The Raspberry Pi and Retropie discussion thread

[Osgeld]

On 12/1/2019 at 9:45 AM, NE146 said:

Well you DO intend to play them I think is the point. Maybe someday

 

Anyway with the price of SD cards today you're talking about price differences of 2 bucks or whatever when you're talking less than 128 gigs.. which itself goes for around $15. Why bother limiting yourself

or what I do, use a 8 or 16 gig card for the OS and load all the games on a USB hard drive, which even with spinning media and transfering over USB its still night and day faster. 

[ClassicGMR]

16 hours ago, Osgeld said:

or what I do, use a 8 or 16 gig card for the OS and load all the games on a USB hard drive, which even with spinning media and transfering over USB its still night and day faster. 

Exactly. I use a 32gb for the OS and a 128gb for the games. Works great and 128gb runs like $15 retail. 

[NE146]

I don't see how a USB hard drive on an RPi3 would be faster than straight from the SD card.. maybe I'm wrong.  

 

That said, I went for a 256 gig micro sd card.. works fine enough. My Pi is in a barcade so by it's very nature it's shut down hard every time with a simple power toggle.

 

Worst case scenario is if it ever goes belly up, I have the backup image to just shove on another card. EZ

[VectorGamer]

10 minutes ago, NE146 said:

I don't see how a USB hard drive on an RPi3 would be faster than straight from the SD card.. maybe I'm wrong.  

 

That said, I went for a 256 gig micro sd card.. works fine enough. My Pi is in a barcade so by it's very nature it's shut down hard every time with a simple power toggle.

 

Worst case scenario is if it ever goes belly up, I have the backup image to just shove on another card. EZ

I can't imagine a USB drive would be faster either. I have everything on 128-GB SD card.

 

What's the likelihood that the SD card would go belly up though?

[NE146]

23 minutes ago, VectorGamer said:

What's the likelihood that the SD card would go belly up though?

I would say it's not especially likely. That said, when you get everything set up it totally makes 100% sense to create a backup image on your computer. 

[Osgeld]

47 minutes ago, NE146 said:

I don't see how a USB hard drive on an RPi3 would be faster than straight from the SD card.. maybe I'm wrong.  

 

Least on the pi 3's the SD card maxes out at 22MB/s a basic spinning 5400RPM laptop drive can hit 75MB/s with a sequential read but is limited to the max of 60MB/s of USB 2

[NE146]

3 minutes ago, Osgeld said:

 

Least on the pi 3's the SD card maxes out at 22MB/s a basic spinning 5400RPM laptop drive can hit 75MB/s with a sequential read but is limited to the max of 60MB/s of USB 2

I see. Is there any known particular scenario on a game (that the Rpi3 emulates/plays well) where that speed difference comes into play? 

[VectorGamer]

17 minutes ago, NE146 said:

I would say it's not especially likely. That said, when you get everything set up it totally makes 100% sense to create a backup image on your computer. 

But does that require that you formatted the SD card FAT or FAT32 in the first place so that Windows can read it? I formatted the SD card with SD Card Formatter and FAT wasn't an option.

[NE146]

41 minutes ago, VectorGamer said:

But does that require that you formatted the SD card FAT or FAT32 in the first place so that Windows can read it? I formatted the SD card with SD Card Formatter and FAT wasn't an option.

No. You will not be able to "browse" the SD card with windows at all, but you can totally make an image of it using Win32DiskImager. You will also use this app to write to the new SD card as well (if needed) to restore your backup. 

 

Check out the article.

[VectorGamer]

51 minutes ago, NE146 said:

No. You will not be able to "browse" the SD card with windows at all, but you can totally make an image of it using Win32DiskImager. You will also use this app to write to the new SD card as well (if needed) to restore your backup. 

 

Check out the article.

I skimmed it. I will make a backup soon.

 

Thanks.

[Osgeld]

2 hours ago, NE146 said:

I see. Is there any known particular scenario on a game (that the Rpi3 emulates/plays well) where that speed difference comes into play? 

