[smithers]

Hi all.

Here is a ‘Vanilla’ build of RetroPie / OSMC:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/swgen48306ko3v1/RetroPie_OSMC_Vanilla_DualBoot_v1_SS.zip?dl=0

Both OS’s are standard in every way other than my scripts to switch between OS’s. OSMC will prompt you with its normal ‘First Setup’ steps after install and RetroPie will ask for controller setup as normal. I have not modified either system in any other way so they will act and perform as the standard builds would.

This build allows installing via the normal SD card method OR using a USB stick to store the OS’s on. If you use the USB stick method then you will only lose around 125MB to install files, whereas using the normal SD card method you will lose around 800MB. I recommend using USB!

Full instructions in the normal ‘README’ file. I’ve tested it a few times and it works great but please let me know how you get on!

I will look into RasPlex next as a ‘Vanilla’ build then work on ‘full’ builds for both, which should allow time for RetroPie v3 final to arrive! :)

As for the OpenELEC build – I’m not sure what to do for the best. I like the stability of KODI v14 but if that has SD card corruption issues then I don’t want to package it up and release it for fear of creating problems for folk. As for the v15 release candidate – it seems to me like it has some bugs that cause it to crash quite a bit. I think I would rather wait for v15 final than use any other Betas, but not sure when that will be. :/

Anyway – Hope this helps someone. I’ve never used OSMC before but some people seem to prefer it so here it is.

All the best.
Steve

p.s. I forgot to mention, I have created a separate ‘OSMC’ theme, instead of using the normal KODI theme. So that is another change to the RetroPie build, but nothing major. Let me know what you think of the theme!

[smithers]

Excellent, thanks very much! :)

[smithers]

Ahh excellent, thanks Floob. I didn’t realise you could do this via the retroarch.cfg file, I thought the core options saved independently?

[smithers]

[quote=103735]I literally just registered to say thanks for all your work smithers!
I have been following and lurking since your first post!

[/quote]

Thanks – I appreciate it!

[quote=103721]Just wanted to add.

I came here from Reddit and, despite spending most of the day setting up Kodi within Retropie through another method, I decided to ditch my work and go along with this image.

I should have used this one from the start. Effortless setup, great to look at and all the best add-ons already pre-installed.

Simply amazing work.

One wee addendum, though. I had trouble getting my Dualshock 3 recognised via Bluetooth and had to delve into the settings to individually pair the controller. Just thought I’d share my method here in case anyone else is having trouble.

Just go here – https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Setting-up-a-PS3-controller
and follow the instructions. Worked like a charm.

Thanks again. You’ve made my life so much easier. I owe you a beer!

[/quote]

Thanks – appreciate it. I see someone else has issues with PS3 controllers too – hopefully your link will sort them out, thanks!

To follow on from the controller issues people face – I have had luck with PS3 pads in the past but have turned to a different style of controller (Thrustmaster Mini T Wireless). I fully intend on going back to the PS3 pads and would be happy to share my controller configs for folk to l when I do make the switch. I would also do the same for other controllers, if I had them. In sure I could borrow an XBOX pad for a while to work on it, but this is all in the future, if people were interested.

Ok so now that I have had time to play with OpenELEC Isengard RC1, I must say I’m a little disappointed with the stability of it. Normally it is rock solid but it’s crashed out on me a few times and I get a constant nag about an ‘extended info’ script needing to be installed. I’m sure any such issues will be ironed out when Isengard is ready for final release but for now, I’m going to move away from it.

So what I intend to do is release different flavours of my build, to allow full choice to you, the end user. I will work on adapting a build of OSMC and Rasplex that can be optional installs.

I have never used either of these OS’s, but user @agrasan messaged me saying you can directly link to scripts within OSMC so that may make life easier (thanks for the heads up, agrasan!) Rasplex on the other hand – I have no idea, but will investigate! (unless anyone experienced in Rasplex could advise on if this is possible or not from the outset?).

Vanilla build is still my first priority! Expect it soon (how many times can I say that until you get annoyed waiting for it? Haha).

All the best,
Steve

[smithers]

Hi all.

Quick post before I go to bed (its 2am and I have work @ 8am. :s )

After around 4 hours of compiling and testing and 6GB of dependancy downloads (!!)…. I have now got a version of NOOBS installer that will allow installing via a USB stick!

