SOLVED..?!?!
So no real explanation. I came home, scratched my head a few minutes, made sure my files were not set to read only, reinstalled the advmame packages, double checked my placements and linkage, rebooted the entire house... and it works now. Three randomly picked games loaded up. I need to map keys but yes, this is awesome.
In the attract mode motion blue & hyperpie, the sega and atari circuit board system display layouts pull from the advmame set, and it turned out to be one of the only sets I don't have, so this was awesome, not sure what all was wrong here.
Thanks again to everyone's help on this