Phil K said:
After downloading, what next ? Installed mame, but wherefore now ? Seems to be a large selection, but I tried to download some without any luck, and if I select on Mma it says there is awhole bundle of stuff missing ! Hand hold me through this chaps, please !
Did you Read The Friendly Manual included in MAME32?
There is a detailed explanation of how ROMs are managed in MAME; I always download from mame.dk, because it's the most "official" arcade ROM and information repository. But you can't download unless you signup. If you need a very easy to use ROM file manager, I suggest you try RomCenter 2.50. "RomCenter is an application written for 32-bit Windows operating systems, designed to help you maintain and organize your emulators roms collection for various gaming systems including computers, consoles, arcade, calculators and handheld. You can add additional systems through external datafiles available on a lot of sites. RomCenter can audit your games and report which are working or not. It can fix problems such as bad name, missing roms available elsewhere, and clean your set by removing useless or bad roms and files."
http://www.romcenter.com/