Playing .chds in MAME32?

[Hardcore]

I'm not on the up and up when it comes to these .chd files. How do I get them to work with MAME32?

[Hardcore]

No responses? This makes me a sad panda. :(

[OldSchoolGamer]

You don't really play the .chd files as it were. The .chd files are simply the file equivelant to the files that some games required to run off a hard drive built into the cabinet of specific games that required streaming textures etc. So they work in tandem with the ROM files of the same name, at least that is my understanderding/interpretation of them. Removing .chd files will make the associted ROM unplayable. Please, anyone more informed in MAME feel free to correct me. Anyway, such titles also seem to take the most resources to run at an exceptable level at least on my old setup (Athlon XP 1800+/ Geforce Ti 4200 64mb) so I deleted the my .chd files to save space. but I look foward to my next PC which should be more than capable at running them fully.

[agbulls]

You don't really play the .chd files as it were. The .chd files are simply the file equivelant to the files that some games required to run off a hard drive built into the cabinet of specific games that required streaming textures etc. So they work in tandem with the ROM files of the same name, at least that is my understanderding/interpretation of them. Removing .chd files will make the associted ROM unplayable. Please, anyone more informed in MAME feel free to correct me. Anyway, such titles also seem to take the most resources to run at an exceptable level at least on my old setup (Athlon XP 1800+/ Geforce Ti 4200 64mb) so I deleted the my .chd files to save space. but I look foward to my next PC which should be more than capable at running them fully.

You are 100% correct. Games like Killer Instinct had hardrives that were dedicated to running large parts of the game---specifically the video intros and game endings. You do need a good machine to be able to run games like KI and KI2--but nothing crazy. I have a P4 1.6/1 gig ram/9700 pro and they all play great. Just make sure nothing else is running in the background. If you need help finding these files that is another store entirely. CHD files are considered taboo talk just about everywhere as they are the backbone to the arcade cab and their emulation. FTP or getting from another member is probably the way to get them at this point. The odds of finding them hosted on http are slim to none.

[Hardcore]

Ah, ok. I have the .chds, I just now need to find the ROMs. Thanks!