If it were me, I would separate .108 also. I know there have been many changes to the mame.ini file over time. By keeping your mames separate, not only do you avoid problems caused by settings in mame.ini that are incompatible or incorrect between versions but it also allows you to tweak each version separately as needed. Personally I keep every version of Mame separate, however I haven't found a need to run versions that are "close" together.
Hey SGT-
Update & comments.
1 - MAME 82, 108, & 115 all use "mame.ini", even if you rename the executable to something like mame82.exe
2 - Oddly, if you run "mame82 -createconfig" at the command line to create an ini file, it calls the new ini file mame82.ini. And it *will* use that ini file if it doesn't find mame.ini. In other words, if you have mame.ini & mame82.ini in the same file as your mame82.exe, the executable will use mame.ini.
3 - Having said that, I *still* can't get Phoenix to *not* blank & click my monitor when it launches. I'm using a proper mame82-generated ini. Here are the entries in it that I think are relevant to this discussion: window 0, hwstretch 0, cleanstretch auto, resolution auto (or 800x600--no difference), zoom 2, refresh 0, switchres 1 (or 0--no difference), screen_aspect 4:3
4 - I just noticed that, when I launch Phoenix in 115, it pulls up the cocktail bezel from the artwork directory. However, when I launch Phoenix in 82, it doesn't pull up the artwork. I've got the artwork directory set up in the ini: artwork_directory ..\mame\artwork, and I also have the following settings in the ini: artwork 1, use_backdrops 1, use_overlays 1, use_bezels 1. Any idea why that doesn't work? Actually, this is an academic question, as I don't find the cocktail bezel very attractive & it *really* shrinks down the playfield more than I like.
5 - My other oddball game, Turbo, runs on MAME108. It pulls up the nice bezel artwork on the left side, where the score & tach/speedo LED displays were on the real arcade machine. The speedometer fills in red as I drive faster, but the tach & Best 5 & Your Score are blank. Oddly, the turbo.zip file in my artwork folder has a handful of tachometer images in it. Any trick to getting the tach or the scores to work, or are they not functioning in MAME108? According to MAWS, 107u4 is where the built-in layout was changed, which is where I figured this bit of graphics was programmed...Using the same artwork & ROMS files, MAME115 shows all those display items correctly (though I can't get the game to run at full speed. It's about 68% or so w/ MAME115...
Thanks!
-Jason