The Raspberry Pi and Retropie discussion thread

[+fdr4prez]

11 hours ago, RevEng said:

I don't really have specific knowledge here, but I do know the gpio layout for RPi2 is different than zero. Have you adjusted for the new layout?

sorry, that is not correct.

 

Pi0 uses the same header pinout as the Pi2 and Pi3

 

It is the Pi1 that is different (it is shorter, so less pins)

[PacManPlus]

18 minutes ago, fdr4prez said:

Did you try this, from its github page

https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-Retrogame

 

RetroPie 2.0+ Compatibility

Note that by default retrogame won't work with SDL2 applications that depend on evdev for input events. Specifically this means applications like the latest version of RetroPie and EmulationStation won't be able to see key events generated by retrogame. However you can fix this issue by adding a small custom udev rule to make retrogame keyboard events visible to SDL2.

Connect to your Raspberry Pi in a terminal/SSH session and execute the following command to create and edit the file /etc/udev/rules.d/10-retrogame.rules:

sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/10-retrogame.rules

Once the nano text editor loads, copy this single line into the file:

SUBSYSTEM=="input", ATTRS{name}=="retrogame", ENV{ID_INPUT_KEYBOARD}="1"

Save the file by pressing Ctrl-O and enter, then press Ctrl-x to exit. Restart your Raspberry Pi and run retrogame again, now button presses should register in SDL2 applications like the EmulationStation frontend to RetroPie

 

That was the first thing I did  :

 

14 hours ago, PacManPlus said:

Not to de-rail this thread too much but...  Is there anything special about the RPi Zero and the GPIO pins?  I'm Already running retropie on a RPi2 with 'retrogame' to take input from the GPIO pins and it's fine... But on the Pi Zero I get *NOTHING*.  I've tried two different RPi Zeros, re-configuring the '/boot/retropie.cfg' file, tried EVERY BCM pin, and nothing.

 

I know I have it connected correctly, as I've done these before (on different Pis) and they worked. 

I've made sure '/etc/udev/rules.d' has a file called '10-retrogame.rules' with the line 'SUBSYSTEM=="input", ATTRS{name}=="retrogame", ENV{ID_INPUT_KEYBOARD}="1"' in it.

I've made sure '/etc/modules' has 'uinput' in it.

This is very frustrating.

 

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Bob

 

[+fdr4prez]

34 minutes ago, PacManPlus said:

That was the first thing I did  :

 

Ah, it seems I missed that part of you original post.

 

I've never used retrogame

 

I do have a little python script that I use for GPIO button detection and it will "uinput" keyboard presses into the system, but it isn't SDL2 compatible, so it doesn't work with the "lr-" emulators.

 

For the RetroPie emulators that I use (jzintv, standalone stella, and coolcv) my script works good for GPIO button detection.

 

That being said, when I press F4 to get to to the terminal, I am able to press the GPIO buttons and those "keyboard" presses will be displayed in the terminal.  

 

On your other Pi2 that you say works good, do the retrogame GPIO button detection get displayed in the terminal?  Do you see the same results in the Pi0?

[PacManPlus]

I actually wanted to use the standalone 'stella', but it runs VERY slow on the PiZero.

Regarding the terminal; nothing comes out there either on the PiZero.

The Pi 2 & 3 worked fine.  I haven't tried 4 yet...

 

Thank you for helping...

Edited June 11, 2020 by PacManPlus

[+fdr4prez]

2 hours ago, PacManPlus said:

I actually wanted to use the standalone 'stella', but it runs VERY slow on the PiZero.

Regarding the terminal; nothing comes out there either on the PiZero.

The Pi 2 & 3 worked fine.  I haven't tried 4 yet...

 

Thank you for helping...

 

I used quite a few Pi0 with the standalone stella - see my Ultimate Atari Joystick

 

I have not seen any slowdown in any of these that I've built.  I've built about a dozen, but that was some time ago.

 

There is another AA member that has recently complained about Stella running slow on Pi0 and I built a new image using the latest RetroPie and I did not see any issue.

 

If there is a documentable issue with the standalone stella, then please go the RetroPie Forum and request them to fix it.  

 

The version used with RetroPie is made and maintained by those guys, and not by the coders of Stella themselves.

[+fdr4prez]

2 hours ago, PacManPlus said:

I actually wanted to use the standalone 'stella', but it runs VERY slow on the PiZero.

Regarding the terminal; nothing comes out there either on the PiZero.

The Pi 2 & 3 worked fine.  I haven't tried 4 yet...

 

The standalone stella is using SDL1, so the retrogame events should be detectable without doing anything extra.

 

And since the terminal doesn't display them, then this implies that retrogame isn't running correctly.

 

You may be able to go to Adafruit's forum and see if there are any posts with similar issues.

 

What are you connecting to the GPIO?  And are you planning to use only the standalone stella?