“So what??”, I hear you cry… well this means that you can now claw back nearly all of your precious SD card space as it no longer has to carry the burden of the recovery files. This means a saving of approx 1GB, based upon my last build and it means I can potentially include more in my builds (if necessary) without the sacrifice of SD card space and not so much stripping back is required. It also means that an 8GB install is completely feasible now, whereas before you had very little space to play with.

The thing that makes it important to me personally is that now I can make a backup of my entire 32GB build via a .tar.xz file and use it as a custom installer option via USB drive, making life much easier if I upgrade to a 64GB card, or when my current card breaks (its been abused alot by this venture!), I know that any 32GB replacement card will work (.img files have an exact size that needs to be adhered to whereas this NOOBS method doesn’t).

Anyway – its something Ive been trying to solve for a while until I eventually stumbled over a Github fork of NOOBS for this sole purpose. What a swine it was to compile though!! :o

I will address questions tomorrow and will finally get the ‘Vanilla’ build out! :o (and it will be based on this ‘new’ version of NOOBS so you have the option of USB install or normal – as will all of my builds from now).

All the best,
Steve

[smithers]

[quote=103649]Thanks 4 the build

A link to RetroPie_KODI_DualBoot_V4_SS.zip on Uptobox: RetroPie_KODI_DualBoot_V4_SS.zip – 934.3 MB

My wireless 360 controller, keeps flashing, anybody got that same problem? maybe a solution?

[/quote]

Many thanks fro re-uploading the file! :)

As for the controller – I have seen this mentioned a few times in the forums and I know there is a fix for it. Have a check in the ‘Controller’ section of the forum and you should find your answer there.

@mayki – is there any added benefit in using the Amber skin over Aeon?

[smithers]

[quote=103622] I can now confirm this latest release of OpenELEC resolves the SDCARD corruption issues. This ROCKS!! A HUGE thank you. Looking forward to the vanilla build!

EDIT: To clarify, I believe we’re all of the same understanding. Vanilla means a KODI menu in Retropie, and in OpenELEC the updated skin to support menu item that boots into Retropie, no other changes.

By the way, I’ve noticed a typo in the OpenELEC menu item for gaming – It reads “Lanch” instead of “Launch”.

Longer term suggestion: A method (script or directions) to update with the latest retropie and openelec vanilla images on our own. The vanilla image will allow power users to do “their thing” — really awesome of you to do this.

EDIT2: Not sure what the OpenELEC skin provides, but menu items for POWER and SETTINGS I assume will also be included.

[/quote]

Glad it works for you! I am working on the vanilla builds now and expect to upload it in the not too distant future. It will be ‘vanilla’ in all aspects other than the script to switch between systems, so standard functionality will apply to both systems.

As for updates – the RetroPie Setup Script will take care of RetroPie updates and OpenELEC has its own standard method of updating which still applies in my build. There is no need for any scripts or guides from me as they already exist!

Games launcher spelling mistake – indeed I have mis-spelled it – doh! should you want to correct it, highlight the ‘Lanch Retro Games!’ icon and press menu (<c> on the keyboard), then choose ‘Edit Launcher’. Now choose ‘Modify Datas/Infos’ then ‘Modify Title’. Note – you will get an annoying pop-up asking you to install a script – click no to bypass. Now change the name to ‘Retro Games!’ (or whatever you want really!), then click done.

Cheers.
Steve

[smithers]

Ok the dropbox link has been suspended again! :s Don’t suppose anyone else has re-uploaded? I will post a new link on Mega in the meantime.

[smithers]

[quote=103638]

arkanoid wrote:

Hi

First of all, thanks a lot Smithers for your image, it´s the perfect media center with the perffect an emulator system on it.

I have a simply question. Playing with the config.txt, I have change the original Smithers overclocking settings from the original image. Could anyone tell me those overclocking settings?. Playing N64 games without any overclocking it´s really difficult.

Thanks

Anyone?

[/quote]

Hi. Sorry, I must have missed your question! Here are my overclock settings:

arm_freq=1067
core_freq=533
sdram_freq=483
over_voltage=4

Please use with caution as they are quite aggressive settings and your pi may not re-act well to them

. I would strongly advise using something less aggressive first then increase in increments. Something like below:

arm_freq=1000
core_freq=500
sdram_freq=450
over_voltage=4

The reason I say this is because overclocking can corrupt your SD card if the Pi doesn’t like it and crashes out.

Good luck!
Steve

[smithers]

Or another option is sudo poweroff – that’s what I tend to use.

