…ok, well that hasn’t quite to plan, just finished wiping the drive and putting beta3 retro pie onto it, and same issue.
Full info:
used gparted on my ubuntu laptop to wipe partitions on the USBHDD and create a new flat ntfs partition (not sure this is necc as I think when you apply an image to a device it goes over all the partition info, but safer>sorry)
downloaded a fresh version of the beta3 image to ubuntu
used dd through ubuntu to apply the beta 3 image to the USBHDD
booted the pi2 using the USBHDD
first screen when retropie finishes loading is:
WELCOME
no gamepads connected
hold a button..
press f4 to quit
pressing f4 has no effect, using a ssh terminal I then find and kill the retropie process which quits me back to commandline, where the keyboard works as expected.