Most later disc based games but in reality not really but its a hack of a lot faster to get large collections on

[Keatah]

Those tiny microSD cards don't really have caches or enough parallelism to compete with traditional spinner HDDs.

[VectorGamer]

Has anyone been able to get some of these 2600 home brews like Draconian and Super Cobra Arcade to work on RetroPie?

[mr_me]

I believe Draconian and Super Cobra require Stella 5.02 or greater.

[+fdr4prez]

6 hours ago, VectorGamer said:

Has anyone been able to get some of these 2600 home brews like Draconian and Super Cobra Arcade to work on RetroPie?

 

5 hours ago, mr_me said:

I believe Draconian and Super Cobra require Stella 5.02 or greater.

 

Draconian and Super Cobra will work, but you need to use the standalone version of Stella.  In Retropie v4.4 the standalone Stella has been updated to v5.0.2

 

I am running RetroPie v4.5.1 and after you run the update the standalone Stella is now at v6.0.1 (added in Sept 2019)

 

I've no clue if lr-stella hasn't been updated since I never use it, and I don't even know how to check what version of lr-stella is being used right now.

 

Which RetroPie version are you using, and are you using lr-stella or the standalone version of Stella?

 

The people that work on Stella have no connection to RetroPie, so if something isn't updated or working then you should head over to the RetroPie forum and ask them.

 

 

Edited January 5, 2020 by fdr4prez

[tane]

Commodore with a new Retropie / Retroarch image, but still there isn't an Atari only image.

 

 

[+fdr4prez]

On 1/4/2020 at 11:58 PM, fdr4prez said:

I've no clue if lr-stella hasn't been updated since I never use it, and I don't even know how to check what version of lr-stella is being used right now.

 

If you look in the libretrocores folder, it looks like lr-stella is from 2014

 

 

so it looks like it hasn't been updated in many years and it's no wonder current/recent homebrews don't work on it.

 

I don't see any advantage to using this compared to the standalone Stella version that is running at v6.0.1 (nearly the current version)

 

[John Stamos Mullet]

On 2/22/2020 at 7:14 PM, fdr4prez said:

 

If you look in the libretrocores folder, it looks like lr-stella is from 2014

 

 

so it looks like it hasn't been updated in many years and it's no wonder current/recent homebrews don't work on it.

 

I don't see any advantage to using this compared to the standalone Stella version that is running at v6.0.1 (nearly the current version)

 

The Prosystem version in Libretro has the same problem. it's ancient, and doesn't incorporate the fixes that the Wii version made that fix all the graphical issues.

[Hydro Thunder]

New to the Rasp Pi scene, so apologies if I don't know what I am talking about or am not explaining things right.

 

I just got a Retro Pi (Rasp Pi 3B+), and I am having trouble getting some arcade games to let me configure the buttons.  Specifically Xmen V SF; ).  I can't get my keyboard Tab key to pull up the Mame menu, but tbh I'm not sure it's running mame.  I have tried the trick of deleting the default config file from RetroPie/roms/arcade/mame2000/cfg/ and the related ones (mame 2003, mame 2010, mame 2014), but it hasn't worked.  It may be running the game in FB alpha... Is there an easy answer to how I map the buttons differently in that?

 

Second issue...

I got this as part of a cheap but neat Arcade setup with a 32" LCD monitor.  Most of the 7800 games and 2600 games look not great, given the size of the screen & the fact that you're standing right there in front of it.  Are there video settings that I can change such that the screen image size will be smaller?  It's not stretched, it's the proper ratio it's just not sharp or clean.

 

Any help greatly appreciated - loving what this little powerhouse can do.

[mr_me]

Use the run command launch menu to check and set the default emulator.

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Runcommand/#runcommand-launch-menu

 

There's probably some setting in libretro/retroarch keeping you from using the keyboard.

[ClassicGMR]

Well I have been so enthusiastic recently about getting a collection together that is "Real console, *loader solution*, HDMI connection" that I have complately ignored my RPi setups. It's been a LONG time since I booted either setup.