[smithers]

OK then – time to share my new build! I am taking a different approach in that I’m sharing a folder instead of a direct link this time – Let me know if that doesn’t work out for you (I will post a direct link too at the end of this post).

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ughxu46mu4wy61g/AAC7RzLRXvPwVmsbqU4xLt-Ka?dl=0

So this is v4. I have included a full changelog in the readme file, but in a nutshell:

* Re-built OpenELEC from scratch again, based upon Isengard RC1 (v15). This fixes potential SD card corruption issues (see earlier posts in this thread)
* Re-enabled Apple II, Macintosh and PC and themed them all
* Fixed Atari Lynx emulation by reverting back to an older binary
* Fixed Gameboy theme (and changed it, along with a couple of others)
* Changed the look of KODI – using the same Aeon theme (its not an option to change), but I have changed the backgrounds and added a few extra menu items in.
* Added my own slide in the NOOBS install, instead of using the default OpenELEC slides

So it all seems stable, Ive fixed all bugs / annoyances that I have introduced, so that’s cool, and I have installed the latest KODI beta. First impressions of Isengard are that it runs nice and fast. I haven’t seen any major issues, but I have seen a few little niggles, mainly when installing addons (a persistant box pops up telling you that an extra resource needs to be installed but it never installs itself?), and also the ‘zoom’ animation in iVue is no longer smooth. I decided these weren’t show-stoppers and of course we need to remember this isn’t a final release of Isengard, but everything else seems fine.

So please download, install, let me know what you think! :)

I will work on the ‘vanilla’ build over the weekend and upload it.

All the best,
Steve

p.s. here is a direct link to the new build if the folder share above didn’t work:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qpksky7sjozswqf/RetroPie_KODI_DualBoot_V4_SS.zip?dl=0

[smithers]

[quote=103584]I have finally learnt about ssh and accessing my pi via winscp and found there is much more to the directory structure!

I navigated to this and I try to rename or replace, even add the new named image file and I get;

Error Code 3
message from server: permission denied.

I have success copying files else where even copying and deleting roms.

[/quote]

Ok so the problem you have here is that you don’t have permission to access that directory as read/write, only read access. Using WinSCP you will have logged in as user ‘Pi’, but you would need to be user ‘root’ to gain read/write access to such files.

As default, RetroPie does not allow the ‘root’ login, so you wont be able to transfer / delete / amend files in certain folders using any FTP software, because you can *only* log in as user ‘pi’. A trick to get around this is to creating a working folder in the /home/pi/ directory (e.g. /home/pi/wip/ for example), then copy files into there (where you *do* have write access). Now you can either SSH into the pi or access the terminal on the screen and move the files to their specific folders. See below example:

sudo mv /home/pi/wip/retroarch.cfg /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg

Please note that it will *not* warn you about overwriting files so be cautious and always make a backup of the original file first! You can do this via the following command:

sudo cp /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch_copy.cfg

p.s. the ‘sudo’ part above means you are requesting temporary ‘super user’ access, i.e. root access.

Also, off-topic really, but if this is your first time dabbling in the command line etc. then a handy tip to save time when typing directory structures etc. is to use the ‘Tab’ key which will auto-complete folder names, file names, commands etc. for you. for example, press F4 to exit emulation station (and press a key to stay inside the command line prompt). Now to get back into Emulation Station again all you have to do is type emulationstation and press <enter>. Instead of doing this, type emu then press the <tab> key and it should complete the rest of the line for you.

Apologies if you already knew this! Anyways, hope this helps.

All the best.
Smithers

[smithers]

[quote=103580]UPDATE:Now the controller won’t work and I have to restart the pi by pulling the plug. How Do I make the default controls apply to this new emulator?

side note: sometimes I have to reset my controller config on startup, how can i make it permanent?

Will any USB N64 controller work with the retro pi?

EDIT: Ok two things, I just want to make kodi always boot first ie be the default boot OS, how can I do that?

EDIT EDIT: I shutdown via ssh and noticed these words about config?

[/quote]

Hi. Sorry for delay in replying.

So I will try and tackle your questions one by one!

N64 Controller config – as far as I am aware the controller config is all done manually for the N64 emulators (except the libretro version). So you would need to edit the specific mupen64.cfg file and add in your controller mapping as you want it. This includes an ‘exit emulator’ key. If you do a google search you will find a guide on how to do it (I can’t remember off the top of my head, sorry).

Resetting controller config – are you referring to Emulation Station here, i.e. it will ask you to set up all your buttons again, even though you already have? If so – I haven’t experienced this in the RC1 build personally. Have you checked the rest of the forums to see if anyone else has this problem (maybe with your specific controller?).