[PacManPlus]

Hi

 

The idea here was to use the RPi Zero inside the Flashback X case: 

 

I even 3D printed the bracket to mount the Zero in the case.

BTW, I tried the PiZero image that you had on the 'Ultimate Atari Joystick' page you linked to... (the one that was tailored to the Pi Zero)  Froze at the multi-color image at the very beginning.  Tried two RPi Zeros, and Two different 8G cards.

 

Is it possible that I have *two* bad Rpi Zeros?

 

I was connecting everything (both joysticks, console switches) to the GPIO ports, and run the USB port to the 'cartridge' port on the FBX (for things like paddles, etc).

The Zero is the only thing that will fit in the FBX case though.  

 

...and yes, I did want to use Stella alone.  I only went with retropie/emulationstation because the Stella on that ran at a normal speed.

 

EDIT: I also have a Flashback 1 (the one that looks like the 7800) and I had planned on using the other RPi Zero for that one.  (A 7800 Flashback)

 

Edited June 11, 2020 by PacManPlus

[+stephena]

The 'fast' version of Stella is using SDL1, and as such is based on 3.x versions using software rendering.  So it's quite old and obsolete.  The other version is probably the latest one, using SDL2, based on Stella 6.x and using hardware rendering.  Problem is, most of these ARM devices don't offer framebuffer support for SDL2, and instead go through XWindows (or don't have hardware acceleration enabled at all).  That's probably why it's so slow.

 

We ran into the same issues on the Retron77.  There, we had to patch SDL2 for the events issue mentioned above, and also add hardware acceleration to SDL2 without requiring X.  There's nothing stopping anyone from using this version of SDL2 on those devices, and then getting full hardware support.  But everyone seems to stick to the old code.  This is really a problem of SDL2 not being properly supported on this hardware.  The modified SDL2 is out there, but it seems nobody other than R77 is using it.  That's why nobody is seeing issues with R77 compared to these devices.  In reality, if it runs fine on R77, it should on this type of hardware too (they're in the same class).

[PacManPlus]

Thank you, @stephena.  Please note, that I know that Stella running slow was because of the RPiZero.

 

So, I need to go searching for the version of Stella you patched for the Retron77?  I'll go try and find it in a bit.

I'm going to see how to fit the RPi3 in the FBX (I may end up removing the Network port and one of the USB receptacles) and then design a bracket to hold it in.  I don't know if it will make it (the RPiZero fit nicely, but it won't play nice with the GPIO pins).
 

I really want to get this going, as like I mentioned I have a FB1 and I want to make a 7800 Flashback for that.

 

Anyway, thank you again for jumping in this thread.

 

Also, thank you @fdr4prez - Hopefully between all of us, we will get this going.

 

[PacManPlus]

Something just hit me... 

 

I bought these RPiZeros quite a while ago.  Has the hardware been updated since the Zeros first came out?

Edited June 12, 2020 by PacManPlus

[ClassicGMR]

On 6/12/2020 at 9:40 AM, PacManPlus said:

Something just hit me... 

 

I bought these RPiZeros quite a while ago.  Has the hardware been updated since the Zeros first came out?

If I am reading this correctly (and I am exhausted so maybe not) it looks like there are a few revisions of the RPi 0

 

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/revision-codes/README.md

Edited June 30, 2020 by ClassicGMR

[PacManPlus]

Thank you!  ...but actually I picked up a new Rpi Zero.  I've been getting help from @fdr4prez  (massive thanks!) and once it's completed, along with the 7800 flashback I plan to make, I will make a post in the emulation forum with my findings.  (I don't want to derail this one any more than I already have.)  I will post the .STL files for the adapters for the RPi Zeros, and what I purchased to make it work.  There have been quite a few trial and error purchases, so hopefully I can spare anyone else looking to do this any headache.

 

 

[ClassicGMR]

On 6/30/2020 at 8:59 PM, PacManPlus said:

I don't want to derail this one any more than I already have.

You can't. That's what this is for! Pi stuff!

[TIX]

Hey,

 

Any of you guys happen to know how these 'pegs' are called ?

they are used to mount the pi2scart on to the pi, and of course they are not included in the package..

Where can I order them ?

 

[+fdr4prez]

standoffs - can be plastic or metal

Edited July 27, 2020 by fdr4prez

[TIX]

6 minutes ago, fdr4prez said:

standoffs - can be plastic or metal

Aha...  thanks man !

[Osgeld]

depending on the size your local hardware store might have them, otherwise off to the interwebs

[Cynicaster]

Any Retropie MAME experts about? 

 

I've got a Pi (version 3b) running MAME2003 on the v0.78 romset.  Games all work, but the aspect ratio of the display is out of whack.  

