Many ROMS not working

[mikej]

I am running windows mame v. 55 and am having trouble getting many games to run.  I know the roms are good, but I get an error telling me that "some of the required files are missing" when I try to launch mame from a dos shell.  Is there some setting that I might have wrong?  The strange thing is that most of my games work.  Pacman (midway) is an example of one that doesn't work.  Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Mike

[Magnet_Eye]

Do you have older roms with a newer MAME, or an older MAME with newer roms? This would cause problems...


Why don't you just get the latest MAME release and roms and be happy!!?

[simpleman46]

Perhaps... are they all neogeo games?  You may be missing the neogeo rom.  Or something like that.

[Chris]

Pac-Man requires its parent rom, Puckman.  Do you have the ROM for Puckman?

I'll bet all of the ones you have with "missing files" have parent ROMs or BIOS ROMs.  Go to http://www.mame.dk and look up each of the games that doesn't work, and see if it has a parent ROM and/or a BIOS ROM.

--Chris

[mikej]

Do you have older roms with a newer MAME, or an older MAME with newer roms? This would cause problems...


Why don't you just get the latest MAME release and roms and be happy!!?

This sounds like it might bee the problem.  I have all the roms for mame v.36 on CD and I am using these (because that's what I have) with MAME 55.  

I was under the impression that the ROMS were just a dump from the original game.  Is that the case?  If so, how can a particular ROM be dependent on a particular version of MAME?  I'm confused.

[JLR2000]

Roms are changed with different releases of MAME:

http://www.mame.dk/changes/

What Chris is talking about is that some ROMS need their parent roms....for example PacMan is just a clone of the japanese game PuckMan.  Instead of haveing the same core files repeated in each clone, the clones (pacman in this example) refer to the parent rom for those missing files.  For PacMan to work, you need pacman.zip AND puckman.zip in your roms directory.  Other games require files outside of the game dump, called bios roms.  For example, the Neo-Geo games like Metal Slug and Neo-Geo Golf Tournament require the roms (mslug.zip, neogolf.zip) AND the bios file (neogeo.zip) to work.

Hope that makes sense.....Good luck.

BTW, PacMan was modified in the 53 release of Mame:
http://www.mame.dk/gameinfo/pacman/

[Chris]

A ROM set might not include the sound ROM if the sound had not been emulated at that point; once the sound emulation is complete, updated ROMs would be necessary.  I'm sure there could be a number of reasons that would require ROM updates for one reason or another.

--Chris

[SirPoonga]

you can always use clrmame to see what's wrong with your rom set.  Or romcenter.

[Howard_Casto]

long story short, dumping a rom isn't as easy as it sounds..... it's very hard to get a clean dump with uncorrupted data.  Sometimes the devs don't realize that a portion of the rom is corrupted until they are done emulating the game and realize that the "error" is a fault of the data.  

Also sometimes it's hard ot get a re-dump, and thus it takes a while before a rom can be fixed.  

Put that on top of name re-standardizations, empty data clipping, and data encryption/decryption and it becomes quite obvious why roms change over time.  

[romid]

Which brings up a question Ive had for a while now:

--> How exactly do the roms get on the computer? they hook up a laptop to arcades or what?
-->Who does the copying?  can random people contribute or is there a set of people who have been taking it upon themselves?
-->Do they get permission from arcades to copy the roms or do they have to buy the circuitry and copy it?

Thanks to anyone who can help answer these  

[Jakobud]

Don't forget, Mame is a WIP all the time.

[Chris]

Which brings up a question Ive had for a while now:

--> How exactly do the roms get on the computer? they hook up a laptop to arcades or what?
-->Who does the copying?  can random people contribute or is there a set of people who have been taking it upon themselves?
-->Do they get permission from arcades to copy the roms or do they have to buy the circuitry and copy it?

Thanks to anyone who can help answer these  

They have to remove the chips from the game boards and use a ROM dumper to read the chips.  In some cases, the ROMs may be available from the manufacturer, meant to be burned on to EPROMS for updates.  (Williams makes its pinball ROMs available for download in this manner, for example.)

There are also security ROMS and suicide ROMS to deal with as well.  Not a task for the faint of heart...

Since the ROMs must be removed from the main board, these are dumped by people who own or have access to the board or game in question.  You can't just plug a cable into an arcade machine and copy it...

If you're interested in contributing, see http://targets.mame.net/dump.html .

--Chris