Im not sure about the N64 controller compatibility, sorry.

Making KODI always boot first – this isn’t the way I designed it. Personally, I like to stay in one OS permanently until I want to switch back to the other. That doesn’t mean to say that it is impossible however. I could easily build a script that reset the partition back to KODI on every shutdown from within Emulation Station BUT I would need to locate the existing shutdown script that ES calls when ‘Shutdown’ is triggered. If anyone knows where to locate this then I will make an optional script for this (maybe an extra item in the RetroPie Setup section?)

So finally, the screenshots you posted are mainly about the rumble support. This is probably because the N64 controller plugin is set to ‘Rumble Pak’ in the emulator config files. Im not entirely sure if rumble support is even implemented, but either way its not working on your pad! I probably wouldn’t worry about the message – its just a warning, however you can disable it by setting all pad plugins to be ‘Memory Card’ instead of ‘Rumble Pak’ in the config files where you setup your button mapping. Can’t remember the exact filenames though from memory, but have a snoop around and you’ll find it.

Hope this helps!

All the best,
Smithers

[smithers]

Hi.

Ok then – I shall try and create a new build tonight based upon latest KODI Beta and upload it asap. It will also have some RetroPie tweaks over the last build, but nothing groundbreaking to make you switch if you’re already (successfully) using v3 of my build.

I will also build a ‘vanilla’ image too, with just the bare minimum to allow switching between both systems. Please bare in mind this will be vanilla in all aspects of the ‘OpenELEC build too (other than my addon for switching between OS’s), so won’t have any other addons installed.

I’ll try and get both builds up tonight, with priority on the ‘non-vanilla’ build. My fibre broadband has now been enabled so my upload speed is around 10x faster now according to Speedtest.net – I’m rather eager to test it out in practice!

All the best.
Steve

[smithers]

You may need to increase your GPU memory allocation. Do you know what it is currently set as?

I have problems at around the 18 emulators mark but increasing my GPU allocation to 512mb sorted me out instantly and I’m now running about 24 (including Kodi and the retropie settings).

Hope this helps.
Steve

[smithers]

Oh well, I figured that would be the case. I even tried to trick it into linking to an image for existing objects (i.e. ‘rating’), but it would not be fooled, the swine.

Thanks for your reply.

All the best.
Steve

[smithers]

[quote=103430]FYI, gameboy art does not work until you rename gb_art_blur.png to gb_art_blur.jpg or edit theme.xml.

I did change my default emulator from pifba to lr-fba if that helps the poster above any. I built my roms from the dat files posted on the wiki.
[/quote]

My bad r.e. the gameboy art – you are indeed correct, I forgot to update the theme .xml file for it. Already corrected for the next release. I wasn’t really very happy with my choice of the gameboy art though to be fair so I may change it (suggestions welcome as I never owned a gameboy!).

In regards to the default emulators for FBA – I must advise that I have set all the best emulators for the FBA roms, at least for the set I have, so I probably wouldn’t recommend changing that unless you are sure you are using the correct version and still having problems (although I don’t see how you would if it were correct romset). Certain roms will only load and play using PiFBA – others only load with lr-FBA, but in the ’emulators.cfg’ file for FBA I have pre-set these choices for you. I am working on a .dat file so you can copy my set exactly.

[quote=103416]Another improvement (atleast for me) would be if the filesystem was read-only, with a small r/w partition for hi-scores etc.
This way, you could just kill the power to the pi without the risk of corrupting the filesystem.[/quote]

I can see the reasoning behind this however I think you *may* need read/write access when dealing with zipped roms (i.e. MAME, FBA etc.), as I’m guessing the Pi will unzip them as it uses them and therefore needs write access to the folder? Could be wrong. It could use a temp folder somewhere else or even not unzip them at all, but Im not certain either way. Also, it would mean having to set a seperate folder for save states too as they currently default to the rom directories.

[smithers]

Many thanks herbfargus – and yes I would of course be responsible for any support. :)

I doubt I’ll really be able to do anything much anyways in regards to mashing the 2 projects. As I say Im not any good with coding at all so I would only be able to port over standalone scripts etc. if they exist. Already I notice that Recalbox is split over 3 partitions vs RetroPie’s 2 so there is the first potential hurdle haha!

Thanks for clearing up the wicd-curses question. I personally would rather it was left out if its causing problems. It can always be added manually again if needed.

