MAME help

[jethro jazz]

im a total newbie to this, but the idea of mame interests me. however, when i go to the download section of such a website it is filler with words like BIOS that i dont understand. simple question is, how do i get the thing running on my winxp machine and how do i play games on it? also where to get roms? thanks

[jethro jazz]

well i D/L the binary but it just tells me to run it through the command prompt, which i dont know how to do. it mentions MAME32 a lot for windows, is this what i need? the only d/l link was to classicgaming.com and you need a gamespy ID to download things through that?

why cant there things be simple? or at least have a page on the site with the downloads telling you what the **** to do with them.

[andy572]

You're right about MAME32. Everything just works - or not

I'm rather out of the loop these days (slow PC), but I believe what would have been my recommended download location (mame.dk) shut down recently. I've had a quick search and had the same result as yourself.

Sorry for the lack of assistance. You'll no doubt get some real help soon; but I'll try to help, should you have any further questions.

By the way, aside from the occasional arcade format (e.g. Neo Geo) a BIOS 'ROM' isn't needed. M.A.M.E. and the game ROM will do all the work for you - aside from some simple setup of options (all contained in menus with MAME32).

[teacup]

If you're using windows then Mame32 is probably your best bet, its nice and easy to use and setup. You can get it here:

http://www.classicgaming.com/mame32qa/

Have a look here:

http://www.mameworld.net/easyemu/

Theres some quite good info on there about setting up mame.

And finally, it'll never be easy to download roms from the net since they're kindof illegal. The best way to download roms is through IRC, but its still not very easy and will take a lot of time unless you only want one or two specific roms. I can however thoroughly recommend these chaps:

http://rockwaldo.mine.nu/

They will burn you a full set of Mame roms on a couple of dvds for just the price of the materials, ie they're doing it for free as thats the whole ethos of mame.

Hope that helps a bit.

Oh and I'll throw this link in just to give you something to think about if you get into mame.

http://www.arcadecontrols.com/arcade.htm

[teacup]

Forgot to mention the bios roms.
Basically a bios rom allows you to emulate a different piece of hardware. For example if you want to play neo-geo games you'll need the neo-geo bios roms, want to play capcom games you'll need the cps2 (or something) roms since most of capcoms arcade hardware is the same.