3DS MAME 2003 File Not Found

This has been tried using the current 3DS Retroarch stable and nightly builds. So I've spent many hours on this problem and for the life of me cannot figure out what I'm doing wrong. I have tried several MAME 2003 and 2003+ romsets and even verified these roms through both Romcenter and CMPro64 using the dat files listed on their corresponding github sources. I am also trying games that are verified to be working with the 3DS build of MAME. I have even manually verified the checksum and file sizes. However, no matter what I try, MAME 2003 and 2003+ always come back with all 'file' NOT FOUND errors while loading.

For the sake of clarification, understand I am using different romsets for 2003 and 2003+, as I know these are not simply interchangeable. I am also not trying any NeoGeo games or anything else that requires and exclusive bios.

 

Okay, so an update. Turns out the roms read when they are put in the root directory of the SD card only. Anywhere else and you get the error I mentioned. It seems like an issue with the build, as I tried an older version, 1.3.4, and it worked like a charm. Guess somewhere along the way, they changed something and I can't find any directory setting that would correct this. The ironic thing is that once I got the games working, they ran absolutely terrible, both on MAME 2003 and 2003+. In fact, MAME 2000 works REALLY well in comparison, so after all this mess, I guess I'll just be sticking to that.