RetroN 77 Community Build Image

[SevenTari]

Hey guys, I had a question regarding paddles. I have done as much research as I could before asking.

I recently bought a R77 with a Ranger controller. Everything worked well enough with the stock fw but once I got to the Community build, I came across some problems (which I understand are well documented)

 

I tried the Ranger and it's paddle works only on the left side of screen.

I tried original paddles and it jumps once you hit the right side of the screen.

 

- So my questions would be is there a fix for this (some people claim they have no issues on the Community Build) or any fix in progress for down the line?

 

- I also have a pair of 2600-dapter 2 and I purchased the OTG Y cable to test out. But is this my best and only option with the R77 and Community build?

 

- Is there a version of the community build that borrows from the original fw that will allow me to run unlimited roms while still preserving the usability of the Ranger controller paddle?

 

Thank in advance to anyone.

 

 

 

 

[fiudr]

I came in to check on the very same thing myself. I was hoping there might have been a newer firmware build that corrects the paddles on the front ports.

 

I have a pair of paddles with new pots coming from Best-Electronics, and I have another pair of original paddles and the Ranger controller. For me, they work with the Retron77 and community firmware through the OTG cable setup and the D9-daptor, but I was hoping at some point the front ports would become usable again for paddles.

 

As I understand it, the paddles work great if using the stock firmware that ships with the Retron 77, but installing the community firmware to allow adding roms breaks the paddle functionality with the front ports. Is this accurate?

 

I was also briefly considering picking up the latest Flashback 50th anniversary Gold, but the included paddles and original paddles don't work properly on that either, and oddly, like the Retron77, it's the right side of the screen that's the problem. There's some videos on the paddle issue with the new new Flashback on Youtube. Apparently the included paddles are fine, it's the translation from analog to digital that may be the issue with the new Flashback.

 

 

[SevenTari]

I believe youre correct. I tried the ranger (love that controller but) using it on the stock retron fw - while it works, it feels more like digital increments rather than a smooth analog movement. (I have not tried using my paddles on stock fw yet to test if it's the same story)

 

Using the 2600dapter 2 however, with both the ranger paddle and orginal paddles, you get a much smoother and true experience.

 

While it's sad developers have not had time to fix these bugs, I certainly can understand as life "gets in the way".

 

Here's my setup. I really would have hoped for an analogue 7800 (with 2600 compat) I don't think that will ever happen so the retron will be the next best thing.

 

If interested, I think atari is licensing a new plug n play called the gameststion pro or plus. There's rumors now that they went back to the drawing board to include paddle controls on it if thats your thing. 

 

But as you can see I prefer using cartridges. 

[killersquirel]

I just got the Retron 77 and I wanted to use it as a cartridge dumper.  I looked at the instructions on the GitHub, but was a little confused about what type of file I need to have to add the setting "DUMP_TO_SD=y" and what folder and where would the Retron dump the game to?  Thanks in advance.

[MegaManFan]

On 8/2/2018 at 1:07 PM, remowilliams said:

As mentioned the included image (sdcard.remo.20181120-1353CB.img) must be written (as an image) directly to your microSD card - this does not mean copy the image as a file to the card, it means use an imaging tool such as USB Image Tool or Win32 Disk Imager or Etcher.

 

Hi! I can be kind of a dummy at times but all of these tools seem to be for Windows or Linux builds. I'm a Mac guy. Is there free software for burning the image file directly to microSD on Ventura 13.4.1 or earlier?

[+Nathan Strum]

I use balenaEtcher. https://etcher.balena.io

[MegaManFan]

2 hours ago, Nathan Strum said:

I use balenaEtcher. https://etcher.balena.io

Much obliged Nathan. Thanks!

[mario64]

Is 6.6.0 the final release of the community firmware or is it still in development? Just wondering if a build based upon Stella 6.7 is a possibility.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

5 hours ago, mario64 said:

Is 6.6.0 the final release of the community firmware or is it still in development? Just wondering if a build based upon Stella 6.7 is a possibility.

Sometime, maybe.

