Hi!

I think one should try out the binary package from deb-multimedia.org. There you can find mame version 0.168 for the sid distribution. Maybe this package works with Knoppix 7.6.0, too.

Since the source of mame 0.168 deb package is also available there you could read the build description of the package in order to find out which additional packages are to be installed on Knoppix 7.6.0 or if there is any conflicting package which make it nearly impossible to compile mame 0.168.