MAME question

[Retropin]

Ive been given 12 CD discs and told that i will WANT these.
6 discs are labelled MAME ROMS
6 discs are labelleds MAME CHD.

Opening them up the ROMS discs are chock full of zip files in alphabetical order.. i cant actually read the files.. just what they are.
Looks to me like ive just been handed several hundred ROM images for MAME games... does anyone know anything about these discs.
The CHD files i have no idea what they are... whats a CHD file?

Instructions on READ ME file just tell me to copy files in their entirety to my MAME directory.

Im so arcade ignorant... but anyone know if its to play games on my comp or to replace game ROMs??

[Chad]

no idea what chd is
if you don't have the mame program you can download it from here http://mamedev.org/
once you have it installed you will be able to play all the roms you have, also when coping the roms to to the mame directory you must leave them in the zip format
hope this helps

[Retropin]

Thanks Chad.

Went to the site on the discs

www.mamedvds.com

there are hundreds of games on these discs but wasnt sure what to do with them... until now that is..

[MartyJ]

CHD= Compressed Hard Disk ( I think )

[Boots]

Ive been given 12 CD discs and told that i will WANT these.
6 discs are labelled MAME ROMS
6 discs are labelleds MAME CHD.

Opening them up the ROMS discs are chock full of zip files in alphabetical order.. i cant actually read the files.. just what they are.
Looks to me like ive just been handed several hundred ROM images for MAME games... does anyone know anything about these discs.
The CHD files i have no idea what they are... whats a CHD file?

Instructions on READ ME file just tell me to copy files in their entirety to my MAME directory.

Im so arcade ignorant... but anyone know if its to play games on my comp or to replace game ROMs??

Some games such as Killer Instinct use a hard drive to run the game.
A CHD file is information or image from the hard drive of that particular game.
The associated ROMS will not work without the CHD files

[Wotto]

Gav

This will read a lot more complicated than what it actually is.
Try it.

I have not done it for years - but from memory .......


You need to grab the Mame program and also possibly a front end to run it all.
Emuloader is a decent Windows based front end that displays all the games ( once Mame and the front end is installed )  http://emuloader.mameworld.info/

Install Mame
Install Emuloader
Copy and paste all those ZIPPED Mame Roms from the discs into your ROMS folder which will be automatically created when you install mame.

Run Emuloader
When you run it the first time it will ask where your mame exe is ( point it to your Mame exe that gets installed when you installed Mame)
It will also ask where your roms are located – point it to them in that ROMS folder ( now full of the Zip files )
Emuloader will then ‘create a game list’ ( takes a while )

Then you will have little icons for all your installed games.
Double click an icon – play the game !

Basic Controls in the games
5 =  Credit
1 = start 1 player game
Arrows control movement
Space bar – shoot/fire

See if that starts you off OK.