I need help with MAME on my RaspberryPi 3

simonster

Thanks @dankcushions , I was tired and started writing non-merged and ended up thinking split sets when writing. Oh well!

So @martinrdgz - each game in the non-merged set is self contained (i.e. doesn't rely on parent games).

caver01

@martinrdgz I think the problem with a third party image in this case, even if you are not running that image, is that you really don’t know that the ROMs that are on that image are correct to begin with. They might be, or they might not be. You could be just copying over incorrect ROMs that the person who made that image had wrong all along. There’s no way to be sure.

SO, let’s say you are trying to do the right thing, using the official image, but you are filling it with ROMs from an unknown source. Then, if a game doesn’t work, how can you be sure you have the right version of any ROM? You are relying on that 3rd party image being correct.

Most of the advice here is about getting the knowledge to understand exactly what you need without breaking forum rules about where you can go to get what you need. Understanding MAME is the key to this process. Knowing that each version of MAME has a corresponding set of ROMs that work with it is the point. Sometimes, a given ROM won’t change from version to version and you get lucky, but more often than not, folks don’t understand that the version of the entire set has to match the version of MAME being used, and if it doesn’t, you will eventually come to a ROM that fails even while some of them might accidentally still work.

It is best to abandon that third party image as a source of ROMs and look for the reference sets you need. As others have recommended, using ROMset 0.78 and using it with lr-mame2003 is your most flexible option.

Sano

I would add that Retropie is mainly an opensource project, based on Linux.
Free software users/devs are nearly always prone to help people, as long as said people does a minimum of efforts by reading manuals, doing google searchs, or trying to understand what they are doing.
Not that we are necessarily pedantic (I'm a linux user for nearly 2 decades now, and have tried to help people on the internet for nearly as long, so I'm including myself), but :

docs represents a lot of work to do, and it's not well seen to ask questions without event consulting it
devs/helpers are nearly always volunteers, doing this kind of stuff on their free time, and answering a question that is well documented is a waste of time that could be better used coding or helping users with more interesting issues
...

Here is a classic paper that anyone should read at least once : http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#intro

martinrdgz

I would like to thank each and every one of you who has tried to help me understand the MAME system. It means a lot to me. I have learned a lot and now have MAME working. This wouldn’t have been possible without all of you. Thank you so much!