 

This morning I grabbed my Super Kintaro 3B setup and ran through it. Man this is fun and I forgot how much work I put into the setup! But you can definitely tell there's a tiny input lag playing games but it's there. Punch-Out! is a great example.

 

My 3B+, apparently, was left as a work in progress. If I remember right I took the 128GB card for something else and swapped a 32GB card in. Looks like I installed RetroPi on it and never configured it nor added any games. I get to re-familiarize myself with the setup process all over again.... tomorrow. ?

 

I forgot how much I liked these.

Edited April 16, 2020 by ClassicGMR

[+fdr4prez]

1 hour ago, ClassicGMR said:

My 3B+, apparently, was left as a work in progress. If I remember right I took the 128GB card for something else and swapped a 32GB card in. Looks like I installed RetroPi on it and never configured it nor added any games. I get to re-familiarize myself with the setup process all over again.... tomorrow. ?

 

I forgot how much I liked these.

 

How long ago was it last touched?

 

It may be worth the time and effort to update it, or start over with a fresh build with the current RetroPie

[ClassicGMR]

3 hours ago, fdr4prez said:

It may be worth the time and effort to update it, or start over with a fresh build with the current RetroPie

 

Yeah I've already decided that I am going to do just that and start this one from scratch. Get me back into the whole process.

[lplp]

Hello everyone! I'm new to the board. I am most into the much older system emulators as those are the games that I grew up on.  I used to play these all night for years. Most interested in Atari 2600, Atari 800, Intellivision and Mame. I also wouldn't mind checking out some of the Apple II games that I heard of as a kid but never had. I installed the emulators and roms on my pc years back and got it working but I haven't played them in a while. In light of recent times, I decided to give them a whirl again but they are hard to play on just the keyboard with a controller, so it would appear I have some upgrade work to do one way or another. When I started looking into joystick/controller systems for the pc, I saw that the Raspberry Pi and RetroPie systems are a chance to play them on a smart tv instead, which seems pretty appealing to me right now.

I had a few questions and would greatly appreciate if anyone could help me with them:

 

*Is there any quality difference in function and gameplay for those emulators mentioned above between a PC setup and a RetroPie setup?

 

*What would be the best space efficient controller or controllers setup to get to be able to play Atari, Atari 800 & Intellivision along with most Mame games?

 

*I see that there are some sites that keep popping up when I search this stuff that sell RetroPie/Raspberry Pi boxes and/or PC drives "all set up and configured with emulators and thousands of ROMs that are just about ready to plug and play". I don't mind spending a bit more to get a plug and play setup ready to go. Has anyone done this before and had a good experience and if so, which are the most reputable places to purchase such a system?

 

*For these very old gaming systems, is a lot of updating of the Retropie/Emulators/Roms very necessary or can I expect mostly smooth sailing once I have a setup ready to go?

 

 

There seems to be a dizzying amount of versions and instructions and options out there for this stuff and any simple guidance would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thank you,
Larry

 

[mr_me]

Between PC and Rasberry Pi, in some cases the preferred emulator is exactly the same, e.g. Stella for Atari 2600.  In other cases you'll have more options on PC e.g. Altiira for Atari 800, mame for intellivision.  But raspberry pi still has solid emulators for those systems.  Regarding arcade emulation, raspberry pi typically has older versions of mame which still provides decent emulation of golden age arcade games.

 

Atari 2600 and 800 are mostly 8-way, one button games.  You can use any usb game controller you like and atari 800 keys can be mapped to buttons too.  You could play intellivision games with a modern xbox style controller, you might have more mapping flexibility on PC.  An intellivision controller is preferable for some intellivision games.  Original Atari paddles would be good for paddle games.  Arcade games with steering wheels and spinners are always an issue.

 

No need to pay extra for a loaded raspberry pi.  You can download a loaded drive image at no cost.  If you have any interest in building one yourself it's the way to go as you'll know how to fix problems and make changes to your liking.

Edited April 17, 2020 by mr_me