All the best.
Steve

[smithers]

[quote=103450]UPDATE: got a hold of a new (different brand) sd card and adapter for computer and it is working brilliant! Thank you smithers![/quote]

Good to hear! I think the whole NOOBS setup process is quite tasking so the slightest problem will make it throw out errors.

[quote=103444]I might be wrong but since the code from recalbox is publically available ( https://github.com/digitalLumberjack/recalbox-os/releases/tag/v3.2.11 ) it might be ok to take some parts of it for your own image

here’s the Wiki: https://github.com/digitalLumberjack/recalbox-os/wiki

greetings

MJFox

[/quote]

I am currently downloading the Recalbox build from your link to have a snoop around, but I can’t promise anything at all. If its coding thats needed then Im not your man Im afraid.

Just so I don’t upset the applecart; if any mods are following this topic, can I ask – is it cool to be discussing changes like this on the RetroPie forums? Just thinking that these are 2 seperate projects by 2 different developers so not sure if this is something that would be frowned upon?

Sorry if Im being overly cautious, but I would prefer to confirm.

All the best,
Steve

[smithers]

Crikey, I didn’t know anything about the openelec issues at all. I have burned it to Sandisk 4gb/8gb/32gb, toshiba 8gb, Samsung 16gb/32gb cards and never had a single issue with corruption or otherwise? It is the 5.0.8 build that I use (and included in my install files), which is the latest stable build, but reading the thread you linked it would seem that version is affected by the corruption issue.

There is a beta version available (5.95.3) that has the ‘SD Card fix’ built into it – I can use that in my next build if people would prefer? A stable v6 is due soon by the looks of things too.

Wicd-Curses package – this is removed by default in RetroPie due to it (potentially) affecting performance. It can be easily re-installed via the RetroPie Setup Script though if I remember rightly so I would rather leave it out (as default).

Borders vs Stretch – bit of a funny one this really. I spent a massive amount of time setting all the video modes up, even to the extent of ‘per rom’ video modes to make them stretch to the full screen. Un-doing all this would take me some time to do and I would then have to offer 2 builds (16:9 build and 4:3 build), so I’m not sure if its feasible. It will also be a bit counter productive for me to do since its just a preference thing rather than a bug. I did however add in my own comments in the ‘aspect ratio’ section of the main ‘retroarch.fcg’ file showing the different codes you can use to set different aspect ratios. Using that you can at least set the libretro emulators to a different ratio?

OpenELEC timezone setting – this is present in my build, in the same place as it should always be? You need to go to the following to get there:

Settings > Appearance > International

Once in here you can change everything to suit your region. :)

As for a standard ‘vanilla’ build of both systems – yes I can do that, no problem. However, I could not leave the skin as standard in KODI because the standard skin does not support direct linking to the Advanced Launcher addon that I use to swap the partition boot instruction. This means the user would have to go into Programs > Advanced Launcher > Default > Games to launch RetroPie, which is un-intuitive. I use Aeon because it supports custom menu items but I would be happy to change to a different skin that supports this, if that was the general consensus, however I only know of Aeon that does (and I quite like it as is to be honest).

Hope this helps – happy to hear other opinions on this.

Cheers.
Steve

[smithers]

Can you tell me how I would create a dat file of my roms? If so then I’ll upload it, no probs. I can’t remember the actual version. I had a total headache piecing them all together them setting the proper emulator per rom. You would need to set the emulator though as its in my emulators.cfg file already.

As for the samples – yes I removed them by mistake. They will be in v4 again though. :)

Thanks for the offer of uploading it again. Its much appreciated.

So I have been having a think about potential improvements, well, it’s more a personal preference thing really, but what are people’s thoughts on merging mame4all, lr-mame, Advmame, Pifba and lr-fba into one ‘Arcade’ system? It would mean only one Arcade option on the main ES menu where all arcade roms could be stored and would prevent duplication of games and ensure the best emulator was assigned for every rom. I would do the merging so it was ready for you to dump all your roms into one ‘arcade’ folder within /RetroPie/roms/ and I would intend it to be an extra system, not a replacement for all three (i.e. you would still have seperate rom folders and themes for mame, Advmame and fba if you wanted to use them).

In my head I know how it would work but haven’t tried it in practice. Its just a small tweak but it worked out good for Advmame, lr-name & mame4all so I think it would work well for the others too and give one complete arcade section instead of it being fragmented over a few system menus.

….thoughts?

