Hi

I'm still very new to mame and I'm a little confused!

I haven't been able to find the answers to this, so can anyone here help?

Q1) General questions about dats

A) How come some dat files are named after a mame release (Mame32QA_Icons_v.119.zip), yet other are just names in dateformat eg

MAME Flyers 20070913
MAME Control Panels 20070913


B) For the date named ones, how do you know which mame release they are for (does it matter?)

For the Cabinets, Icons, Snaps, Flyers, artwork, control panels, marquees and tites, I guess mame32 will load the images if they are there, using filename. If your versions are out of date - then you'll have additional graphics which will not get displayed - as you don't have the game. (Are games ever removed from mame releases?)

However, the sample must to related to a mame release? So how do you know that "MAME Samples 20070916 (cm).zip" is suitable for Mame 119 (other than Romans download page from telling you?)


Q2) ClrMamePro, sample DAT files and Mame32
The "standard" MAME dat file (eg MAME v0.119.dat), when loaded in ClrMamePro, allows to to check against Roms, Samples and CHDS.

Why is there are separate samples dat file (MAME Samples 20070916 (cm).dat)?


Also, I've got the "Green light" when verifying with "MAME Samples 20070916 (cm).dat", but when I check samples with the standard mame dat, I'm asked if I want to delete non-needed files, eg

Mame32b\samples\ballbomb\1.wav'

Then with Mame32, if I "Audit All Roms" - I'm told I have 170 correct sample, 1 incorrect out of a total of 171. (In the summary window, I can't seem to see which one is incoorect).



Q3) ClrMamePro in general

Am I using ClrMamePro correctly?

This is what I (think) I want :-
"Merged Sets" for the ROMS
"Split Sets" for samples
"Split Sets" for CHDs

If I scan using just ROMS using Merged sets - I'm getting nothing missing (other than the nodumps)
As soon as I select scan sets and roms, I get a load of warnings about :-

wrong merged sample set
unneeded fake clone

Likewise, if I scan the CHDS using split sets, everything is ok.


I'm guess I'm still confused about what exactly a set is!?!

Thanks