MAMEWorld Forums - News - tedious explanation

>Understood, every new version has some errors and some games can't be played that's why some games that
> I have in my folder are just unplayable I was thinking that was because the games are broken but now I realize
> that sometimes the emulator is the main problem why some games aren't playing.

a gregf mode explanation or in tribute to the poster Augusto and his manifesto length posts.

Take the emulation process as more of a marathon race instead of a 100 meter sprint.

Items might take years to emulate. Some existing source files have been in source for many years, but maybe not playable for various reasons, Although that might be a letdown for gamers, but for actual pcb hardware owners, that might be godsend especially for having roms already documented and in source code because hardware repair technicians might need to find specific rom files in order to do repair work. That was the original concept of what MAME was about when Nicola Salmoria started this in 1997. He probably didn’t envision where things have gone of what is now supported. He left long ago so now the work is continued by a different generation of contributors.

The cpu might be emulated first in case it is a popular cpu that runs various types of hardware. While that is happening, maybe a different contributor has a pcb or some other item that uses roms that use a particular cpu and the contributor has hardware that can read rom data to create digital backups of the roms.

And then maybe another contributor knows how to work with other hardware components that the pcb uses.
Eventually the specific item might be emulated or it might be added as a no working, but documented item in MAME source which is a good start because it means the item is documented and can be fixed up in the future.

Once the item is in MAME source code it means other outside contributors can improve things such as getting rom labels and locations corrected, any analog audio sounds working, maybe external artwork also being supported and any specific control input devices. To also mention is that in the area of coinop game emulation,
some coinop products use various protection methods or hardware devices in attempts to thwart commercial bootleggers back in the days. Some contributors had to do hardware detective work to see how the devices worked and to emulate those as best possible to get specific games emulated. To this time there are still protection devices not yet figured out of how to emulate them as best possible. Over the 25 years lucky that contributors Aaron, Nicola, Charles, David H and David W, Guru, OG, Lord Nightmare, Morten K, Luca, Mish and Moogly Team Europe, Capsoff and RB and hap and Sean and several others have contributed over the years in order to make hardware protected items playable or have audio emulated as well. Couriersud also because of his non-cpu / net list emulation for getting some of the 1970s era coinop games working.

That’s why one perfect description imo is worldwide non commercial community emulation that someone had posted a long time ago on Gridle’s old MAME.net website forum back in post 2000AD era.

Items that are already emulated and considered working might have issues because a different contributor accidentally made a change to a specific emulated hardware component that helped one item to be working, but overlooked updating the already emulated item as well.

And sometimes there have been past overhauls in MAME source code that affected a fair amount of items from not being playable for several years such as the Sega System 16 and 18 hardware. That is something to be added at a later time unless someone else wants to mention that part. The Sega MC 8123, FD 1094 and FD 1089 protected coinop games emulation work is a chapter in itself.