Posted by Ohso on January 17, 2002 at 22:52:19:
In Reply to: No, i ... posted by Peter on January 17, 2002 at 21:53:23:
The original PCB's contain rom chips with the software code for the game on them. People use special hookups to read this data and store it in a file on a PC. Voila, a rom-file is born.
Then MAME reads that info and acts on it the same way the original PCB would, thus emulating the game.
So MAME takes the place of the hardware, and the ROM file is the actual software code from the rom chips on the board.