>Remember that next time someone says it's OK to use 15 year old MAME because nothing's >happened to golden-age games since then
If any user still swears that any 2003 release of MAME is best way to go rather than upgrade when possible even if using an out-of-date system for gaming, either that user doesn't play Atari Asteroids or loves the awful Atari Asteroids sounds before Derrick Renaud came along and eventually fixed/improved/added many of the discrete audio sounds.
One former coworker acquaintance way back then (around 2003 or 2004 and tried MAME sometimes) actually thought the Asteroids sound effects were accurate back then. I referred him to thoroughly visit Gridle's old MAME.net web site forums to read the various Asteroids emulation complaints at the time. :-)