[+swlovinist]

I have a question that I thought I would post here.   I updated my Retron 77 a few years ago to Stella 6.0 or 6.1.   Is there an easy way to update it to the latest Stella 6.6?  

[Dire 51]

Forgive the "knows just enough about this stuff to be dangerous" questions, and my apologies if this has all been covered here before, there's a lot of reading to dig through.

So in light of all this 2600+ news, I decided to pull my Retron77 out of mothballs and hook it back up. I upgraded it to the most recent community build in 2021. Every game I've tried has run without a problem, it's the controllers that are giving me problems. Based on what I've read elsewhere in here, you can't just plug a touchpad or paddles into the joystick ports of the R77 and expect them to work. I haven't tried my old set of paddles in some time, but I remember that they had issues when I did test them last. I did dig out my Star Raiders touchpad to try to play that properly last night, with no luck.

On a side note, I do have both a Ranger and the Hyperkin stick that came bundled with the R77. The paddle control seems to work pretty well with the Ranger, but I want to use the original paddles, if I can.

 

So if what I'm reading is correct, to get those to work properly on the R77, I'd need a 2600-daptor, specified USB cable, and an OTG cable. Once these are connected properly, the R77 should properly read the paddles and touchpad? Can I use them together with two controllers plugged into the front ports, or just one? Or would it just register it as the second player port? And if that is the case, would the paddles function for games that require them to be plugged into port one?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

The joystick ports of the R77 only support joysticks and paddles (see below). This cannot be fixed.

 

Original paddles have problems in Stella version 6.6. We have not found the reason yet. But since the Ranger works, we suppose that it doesn't work like an original paddle. And the firmware (or worst case the MCU which cannot be updated) has somewhere been adapted to the new behavior. A fix is planned for the next release, but there is no schedule for this.

 

Yes, you need a 2600-daptor and an OTG cable for attaching other original controllers. Then the paddles should work fine too (just like they do on any other computer when you run Stella with a 2600-daptor). IIRC you can plug two controllers into the front port and combine them with 2600-daptors. But their signal might interfere and you get random input. Yes, you can map any OTG controller to left or right port in the settings (Input Settings). And use the other R77 port for the other controller. Usually Stella knows which games use which port and switches the ports automatically. If not, you can edit this per game in the settings (Game Properties).

 

Hope this helps.

[Dire 51]

Yes, that's exactly the info I'm looking for, thank you! I've gone ahead and ordered everything I need.

 

One other question: will an AtariVox work on the R77 too, through the 2600-daptor?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

7 hours ago, Dire 51 said:

One other question: will an AtariVox work on the R77 too, through the 2600-daptor?

http://2600-daptor.com/AtariVox-daptor.htm  (note that 2600-daptor needs a different firmware)

[Dire 51]

Thanks again!

[+swlovinist]

HELP!   After I updated successfully to Stella 6.6, I tried going into the advanced settings on my Retron 77 to adjust the input and now my standard controller cannot successfully navigate the menus and settings.   I try to move up and down and it rapidly moves up and down.   Is there an easy way to reset all the settings so that I can fix this?   Anyone who can help me is most appreciated.  

 

Here is a video showing what is going on 

 

[MegaManFan]

Surprise! I did a video about @remowilliams awesome custom firmware.

 

 

[suspicious_milk]

On 9/2/2023 at 1:55 PM, swlovinist said:

HELP!   After I updated successfully to Stella 6.6, I tried going into the advanced settings on my Retron 77 to adjust the input and now my standard controller cannot successfully navigate the menus and settings.   I try to move up and down and it rapidly moves up and down.   Is there an easy way to reset all the settings so that I can fix this?   Anyone who can help me is most appreciated.  

 

Here is a video showing what is going on 

 

IIRC I had the same issue; accessing Stella setting "in game" seemed to work (ie don't go into the settings from the main screen, load a game first).  The community build is a bit buggy on some units (Mine for sure! an orange one) due to manufacturing inconsistencies with R77 hardware.    As an aside, disabling multi-threading in the settings helps the (my) buggy hardware run longer before experiencing lockups (but certainly doesn't fix it over all).   I was toying around with for a while trying to stabilize it, but have since just reverted to the stock.  Hopefully the 2600+ gives us enough quality and polish we can regulate the R77 to closet duty.

