The DIP switch checker is usually updated for tournaments and distributed to all judges. It is not reserved for editors only. However, it is far from being an overall checker. Yes, Brian is correct, you can look at the source code to find out how the DIP switches are stored in the .inp. The bad parts: (1) The overall .inp format has changed at least three times, (2) there are 3000+ games in MAME, and (3) The DIP switch parts of game drivers are changed every now and then, so if you know which bit corresponds to which DIP switch for a given version of MAME, that does not mean it's the same bit in a different version of MAME, even regardless of whether the two versions use the same format as mentioned in (1) . Is anybody volunteering to MANUALLY add support for 5000+ combinations of MAME versions and games to the checker?(posted 8437 days ago)Also, the checker at this point is written in a way to see if the correct settings are used. Most of the time when there is a tournament, I look at what the required settings for each game in that tournament are and then manually add each game to the checker. Then it can be used to compare the settings of SOME PARTICULAR VERSION of MAME (so not just any version) of a given .inp to the required settings for that game.
So, again, it's not a one size fits all utility. Actually, it's a one size fits only a handful utility, with by far the majority being unsupported. So most of the time when I want to see which DIP switches were used in some recording, I can't even use it and have to revert to using a hex editor and reading the source code of the game driver...
Cheers, Ben Jos.