> I think they will eventually be moved to just hash? > At which point this issue will be back.
this is not going to happen (it's only been H*z* which tried to remove them from the driver list in the past).
what is possibly going to happen is that we remove the crc from the source and MAME gets these data from the list xml to use it at loading time and when you call -lx but things might even remain as they are now forever... so I suggest a good old DON'T PANIC