I use to have lots of time, and found some great emulators of old coin
operated games, yrs ago.  Now after several compters and hard drives
later, lost all the old info and data.  I remember looking them up
recently, and they all seem to have gone pay sites, or full of lots of
confusing pop-up adds, even porn.
I'm looking for a site (or sites) that explain easily how the
emulators work (I think MIME version 'someing' was the dominate one)
and looking for games that were popular in the eighties.  ((like
choplifter, commando, double dragon, impulse, to name a few)).
If someone could find a concise web site (that's still around! and I
don't mind if it's a pay site), that's easy to navigate..freeby
forums, updates that will at least point me in the right direction.  I
use to be well versed in this, but now its been so long, love to have
them back.

I use WinME

Hi! Thanks for the question.

I have found the following sites wherein you can download classic
arcade game emulators.

MAME- Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator
http://www.mame.net/download.html

NEO RAGE
http://home5.swipnet.se/~w-50884/emulator/rage.htm

Raine
http://www.rainemu.com/

Retro Games
http://www.retrogames.com/

Emuunlim
http://www.emuunlim.com/

JROK'S Emulation Page
http://www.jrok.com/frames/emu_frame.html

Arcade Games
http://home.wanadoo.nl/xansan/arcade/

Classic Gaming (Games Download)
http://www.classicgaming.com/vault/arcaderoms-AC.shtml

-----------
Our next sites are forums or advice sites.

EmuAdvice
http://www.mameworld.net/emuadvice/

The Arcade Gaming Forum
http://www.notbbc.co.uk/arcade/

Arcade at Home
http://www.arcadeathome.com/

------------------
Other Resources

UnMamed
http://unmamed.mame.net/

Vintage Gaming Network
http://www.vg-network.com/emu.phtml

Arcade Emulator Cheats
http://cheat.retrogames.com/forums/

Google Groups Arcade Games Threads
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=arcade+games+emulators&sa=N&tab=ig

Search terms used:      
classic arcade games emulators forums    
      
I hope these links would help you in your research. Before rating this
answer, please ask for a clarification if you have a question or if
you would need further information.
                          
Thanks for visiting us.                           
                          
Regards,                           
Easterangel-ga                           
Google Answers Researcher

Whoa...a ton of good sites there!  This will keep me occupied for months.
Thanks easterangel

You're welcome summerz-ga! Thanks for the nice rating!