[smithers]

[quote=103395]

smithers wrote:

So I think I may as well just upload v4 since there have been no calls for changes / improvements / bugs – what do you think?

a while ago I tried recalbox ( http://www.recalbox.com/diyrecalbox ) and while it is a stripped down retropie (e.g. some emulators are missing) there are some things I would love to see in your image:

-) in recalbox when you configure a controller in emulationstation you are being asked for a special key as well… this key is being used to enter the retroarch menu (and probably some other emulator configurations as well)… so you don’t need to remember any button combinations to enter the emulator configuration

-) I have a wired xbox 360 controller and a (wireless) PS3 controller and so I installed the xbox 360 and the sixaxsis driver in retropie… I ended up having the xbox 360 controller being the player 1 controller and the PS3 controller being the player 3 controller… I really had a hard time to fix that – and I finally did by removing a (not connected) second xbox controller (from /etc/run.local) so the PS3 controller was the player 2 controller again… in recalbox there’s a nice menu in emulationstation where you can define what player is being controlled by what controller

-) in recalbox you can select your language, so you don’t need to use english if you aren’t a native speaker (like me)

best regards

MJFox

[/quote]

Ahh… I should have probably worded my post a bit better – I can’t tweak things like that (I have no coding skills). All I can offer is tweaks to existing functionality Im afraid. Or adding ports that are not included in the Retropie setup script as standard. The requests you have (which would be very useful), would need to be made by the developers of RetroPie Im afraid. Not sure if its something thats on the radar already?

Sorry for any misunderstanding! :o

[smithers]

[quote=103380]

lozzajp wrote:

I was about to report the filedropper link would time out after about 10-50mb downloaded each time and had an unfinished corrupt zip file to show for it.

Sorry guys, this is my mestake
I didn’t expect such problems with filedropper anyway…
@fuzzylogic, thank you for right link.

[/quote]

No worries man – thanks for taking the time to upload in the first place! :)

So I think I may as well just upload v4 since there have been no calls for changes / improvements / bugs – what do you think?

Or is there a certain game port that you want to see on there as standard but can’t get it to build etc? I’m open to suggestions so fire away if you have any.

Also, my area has FINALLY got fibre broadband and mine is getting activated on the 6th of this month – Happy days! That means uploading builds will no longer be a chore and I may even make it a regular (ish) thing if and when I get any requests through. I really don’t mind tinkering with things in my spare time and I know not everyone has the time to do that so I’m happy to help out where I can.

All the best.
Steve

[smithers]

Ahh well spotted! Yes I wouldn’t have had those issues with my games – hexen and blood!

Do you happen to know any speed tweaks that can be gained in dosboox? I really really want Blood to run well on the Pi. :(

[smithers]

[quote=103367]Is anyone experiencing problems with booing psx games off a usb? ive tried changing paths multiple times and still no luck. Any help would be much appreciated

thanks in advance

Jodie

[/quote]

Hi Jodie.

‘thatguyinfl’ posted a method of getting PSX games to boot from usb which he says works great. Its in this thread somewhere if you wanted to have a scout about.

I’ve never tried it before myself but imagine it would be quite handy. I am desperate to try out some MEGA CD games but have ran out of space on my 32GB so it would be useful for me too!

(I’m aware the MEGA CD was a bit crap, but I loved it back in the day!).

Cheers.
Steve

[smithers]

[quote=103361]First off, I have to say this is INCREDIBLE and a huge thanks to smithers for putting this together.

I did give this a spin last night with the latest image and while Retropie boots fine, OpenELEC stalls indefinitely at boot (at the OpenELEC boot logo). Hard rebooting doesn’t help and ultimately leads to corruption of the sd card.

Anyone else have this issue?

[/quote]

Hmmm that doesn’t sound good. Can I ask how you formatted your SD card? NOOBS is a bit funky on how it partitions your card and if you haven’t partitioned it just how it likes it then it can spit out errors when trying to boot.

I had it fail on me once because I had done my own ‘un-partitioning’and formatting via Gparted in Linux – it didn’t like it and had troubles with the fat32 boot partitioning. It was OpenELEC that was affected Funnily enough.

All I can recommend is to use the SD Formatting tool I mentioned in the Readme file. Using that fixed it for me and it all works perfect now.

Has anybody else had this issue?

