Raspberry-pi 2 compatibility

[trimmtrabb]

Can’t wait to get a Pi 2, great to hear there are instant speed improvements for the emulators! Didn’t think there would be a Pi 2 so soon! Exciting times ahead :-)

[downup]

Releases in sweden in some weeks.. Getting one next month! Can’t wait to see it run N64 ;p

[franky]

So, I’m getting my RPi2 tomorrow (hopefully). Any tips on how to get RetroPie set up on it? I have some unix experience, but am a complete RPi noob.

[quote=86645]A bis concern for me was that one of my fav games “Mega Man 2″ just ran with reduced with the RetroArch emulator. The gameplay and also the sound were a bit slower than in the original which bothered me so much, that I didn’t really want to play it.[/quote]
You might be using a PAL rom. That would explain why it’s slower than you’re used to.

[stsfin]

[quote=86604]you can’t just rebuild something to take advantage of multiple cores automatically – it has to be written in a way to support it. Most emulators are single threaded by design.
[/quote]

libretrocore has baked in multithreading since 1.0.0.3, its used for DSP, scaling, soft-filtering etc “enhancemends” and for audio like you said. This should help with CPU-intensive games that with the normal pi have audioglitches since the audio will be run on its own core. Just because of this it would be a good thing to build the libretrocore stuff multithreading enabled.

[petrockblog]

It may help some audio glitches, but it may not as some are down to the video sync/timing etc, emulation accuracy, and other things. The fact that the pi2 is quicker will be the main benefit I think.

RetroArch is already built with thread support. What specific setting are you referring to ? If there is a specific setting for some cores then please give more details. thanks.

[retrofredde]

Just wanted to send out a big Thank You to buzz for all the work and uploading a working image. I got my Pi 2 today and had RetroPie up and running with controller within an hour tops. :)

[juicebag]

[quote=86681]You might be using a PAL rom. That would explain why it’s slower than you’re used to.
[/quote]

Hmm I don’t think that this could be the problem since I use the same rom file on my Samsung Galaxy S4 in an emulator where it runs absolutly smooth and how it should be. :/
But I’m not quite into it. Are there really speed differences between the local versions of mega man?

[herbfargus]

@ buzz
[quote=86550]
A user reported the other day about a black screen on scummvm. I am now getting that myself. I suspect it might be connected to the last firmware/kernel update, but I need to do more testing.
[/quote]

Thank you. I had updated my kernel, and that is what broke Scummvm. That is good to know.

[GameRockeR]

Hi! did anyone already tested CATSFC (snes emulator) with this new board?

[Anonymous]

I got my Pi2 a few days back. Got a chance last night to backup my roms and hori controller configs from the B+ in preparation for a wipe and install of Buzz’s image (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_knGioK16E6c0d4MDZCRUlqclU/view?usp=sharing).

So, first things first.. Thanks Buzz, the image works like a charm! the Pi2 boots much faster than my old B+ and plays ALL the roms I’ve tested.

Now, the games..

Metal Slug’s – I love them and use the FBA emulator to play them. Prior the B+ 2 to 5 exhibited some slowdown/choppy sound in certain parts of the games – NO longer with Pi2 the games are smooth and play extremely well with the arcade stick!! I’m really impressed and this alone justified the purchase :)

N64 – Could never get a rom to load on the old B+; roms load and play fine (tested Mario64 & some snowboarding game)

SNES – Tested yoshi’s island and starfox as neither of these were really playable on the B+; now they are! they work flawlessly. Starfox still has the original slowdown that I experienced on the console as a kid but that was expected.

MAME – Tested a few roms and found they were faster to load, and felt smoother without sound issues (had sound issues with TMNT in Time & Simpsons before)

All in all worth the upgrade and switching from B+ to Pi2 was very easy.

[Anonymous]

One note from my previous post I forgot to mention. When you use “raspi-config” to extend the root on the SD also change the overclock to the Pi2 setting 1000 – this fixed choppy sound in N64; before that with the default setting sound in Mario64 was choppy.

