With most good frontends, you can have more then one version of mame on the system and launch them all from a common interface.

I got practice with the old system16 versions of mame. But now I only use it for analog+ mame when needed. But just load the old .80 version in it's own directory. And have all the configuration settings for the specific games its going to run.

Then either move the roms / chd files around or point the other mame to the original rom locations.