Different emulators and MAME versions require different BIOS sets. For example, FinalBurn Neo (FBNeo) uses a similar but not always identical neogeo.zip . Using a BIOS from MAME 0.170 with MAME 0.260 will often trigger a "ROM mismatch" error.
Once you have the basic BIOS working, here is how to optimize.
The neogeo.zip file should remain zipped . Do not extract it.