[smithers]

[quote=103312] @smithers: could you maybe have a look into the dosbox-scripts? I’m pretty sure that in the latest retropie version it was possible to launch exe-, com- and bat-files from the emulationstation… but when I try to launch such a file dosbox gets launched but nothing else happens, especially the c-drive doesn’t even get mounted so you have to do everything by hand

cheers

MJFox

[/quote]

So I have had a look into this and found that it is working fine, i.e. I am able to launch an .EXE file straight from the emulation station front-end and it works as it should. I tested this on Blood and Hexen and both booted straight up (however Hexen wouldn’t play on DOSBOX, only RPix86).

What happens when you try exactly, like do you get an error message or anything? And what game is it you are trying, I will see if I can re-create it at my end.

Also – have you tried running them in RPix86 instead? I found it to be more compatible for sound than DOSBOX (only tried those 2 games though!).

Cheers.
Steve

[smithers]

[quote=103339]
I have uploaded it to mediafire here:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/lb7fe34ggi5sfdv/RetroPie_KODI_DualBoot_SS.zip

I’ve got an account with them, so it should not expire.
[/quote]

Many thanks ‘fuzzlogic’ – it is much appreciated by others I am sure too!

[quote=103355]So i am pretty new to all of this, is there a way to update the Kodi image to the latest version without having to start all over? Once Isengard is stable for pi’s i would want to update to that.
[/quote]

Yes – so because KODI is set up on its own partition it means that it can be tweaked however you want and it won’t affect RetoPie at all. As for updating – it will tell you when an update is available then you can just go to ‘OpenELEC Config’ in the ‘System’ section on the home screen and update inside that menu. There is no need to start all over, everything should perform as it should as if it were on its own dedicated SD card. Same goes for RetroPie updates via the RetroPie Setup Script.

p.s. KODI is fully up to date as of a few days ago (an update came through just before I uploaded the image and it all went smoothly).

p.p.s. reading your question again I think you are maybe referring to the Raspbian installer version of KODI which was (last time I checked) still in BETA form. I don’t use that version in my build, I use OpenELEC and it is very stable compared to the Raspbian installer version of KODI, so don’t worry so much about the updates – it runs perfect as-is right now (I haven’t found any issues at all).

Hope this helps.

Cheers.
Steve

[smithers]

[quote=103312] @smithers: could you maybe have a look into the dosbox-scripts? I’m pretty sure that in the latest retropie version it was possible to launch exe-, com- and bat-files from the emulationstation… but when I try to launch such a file dosbox gets launched but nothing else happens, especially the c-drive doesn’t even get mounted so you have to do everything by hand

cheers

MJFox

[/quote]

I shall have a look at it for you yes. As it happens I have been playing around with it already tonight but only via command prompt, not via Emulation Station.

Whilst on the subject – do you happen to know if a list exists of ‘good’ games for dosbox on Pi? By good I mean that they are playable. I was really hoping that Blood would run well but unfortunately it runs very slow when there are a few sprites on the screen. :( I would also like Rise of the Triad on the Pi but I bet it too would run badly.

Unless there are tweaks you can do to make the games run better?

[smithers]

[quote=103299]If smithers don’t mind
I’m posting this link to everybody who wants to download last image from smithers
http://www.filedropper.com/retropiekodidualbootss1

[/quote]

Hi kamovsky. I don’t mind at all – thanks very much for re-upping the file. :)

I am awaiting any reports of bugs before uploading a modified build (see posts above), but could you recommend ‘filedropper’ as a reliable host for my future uploads?

[smithers]

Yeah it seems so. :/

I guess I will upload to Dropbox and MEGA then. Hopefully that will balance things out!

[smithers]

No probs. Its harder to explain than it is to do it really, so you should be fine. The most time consuming part is making a tarball of your build, then compressing it via .xz (a requirement of NOOBS). I would recommend you strip your RetroPie build down to the bare minimum so not too much SD card space is wasted (it will always reside in the NOOBS recovery partition you see). You may be able to store your NOOBS data on a external USB stick which would save you space, but I havent attempted this yet!

Anyways – good luck!

Cheers.
Steve

[smithers]

Hi.

I am about to post a thread with a link to my theme pack which includes Videopac theme.

Give me 2 mins! :)

Cheers.
Steve

[smithers]

@agrasan – Yes I created the scripts to switch back and forth between the two. I had seen other methods that switched OS on reboot but I wanted something cleaner than that so found my own way. To be honest, it turned out to be a very easy method too, easier than the ‘reboot’ method in my opinion.

