I'm also using mame32 in my cabinet (I assume that you're talking of the gui version of mame, which you can download here: http://mame32qa.classicgaming.gamespy.com). The executable is called "mame32.exe" and the ini "mame32.ini". Make sure that your MaLa config points to the correct exe and all the pathes are correct.
Zitat
everything shows up with the default options (in a window, not rotated, etc)
Do you mean the games load with default options, or does MaLa show the default options when configuring mame ? If latter is the case:
AFAIK you can't configure (all) the options of mame32 through MaLa, because they're called differently, compared to the standart commandline version. So either configure everything through the gui of mame32, or edit the inis for the games by hand (that's what I did for tweaking).
I'm not sure if I understand your second question. Do you mean, that you can't read MaLas gamelist in the mentioned resolutions ? If that's your problem: do you use a skin for vertical monitors ? did you change the orientation of MaLa to vertical (there's a key for it in the settings) ?