CHDs, LDs, ROMs OH MY

[Iceberg802]

Im starting to make a cabinet. Getting NES and SNES roms and emulators is no problem at all!

Trying to emulate arcade games is whats getting me. So I know I need MAME, probably MAME32 (going to be using maximus arcade as a front end). The end result for arcade I want to be able to do old school arcade (galaga, pacman etc) AND newschool arcade (street fighter, the marvel games, pretty much all the classics from all years). I understand and can find ROMs for the classic arcade, but are the newschool arcade files the CHDs and LDs? Whats the difference? Can they be played with MAME32 as well? Thanks so much for the help

[ahofle]

CHDs are only needed for newer games that actually had hard drives in them (the CHD being the actual image of the hard drive, compressed).  LDs are laserdisc images, only for games like Dragon's Lair.  Again, it's an dump of the laserdisc contents.  The vast majority of games which MAME supports do not require either.

[u_rebelscum]

Mame32 is old.  It's called MameUI now.  
Might be because it comes in both 32 and 64 bit binaries.  It also might be that standard official mame is also 32 and 64 bit.  Mame32 should have been renamed way back in 0.53 period (starting with 0.37u14), when standard mame when 32 bit, but that's another story.

Anyway, no reason to us mameUI if you're using maximus FE.  MameUI is just standard mame + a front end UI, which you don't need with maximus doing that duty.

ROMs are copies of chips, and are grouped thogether in ROM sets in zip files for each game.  CHDs are copies of hard drives, laser discs, and other non chip storage spaces.  CHD stands for Compressed Hunks of Data.  No real difference between the two except CHDs are usually bigger, are self compressed.  Some games need just the rom sets, others need the rom set plus the chd(s).

Look at MAWS to see what each game needs.  (the "Data" area of each game).