Dr Luveno

Ooof, I just returned it last night. Where's the BIOS flash utility and associated downloads? Disabling secure boot aside, I guess my second issue would have been having to manually select PC Mode to go into Batocera, as opposed to just having the machine boot up as a Batocera-first machine?

Agreed, I really loved the look of it, and the APU horsepower was perfect for what I needed. I'll be on the lookout for an equivalent-or-better mini-PC, but it won't have the look nor the $250 cost I was able to snag the VCS at. I might give it another whirl if I see it blown out for $100 or something someday in the future.

Returned it last night. I really wanted it to work out, but I guess it wasn't the device for what I wanted/needed.

It was a brand-new unit from Micro Center. Empty password does not work either. It's definitely not a typo or keyboard error, as I was able to use the on-screen keyboard to eliminate any ambiguity there.

Oh wow, so with an alternate OS installed on the internal M2, you either need to select PC mode through AtariOS or use your workaround? That's a bummer.

It's definitely not the keyboard, as I figured out the BIOS has an onscreen keyboard that you can use, and that didn't work with the celebrate password either.

I just ran down this route, choosing to plug in an external Easy Store powered USB drive that I had laying around and install Debian 11 onto it on the VCS. The Easy Store had been shucked of its original 14TB drive for use in my Plex server, and I had an old 4TB WD Red that I put in it (not relevant, but I thought I'd include this detail). I successfully installed Debian on the external drive on the VCS, but could not get the VCS to boot from it, with the VCS instead just booting into the onboard OS. Not wanting to waste any more time on it, I went back to the BIOS password thing. I didn't really want to go down this route anyway, strongly preferring a Buildroot -> Recalbox -> Batocera setup instead of vanilla Debian/Ubuntu + Batocera on top. Anyway, because of the attempted Debian install, I had a mouse plugged into the VCS as well. When I entered the BIOS and tried to access the secure boot menu, for whatever reason I clicked into the password dialog box with the mouse and to my surprise an onscreen keyboard popped up. I tried entering the "celebrate" password using only the onscreen keyboard and still got the invalid password message. So if this is still a PEBCAK error, it isn't due to my physical keyboard nor any typos. Unless I get a Hail Mary from somewhere, I'm going to have to return the VCS to Micro Center.

That's the kinda thing an idiot would have on his luggage!

Thank you for your thoughts on this. Yeah, it's a head-scratcher. And I've typed that darn password in so many times now that I'm starting to go loopy, and second- and third-guessing myself ("did I type it correctly? what did I just type?"). I've done my fair share of sysadmin-y work professionally since the mid-90s so I should know what I'm doing, and this is literally just typing in a password. It certainly doesn't help that the BIOS interface asterisks out your typing, but 100+ attempts across three keyboards I'm guessing that typos are not the problem here. I've tried different USB ports, ethernet cable plugged/unplugged, mouse and controller plugged/unplugged, and no dice.

Thanks! I hope so too. I really like the hardware design, this really would have been perfect. Support has escalated my case, we'll see what else they come up with.

I was using Retropie-on-Ubuntu previously on the Celeron J4125 box the VCS was supposed to replace, and the experience was considerably more janky (bluetooth controllers, certain cores configs that I could never seem to get right, etc) than what Batocera provides out of the box. Given that I wanted this to be as console-ish as possible, it's Batocera-or-bust for me.

The "Atar!C3l3br8te$50Ye4r$" password does NOT work for me. I picked up a VCS 800 with the idea of using it as an upgrade to my Celeron J4125-based Batocera box. I plugged in the VCS and played around with it stock, letting it update and everything. After having my fun with the out-of-the-box experience, I went off to go play with Batocera on it. I went to boot Batocera via USB, and I was a bit surprised by getting prevented from doing so due to security policy, but figured that was just something I could reconfigure in the BIOS. I hop into the BIOS (now updated to v23) and get password prompted. A little bit of Googling later, I see the "piano" and "celebrate" passwords and have at it. Nothing works. Small case "L", upper case "I" and so on. I used three different keyboards, different USB slots for them, no luck. I contacted support and they confirmed that the "celebrate" password should work. Doing some more Googling, apparently I'm not the only one dealing with this, but it appears inconsistent, with some folks being able to get in with the "celebrate" password and others not. I'll be driving back later this week to return this, unless someone has other ideas on how I can get Batocera booted on this thing. I know I could install Ubuntu and Retropie, but Retropie it is a bit more janky than I'd prefer (it's what I had on my Celeron J4125 box before going with Batocera).