So in a nutshell – by default NOOBS presents you with an OS selection screen on bootup (when you have more than 1 OS installed), but it can be forced into booting into a particular partition by creating an “autoboot.txt” file in the NOOBS partition. My script simply changes the partition number in the file depending on what OS you choose.

I must advise that it would probably be quicker (and certainly easier) for you to just download my build. This is because first of all you need access to a Linux PC to create the tar.xz files needed for the NOBS installer, and secondly – it takes a very long time to set it up ready for NOOBS. That all being said though, it is good to put your own touch on things (and learn new tricks) so I will stop waffling on and describe how I done it:

* Install OpenELEC and RetroPie using NOOBS
* Create a “noobs” folder in each partition to allow mounting of the NOOBS recovery partition. For OpenELEC partition I used ~/noobs/ and for the RetroPie partition I used home/pi/noobs/
* Create a folder in RetroPie to store an “autobootkodi.txt” file (I used /home/pi/.ss/). The “autobootkodi.txt” file should look like this:

boot_partition=5 — note – this assumes you end up with the same partition numbering as I did.

* Create a folder in OpenELEC to store an “autobootgames.txt” file (I used ~/ss/). The “autobootgames.txt” file should look like this:

boot_partition=7

* Create a script for RetroPie to allow booting into KODI – see below:

#!/bin/bash
cd /home/pi
sudo mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 noobs
#cd /home/pi/noobs
sudo cp /home/pi/.ss/autobootkodi.txt /home/pi/noobs/autoboot.txt
sudo reboot

* Save the script in home/pi/RetroPie/roms/kodi/kodi.sh on the RetrioPie partition and make it executable.

* Create a script for OpenELEC to allow booting into RetroPie – see below:

#!/bin/bash
cd ~
mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 noobs
cp ~/ss/autobootgames.txt ~/noobs/autoboot.txt
reboot

* Save the script in ~/ss/games.sh on the OpenELEC partition and make it executable.

Now you need to create a system theme in Emulation Station for KODI and make it recognise extension ‘.sh’ for its rom files. See below taken from my ‘ES_systems.cfg’ file entry for KODI:

<system>
    <name>kodi</name>
    <fullname>KODI Media Centre</fullname>
    <path>~/RetroPie/roms/kodi</path>
    <extension>.sh .SH</extension>
    <command>%ROM%</command>
    <platform>pc</platform>
    <theme>kodi</theme>
  </system>

This will allow ES to recognise the ‘Kodi.sh’ file you created.

Now you need to install the ‘Advanced Launcher’ addon in KODI. You will need to search in google for the repository .zip file as its no longer available as a KOI repository.

Setup Advanced Launcher to point to your “games.sh” file and save it as ‘Launch Retro Games’ (for example). Now you need to install the ‘Aeon’ theme in KODI as this supports custom addon access from the home screen. When installed, amend the skin settings and set up a custom menu item for Advanced Launcher and name it ‘Games’.

I have kind of skimmed over the Advanced Launcher section there, but it should be self explanatory if you have a go. Let me know if you get stuck.

Hope this helps.

Cheers.
Steve

[smithers]

[quote=103229]I tried to download your newest version, but your dropbox account is generating to much traffic and has been disbaled. any way to get it posted somewhere else to download?
[/quote]

Arrgh! I didn’t realise Dropbox done this otherwise I wouldn’t have uploaded there, but yes you are right – I have received an email saying my link has been suspended due to too much traffic. If I am reading it correctly it will be available again after 24 hours…?

If anyone can advise of a good, reliable, free site where I can upload the image to then I will upload again. Does Google Drive enforce traffic limits too?

[quote=103231]Love it!! Could not figure out the esc key at first but finally figured out using a keyboard was shift+enter.
[/quote]

Hi Luis. I’m not sure what you mean by this – are you saying the ‘Esc’ key isn’t working? Seems ok my end but if you can give me some further diagnosis then I will test it out.

@mjfox – I have updated my build to rename the PC, Apple2 & Macintosh files so they will appear and work again as normal. I will include it in the inevitable next version / upload!

I have also fixed the Atari Lynx issue by reverting back to an older version of the lr-Handy emulator. It works fine now.

FYI – I have created a full theme set of my own now (even systems that will never appear on the Pi, such as Wii!). I will include it in the next update but in the meantime, here is a link should you want to download it:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/e4rx0z8d76cfj0z/SS%20Theme.zip?dl=0

OK so now I will await feedback on bugs so I can try and capture everything in the next update but please also let me know where you would prefer me to upload it to?

Cheers,
Steve

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