arcadefan wrote: ↑Sat Feb 01, 2025 6:39 pm
it means that good emulation still depends on modifications to the ROMs and not only on improving the emulation within the emulator.
Yes, that is exactly correct. You need a good dump of the roms, as well as good emulation of the hardware. If it is discovered that a specific rom dump turns out to be incorrect, it would be preferred if it could be replaced by a better/correct rom dump in the future. And if the emulation of the hardware turns out to be imperfect, it would be preferred if it could be corrected and updated in a new version of the emulator.
arcadefan wrote: ↑Sat Feb 01, 2025 6:39 pm
Is it possible to use a non-merged MAME 0.273 ROM on a MAME 2000 or MAME 2003 emulator? Many emulation devices, TV boxes, smartphones, laptops, retroarch etc. use only these two versions of MAME.
You need to use the rom versions that correspond to the mame version used.
The mame (rom) versions 2000/2003 you mention, are roughly 25/22 years outdated by now. You cannot realistically expect things that old to work correctly with the current mame version (or a 25 year old mame emulator to work with current 2025 roms). The 2000/2003 rom versions are only still used by heavily outdated and/or severely hacked-up mame emulator versions (like, but not limited to, retroarch). You are far better off using the latest mame version, and the rom versions that go along with that.