 

I'm trying to use a small 4:3 LCD monitor in landscape orientation.  When I just use default settings all around, I get big black bars of unused space on the sides of the screen.  I fully expect this when running vertical games on a horizontal screen but I'm getting it on all games, even horizontal ones.  Both types are showing an image that is obviously too narrow in the side-to-side direction, so the proportions look like crap.  I'm Ok with black bars on vertical games but I want the proportions of the image to look right, with the largest possible image that will fit in the 4:3 horizontal screen.    

 

I have no trouble at all getting this to work on a PC version of MAME - in fact, it "just works" without having to do anything.  But this Pi is driving me nuts.  

 

I am able to go into the Retroarch video settings and select different aspect ratios until I find one that looks great on either horizontal or vertical games, but whenever I set it up for one, the other gets hosed.  For example, if I set up Kung Fu Master (a horizontal game) so that it fills the screen and looks nice, then all vertical games are also stretched wide to fill the screen.  Same goes for vertical - I get them looking proportionally correct with the black bars at the sides, but then all horizontal games are squished side-to-side in the same fashion.

 

Since both game types are too narrow in the horizontal direction when using default settings, I'm wondering if it's some kind of setting at the OS level (rather than at the emulator level) where the system is misidentifying the monitor's resolution or something like that.  But that doesn't really make sense either because it seems like if that were the case, the Emulation Station front end would also be squashed in the horizontal direction but it's displaying correctly at full screen.   

 

Can anybody shed light?  I'm pretty sure I can create game-by-game config files to force the correct image size but if the answer is that I have to go game by game and create config files to force the correct image size then I'm just not going to bother with this project.

 

I had this thing up and running before on the same monitor and never had this issue, but I'm starting to think I might have been using MAME2010 before.  I'm going to try that but if I can get 2003 going that would be preferable because I already have all the ROMs copied over, etc.  

 

 

[Cynicaster]

1 hour ago, Cynicaster said:

Any Retropie MAME experts about? 

 

I've got a Pi (version 3b) running MAME2003 on the v0.78 romset.  Games all work, but the aspect ratio of the display is out of whack.  

 

<snip>

 

 

 

Fucking right, I finally figured it out.  As I suspected, it wasn't the emulator settings that were causing the problems, it was the settings of the Pi itself.  I ran a raspi-config -> advanced options and selected the correct monitor resolution from the list of options, and re-booted.  BOOM - both vertical and horizontal games look awesome now.  

 

Where I'm confused is I am 99.9% certain I didn't have to do this step the first time I set this thing up with this monitor 2-3 years ago.  Regardless, it works now... just wish I could have those 3 hours back.  

 

 

[ClassicGMR]

You may not have had to do that going that far back but there's so much different now compared to those 2-3 year old builds. We went from Jessie to Stretch to Buster so all the drivers went through some changes as well as general improvements with the program and setup.

 

Good to see you got it all sorted.

[DavidC]

Hello, I am new to the RPi and Retropie and pretty much anything Pi related so I figured I would ask you folks my hopefully simple questions. 

 

I have a new RPi 400. I successfully installed Retropie on a 128 gig SD card and installed a few games, SNES and N64 titles.  They work well and everything is running smoothly. 

 

 My question is, in my googling and searching I ran across a "prebuilt" retropie sd card for a Rpi 4 on Amazon.  Are those cards "plug and play"?  Just plug in the card and retropie and everything just works?   Does anyone have any experiance with these prebuilt sd cards? I figure I would have to configure my controller and stuff, I am using a PS4 controller now,  but I guess I am asking is there other setup stuff required?  If I plug the card into my Pi 400 will it just work? Choose a console, choose a game and enjoy?    Is it really that simple?  

 

 Thank you in advance for any insight or advise.  This is all new to me.

[TIX]

Yeah, that's pretty much it !

 

Images are freely distributed though, head over at arcadepunks, download an image from their huge collection,

write it to your sd card with Win32 Disk Imager, and you are ready to go  ?

[DavidC]

Thank you sir. I will give it a try.  

 

[toptenmaterial]

On 6/12/2020 at 9:40 AM, PacManPlus said:

Something just hit me... 

 

I bought these RPiZeros quite a while ago.  Has the hardware been updated since the Zeros first came out?

I realize that this is an older post but thought that I'd chime in. The only discernible difference that I could find between the Zero and Zero W was that the W has wifi support. I set up a Zero for a pal of mine a couple of years back, and it handled all of the SNES stuff that I threw at it. As far as I know both are currently in production. Here is a link with comparisons:

 

https://iotdunia.com/raspberry-pi-zero/#:~:text=RaspberryPi Zero – W launched in,A%2B%2C with twice the utility.

Edited December 15, 2020 by toptenmaterial

[toptenmaterial]

Hi everyone! I was lucky enough to receive a 400 for Christmas. I'm a bit underwhelmed with PSP and N64. What emulators and settings is everyone using?