MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: doubt folder samples

> Mame 2000 fullset (037b5) there is a samples folder and I have doubts if some games need the files in that
> folder. I'm going to put this fullset in emuelec 4.6 do the samples files need to be placed inside the roms folder?

The external audio sample files should remain in samples folder and rom files should be in the roms folder even though it is possible for users to configure the initialization files to look for roms or samples in folders with different folder names etc.

As noted … that version being mentioned is back in July 2000

https://www.mamedev.org/index.php

https://www.mamedev.org/oldrel.html 0.37b5 (0.41) 27 Jul 2000

Unless the computer that is used for the setup can’t be upgraded to anything newer than DOS or Windows 3.1, it would be easier to start over. The bare minimum computer setup these days, if using Windows computer is Win 7 32 bit OS although some users might still run Win XP setups, but would have to remain with older MAME versions such as any version earlier than .205

Most of the rom sets in use have changed over time because many of the PCBs have been correctly processed over the many years in which many of the rom sets are considered accurate these days in case a user needs to repair a pcb with replacement roms in order to keep a coinop game in working shape.

The concept of external audio samples was used for emulated coinop games that the audio sounds were using analog discrete components to generate sounds from video games which the sounds were not stored on roms / computer chips on a pcb. Back then in 1970s era, almost all the games used analog components for processing audio sound effects. Also some early emulated games such as Berzerk or Qbert didn’t have all the audio hardware emulated back in the early days of MAME emulation so some speech sound effects were also treated as external sample audio files. Over the years of emulation in MAME, many of the games eventually had the audio finally emulated rather than using external audio samples. There are still some exceptions, but the external audio samples still in use would be games that stored audio on actual tape cassettes or emulated items that play mechanical sound effects which could never be emulated. There are some very few remaining examples such as audio that cannot currently be dumped, but these days, that is extremely rare such as a recently emulated handheld game.

It would be easier to list what specific coinop or non-coinop games that are on the list and then other users can indicate what the status is. Most likely, most of the emulated games that used external audio samples no longer use the audio samples. That will require at least using any version of MAME starting with no earlier than .205 version which these days is way behind, but far better than using a version from 2000AD year.

The other thing to mention is MAME is beyond the scope of emulating coinop video games such as handheld electronic games and also musical equipment such as keyboards. That is why there is a bigger reason to update these days in case if able to update to a newer computer system.