Im very much interested in using mame but i dont know how to best use it. Ive downloaded it today but thats as far as ive got. There doesent seem to be a great deal of instructions anywhere, all advice welcome.
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What version of MAME are you using? There are so many different versions!

The easiest version to use for Windows is MAMEUI:

http://www.mameui.info/

You just download, unzip place the ROMS in the ROMS directory and launch. It's pretty straight forward.

The executable version of MAME from the main webpage requires a GUI interface to be downloaded separately, referred to as a "MAME frontend". If not, you have to type commands manually from the command prompt!

I'd stick to MAMEUI. if you're using Windows.
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MAMEUI32 is the best to use, it has already the frontend.
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I also agree here. MAMEUI is the best to use. It has a very nice and easy to use frontend built in, plus is easy to setup.

Also have a look at pleasuredome.org.uk for complete MAME rom sets and supporting file sets.
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Bump!!. I forgot id started this thread a while ago. Well ive final got around to messing about with mame and following the advice here im currently trying to download the mame rom set from pleasure dome. Well this involves torrents wich i havent used before but i got stuck in anyway and well its not going very well.

Heres what happened: I downloaded bit torrent and signed up for pleasure dome and started the rom download. For the first hour it was Downloading 2kb a minute after that it jumped to 30kb and then finaly it got up to 800kb. I then had to pause downloading and start again, for the last three hours or so it hasnt topped 3kb.

So at the moment its been downloading for ten hours and i have got fifty percent of the file and at the curret speed its going to take ooohhh let me check eight weeks and nine days!!!!! what the splugles! am i doing wrong.

This is doing my head in ahhhgghhghghghghgh.

Thanks.
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That's a common problem. Go into the settings of your bittorrent client and reduce your upload rate to about two thirds of your max capability. Usually fixes it.

The reason is that for every datapacket you receive, you send a small confirmation packet back to the sender. If you cannot send these back at a constant high rate, the sender will slow down your download to compensate. So you need to keep some of your upload capability free for these to flow freely. Most clients are set to use your full upload capability to share with however, which chokes your connection and ruins your download rate. So if you reduce the upload rate in your client you should get decent download speeds again.
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