I just did a baaaaaad thing. Can I stress any more the importance of the work ‘backup?’

I was using the program clrmame which is supposed
to check your ROMs and tell you what you’re missing, what has changed since the last release, etc.

I set it to go, and it kept coming up with bad ROMs. I don’t know why, since I play them quite often, with no problems.

So, I go to see what’s happened, and MAME reports that I have no ROMs available! Oh no!

I delete the ROMs – all 968 megs of them *sniff*. I get a couple off an FTP site I know of, and start MAME again. Nothing. Uh oh.

Redownloading MAME again (I use the Windows version to test) I find the new ROMs where they should be. Something tells me I should have tried that first. Oh well, live and learn.