The best way to load the ROMs into place is through the GUI. Should be able to just drop the zip file into place. I'd overclock your Pi some.

There is *no* place to legally obtain the correct roms on line. If you did do any such thing then be careful with them. Watch them for viruses. Don't download any .exes. Only deal with zips. Scan them. Then copy them into the right place. Try to avoid opening them with Windows because of a zip bomb chance. Be ready for many of them to just not work. I wouldn't be too afraid of actually getting a virus on your Pi.

@Chad, any tips on using ClrMamePro? I tried using it once, and it was just too much of a hassle so I didn't bother with it.

Whoops I forgot. Use the webpage on PiMame to upload the roms. http: //your.pi.ip.here/

@dubstylee - Here's a thread mholgatem posted with some tutorials:

http://pimame.org/forum/discussion/1083/how-to-properly-verify-and-rename-roms#Item_1

Here's another link that is a video style tutorial for MAME:

http://www.cphsolutions.f2s.com/guides/cmprotutorial.htm

You would download the mame.exe from http://mamedev.org under the 'Previous Releases' section. If you already have the DAT which has one included in the MAME4ALL for the Raspberry Pi zip you don't need the executable. There's some very minor differences between the DAT built from the official executable and the one included in the zip. I think the creator of MAME4ALL added a few more games to the DAT but no major/popular games were added. If I remember right it's less than 6 games roughly.

If you're using the executable vs. a DAT file you'll get prompted with some questions.

Issue: Possible wrong nodump definition found.

A valid checksum for it within its parent/clone relationship was found though. Insert found checksum instead of using the 'nodump'?

I answer 'No to all' for this question. It found a checksum for a ROM that matches and it may or may not work but MAME is telling you there is no known good dump and do you want to use it. It's really a preference and it may work even (14 years since 0.37b5 was released a correct dump might exist) but I still stick with 'No to all'. You can answer each one individually if you want to see what games it's referring to and tailor it for each game. It will only ask these questions once. You would have to delete and readd the DAT as a whole you're building to change these options.

Issue: Can't merge set due to equal names for different ROM hashes.

Press yes to remove parent/clone relationship or no to force split-merge mode.

I usually answer 'No to all' for this question. Most sets are in split-merge mode and it allows equal named ROM files in both the parent and clone. Unless your specifically building a non-merged set but for ROM auditing 'No to all' is pretty common. Same as above you can answer each individually if you want and delete to change them.

Under settings there's a Path/Headers section to add a path to the samples for auditing (the download would be accurate but if you want to verify them it doesn't hurt) or you can uncheck it like they do in the video. In the video they uncheck samples and CHD's. Samples would be needed for certain games and can be downloaded from the official MAME4ALL for the Rapsberry Pi:

https://code.google.com/p/mame4all-pi/ (A link to openhandhelds.org on his page for samples).

I don't think they were using CHD's in version 0.37b5 so it will probably be a grayed out option vs. what they show in the video.

That video is pretty handy. It's a interactive video so it walks you through each step. I went through most of it and it's pretty good. There's more than one way to do it and once you get the hang of it I think there's quicker ways, mainly drag and drop vs. Rebuild.

Sometimes when a set is being rebuilt it will dump a ROM in the backup folder as unneeded but when you do a Rebuild and tell it to look at the backup folder it will find valid ROMs for other sets it's rebuilding so I always use the backup folder first. After exhausting all options on your local PC then go hunt them down. It seems to be more common to find individual ROM's but there are full sets available too. I always run them through a ROM check.

If you have any questions I can try and answer them. It seems like a lot up front but it's really nice when you know you have a full verified set that's guaranteed to work! :) Also most of what this entails would work for all ROM set types like NES, C64, etc. It really is whether there's a DAT available to verify ROM's and if the source of the DAT is reliable, as in is it accurate. The official MAME program executable (referred to above) has DAT creation built right in which makes it very reliable.

This thread is great. I'm new to the Pi, but have been doing emulation for a while. I am still, however, struggling with getting MAME roms to work on PiPlay.

I made an assumption that a fair goal would be to get hands working on my android phone using MAME4Droid, since I thought it would be the same engine. I also was using the dat file included with it ClrMamePro for rebuilding sets, etc. (I have windows 8.1 64bit, so the executable method didn't work.) I have roms that work fine in the Droid version, but I still get missing file errors on the Pi.

Did I make a bad assumption along the way?

In short, I'm using MAME4Droid as a test of Roms to ensure they are the right version, but still getting errors on the Pi. I'm using the most recent update of piplay and uploading the roms via the Web interface.

Thanks.

Dub, thanks for the reply. I was coming on this morning to say that I had gotten roms to work by uploading them via ftp to both directories knowing that a sym link was missing. You have saved me the trouble of finding the post that talks about creating it. THANKS!

Thanks for the advice and reference to the project, that's great stuff.

The problem was the sym link. I added it in and I was able to add games via the Web client and they were playable. I'm also sort of assuming that all of my sym links are borked, so I'll try to rebuild those as well.

Thanks for the help!