I'm so confused about what Mame to run

[GPD1444]

First I would like to say I am a computer idiot so I'm sorry if this is a dumb question.

I am an arcade collector, currently have 7 dedicated machines and 1 pin. I was recently given 3 cabinets that are good but bad boards and monitors so I figured it was time make a could of Mame machines.

I'm good with mechanical and electrical work but am lost with computers I grabbed 2 of my kids old notebooks they no longer use. Both are cheap acer notebooks
Windows 7 ultimate
240 gig hard drives
Intel atom cpu z520 @1.33 ghz

My questions are
1. Will these be ok to run Mame on to build my cabinets?
2. I find 1000 places to download different Mame programs but most are either a few years old or bad links.
What is the best place for a computer idiot to set these up? Preferably with a guide  how to set it all up.

Thank you for any help and again I am sorry if this is a dumb question.

[XTrek]

It Depends. Are you planning to use a CRT Arcade monitor ?  Then you cannnot use a notebook. Then you need a desktop pc with a radeon HD4000 series Card And Emucrt driver and a special cabel either Vga to jamma adapter or a vga to scart for Crt tv, And Groovymame emulator. To learn how to do it from srcatch it not so easy, and may take some time.

But if you planning to use a LCD or LED FLat Screen HD then you can use any Computer that has HDMI or DVI video out. You can use the usual Mame 32 or mame 64 or any of the variations. Check the mame homepage for the latest version. Then  you need to download the roms and setup mame properly. Can take some time to do, But there should many guides on the net. try google it.

[nitrogen_widget]

I don't know much about that CPU but i'm going to guess it's around the same speed as the AMD APU E series CPU in my old media center.
it was a dual core 64 bit 1.4ghz cpu.

it won't run 3d stuff.
but would run fatal instinct.

i'd go with advanced mame which uses the .106 romset.
Or maybe something in the .140's.
.139 works with android so it's easy to find roms for.

you won't have a lot of fun with the latest version of mame on those systems.
My experience is older slower systems are too slow for the last few versions of mame.

[BadMouth]

For a processor that slow, I'd run MAME version 106.
You can download older versions of MAME on the official MAME website.
http://www.mamedev.org/oldrel.html

I can't tell you where to get the roms, but search for a version 106 romset.

The reason people stick with this particular version for slower computers is that there was a major overhaul in version 107 that resulted in more demanding minimum specs.  Because a lot of people stick with this version, you can find romsets out there for it.

The standard MAME build doesn't have a user interface (no nice menus or game selection screens).
They added a bad game selection screen just to keep people who didn't understand the program from complaining that nothing happened when they clicked the exe.

You can either search for an old user interface derivative of MAME (MAMEUI, MAME21), or use a front end.
If you choose Mala as a front end, UncleT has step by step instructions here:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,56010.0.html
After being in this hobby for years, I do things differently, but those instructions are what got me started.

[Vigo]

Agree with the above. In this case older is better, and 106 is probably gonna be your best bet.

[behrmr]

I've done two builds on an ASROCK with a dual core 1.86 ghz Atom D2550.  It runs all of the 80's classics I've thrown at it very well.  I used MAME 0.154 with a custom build to remove the nag screens.  I previously used Mala for a frontend and it ran fine.  But recently have switched to AdvanceMenu since I like the simplicity of the tiled menu.  It runs with all of the tiles animated concurrently pretty well.

[empardopo]

I'm using mame 0.106 in a Pentium III and It works fine. My children can attest to that. :-)
Greetings!

[Typefighter01]

Only version of MAME I have ever run has been .106 and it runs perfectly, even on the worst of PC's (couldn't give you a minimum spec, but it runs great on the piece of  "E-Machine" my mother-in-law was throwing in the trash around 7 years ago if that tells you anything)...