MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Tip for MAMEdevs

> I've noticed that there are some BIOS machines that have the word "Bios" in the
> description instead of "BIOS"; to standardize, could someone correct?
> Thank you.
>
>
> 3dobios (misc/3do.cpp) 3DO Bios > 3DO BIOS
> alg3do (misc/3do.cpp) ALG 3DO Bios > ALG 3DO BIOS
> allied (pinball/allied.cpp) Allied System > Allied System BIOS
> chihiro (sega/chihiro.cpp) Chihiro Bios > Chihiro BIOS
> hikaru (sega/hikaru.cpp) Hikaru Bios > Hikaru BIOS
> hng64 (snk/hng64.cpp) Hyper NeoGeo 64 Bios > Hyper NeoGeo 64 BIOS
> lindbios (sega/lindbergh.cpp) Sega Lindbergh Bios > Sega Lindbergh BIOS
> recel (pinball/recel.cpp) Recel Bios > Recel BIOS
> sammymdl (sigma/sigmab98.cpp) Sammy Medal Game System Bios > Sammy Medal Game System
> BIOS
> stvbios (sega/stv.cpp) ST-V Bios > ST-V BIOS
> triforce (sega/triforce.cpp Triforce Bios > Triforce BIOS

There are dozens of occurrences of rom/ram or Rom/Ram instead of ROM/RAM in the source too (excluding code-specific uses of lowercase letters). Likewise khz/mhz or Khz/Mhz instead of KHz and MHz.

One of the other long-standing spelling errors is in the placeholder ROM names for Navarone - there is an l where the r is supposed to be (the title and ROM name was fixed in 0.78u1 but not the ROMs themselves - and yes, that u1 change means that all of those hacky MAME2003 builds, based on vanilla 0.78, also have the wrong name). Probably not a hope in the world of finding an original PCB to get the actual part numbers these days (unless of course the chips were unlabeled) which is why they are just filename.extension in the first place (although, way back in the late 1990s when the game was first added, it was a common thing as not much thought was taken, especially when also considering the MS-DOS 8.3 filename restriction).

The MAME source needs a lot of menial copy-editing like that, some of the errors and inconsistencies have been there for over twenty years. Problem is that most people don't have the time for it or don't even notice it unless they randomly come across it when modifying a source file. Many of the comments in the former MESS drivers are also substandard, for example having spelling errors or even adding smileys at the end of some comments.