> I was merely > wondering why others keep trying to port that one build of MAME to all and sundry, > when there are most likely much later builds which could be run (hence better > emulation) on the same devices.
After the build mame4all is based on, mame stopped using 8 bit modes. That is generally why they are stuck.
Later versions of dosmame supported 8 bit modes. For 16 bit palette modes it reduced the number of colours to fit into 8 bit, where it lowered the quality if necessary. 15/32 bit direct colour always just lowered the quality to r3g3b2. It was suprisingly effective.