 

Love your YT vids brother.

Edited September 5, 2023 by suspicious_milk

[Microbc]

This is how I decided to handle the paddle issue.
 

I ended up using the latest community build for joystick based games and I created a separate SD card with the original build that allowed additional games just for paddle games.

 

I just switch cards when I want to play a few paddle games.

 

It works great with the Retron paddle controller hooked up directly to the 77.

 

No additional cables or adapters needed.

 

sure it is a pain to switch cards but it works out fine for me.

Edited September 23, 2023 by Microbc

[envytomdead2]

Does anyone ever have issues with your retron 77 sporadically losing the video signal on 6.5.3 or 6.6. I have an older Retron 77 so it shouldn't have the faulty ram issue. When I switch back to the original firmware, it is fine.  It didn't used to have issues. 

[fluxit]

Yes, but in my case, replacing the HDMI cable with new one eliminated the problem. In my experience, most sporadic HDMI video is the fault of the cable.  They are quite fragile, it seems.

 

FWIW, this was the sequence of events here, IIRC:

1,Sporadic video after having updated my firmware.

2.Good video after returning to the original.

3.Sporadic video after switching back to updated firmware.

4.Sporadic video upon once again returning to the original, and eventually no video until I replaced the cable and then all firmwares had 100% working video.

 

When the cable had finally failed completely, no amount of replugging, hot or cold, would result in stable video.  Cleaning the video connections did nothing, although they didn't seem to be dirty or damaged.

 

It seems as though initially, reorienting the cable was allowing it to work 'better.'

 

That cable still works on other devices, so it seems that HDMI is fiddly enough just testing a cable successful elsewhere is not enough to rule it out as the cause.

 

Other similar HDMI failures can be related to the ports being dirty or damaged.

 

Why these problems would be more obvious with the community firmwares on the R77, I have no idea.  And of course, just because my problem sounds similar to yours and was fixed with a new cable, doesn't mean that you aren't seeing something different.

[envytomdead2]

13 hours ago, fluxit said:

Yes, but in my case, replacing the HDMI cable with new one eliminated the problem. In my experience, most sporadic HDMI video is the fault of the cable.  They are quite fragile, it seems.

 

FWIW, this was the sequence of events here, IIRC:

1,Sporadic video after having updated my firmware.

2.Good video after returning to the original.

3.Sporadic video after switching back to updated firmware.

4.Sporadic video upon once again returning to the original, and eventually no video until I replaced the cable and then all firmwares had 100% working video.

 

When the cable had finally failed completely, no amount of replugging, hot or cold, would result in stable video.  Cleaning the video connections did nothing, although they didn't seem to be dirty or damaged.

 

It seems as though initially, reorienting the cable was allowing it to work 'better.'

 

That cable still works on other devices, so it seems that HDMI is fiddly enough just testing a cable successful elsewhere is not enough to rule it out as the cause.

 

Other similar HDMI failures can be related to the ports being dirty or damaged.

 

Why these problems would be more obvious with the community firmwares on the R77, I have no idea.  And of course, just because my problem sounds similar to yours and was fixed with a new cable, doesn't mean that you aren't seeing something different.

 Switching cables didn't do the trick.  I will probably see if this thing can still handle 3.9.3 and park it there for now. Thanks for your help!

[envytomdead2]

So it is apparently the TV itself that didn't like the community build.  I tested on another TV and it appears to be fine. 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Weird

[envytomdead2]

9 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Weird

Yep. I have raspberry pi running lakka with Stella 6.0 no issues on that TV. As well as consoles hooked up to a RetroTink 2x without issue.  I also tried the hyperkin megaretron hd without issue. That being said the TV is old (2011 I think). It might be on its way out.  I have been using the retron 77 on that TV for 5 years now so it's definitely weird.