds MAME becomes pauseed without any keyboard strokes. I am assuming this has to do with the sleep timing.
Maybe this could help you, and maybe you could help me?