[chito]

So one thing ive noticed (not sure if this happened on the b+ but ive noticed it now) is when you exit to terminal there are a few error lines waiting for me even if i havent done anything but boot ES and then exit to terminal straight away. this only happens sometimes.. very rarely

ALSA lib pcm.c:7339:(snd_pcm_recover) underrun occured
ALSA lib pcm.c:7339:(snd_pcm_recover) underrun occured
ALSA lib pcm.c:7339:(snd_pcm_recover) underrun occured
ALSA lib pcm.c:7339:(snd_pcm_recover) underrun occured
ALSA lib pcm.c:7339:(snd_pcm_recover) underrun occured
ALSA lib pcm.c:7339:(snd_pcm_recover) underrun occured
ALSA lib pcm.c:7339:(snd_pcm_recover) underrun occured
ALSA lib pcm.c:7339:(snd_pcm_recover) underrun occured
ALSA lib pcm.c:7339:(snd_pcm_recover) underrun occured
ALSA lib pcm.c:7339:(snd_pcm_recover) underrun occured

[petrockblog]

To fix the black screen issue with the latest firmware I have now built sdl packages with pssc’s fixes in it (see https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/issues/354)

While you wait for an updated image/retropie-setup with this included (Working on that currently), you can manually install this patched up sdl, and scummvm/dosbox etc should work again. It should I believe make the sdl stuff a lot more reliable on the pi also (some info in the link above)

to update

wget http://malus.exotica.org.uk/~buzz/pi/sdl/libsdl1.2-dev_1.2.15-6rpi_armhf.deb
wget http://malus.exotica.org.uk/~buzz/pi/sdl/libsdl1.2debian_1.2.15-6rpi_armhf.deb
sudo dpkg -i libsdl1.2debian_1.2.15-6rpi_armhf.deb libsdl1.2-dev_1.2.15-6rpi_armhf.deb

[neighbourhoodnerd]

I’ve been playing around with the image Buzz uploaded on page 2.

I’ve configured a 254/746 memory split.

N64 games actually work and tested games have been smooth.

PSX video is 100%, audio still a bit choppy. I’m expecting this to be flawless with a slight overclock or adjustment to memory distribution.

GBA games crash and lock up if they have modded intros (where the ROM dumper added their own intro screen). Crashy behaviour elsewhere in this emulator too.

I’m getting random crashes here and there, unfortunately. Is anyone else experiencing this? I hate having to hard reboot the Pi2, as that’s a recipe for a corrupted microSD card.

[neighbourhoodnerd]

Seems to crash most often when an emulator is closed. Here’s a crash after exiting Retroarch after playing Doom:

Edit: Yep, that seems to be the issue. Crashed after using the RetroArch N64 emulator too (which was a little choppy at first but then sped up to perfect speed ^_^)

[retrofredde]

What emulators are you all using for snes and mame?
I’ve only tried a few times but I can’t get snes games starting using snes9x, I only see a black screen and have to abort it with ESC, I tried change the default video mode with “m” at the startup but it doesn’t seem to matter what I choose. Should I use another emulator perhaps, which one is currently the best for Pi2?
And Mame, advmame runs very slowly on Pi2 for me unless I have the settings all messed up. I always used mame4all-pi with perfect result on PiB, is that working on Pi2 yet?

[neighbourhoodnerd]

[quote=86727]What emulators are you all using for snes and mame?…[quote]

I’ve been using Retroarch for SNES on the Pi2; using the image Buzz posted on page 2. Worked fine in my tests.

[Mutex]

[quote=86696]

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>franky wrote:</div>You might be using a PAL rom. That would explain why it’s slower than you’re used to.

Hmm I don’t think that this could be the problem since I use the same rom file on my Samsung Galaxy S4 in an emulator where it runs absolutly smooth and how it should be. :/ But I’m not quite into it. Are there really speed differences between the local versions of mega man?
[/quote]

Yes PAL (50hz) uses a different refresh rate for your monitor than NTSC (60hz) and the NES emulator doesn’t detect if your rom is for NTSC (us) or PAL (EU) so that could have something to do with it. I just ran mega man 2 on my rpi2b and it ran flawlessly.

[quote=86704]Hi! did anyone already tested CATSFC (snes emulator) with this new board?[/quote]
I compiled it and tried Kriby Superstar with it but its way too slow. Didn’t try the emulator with a less taxing game but pocketsnes now plays every rom I tried (star fox/kirby superstar/mario world 2) at full speed.

[Anonymous]

Hi, I’m completely new to this so apologies for the noob question. I’ve just ordered the rasberry pi 2 model. If I follow the instructions to install Retropie will it still work?

[petrockblog]

[quote=86727]What emulators are you all using for snes and mame? I’ve only tried a few times but I can’t get snes games starting using snes9x, I only see a black screen and have to abort it with ESC, I tried change the default video mode with “m” at the startup but it doesn’t seem to matter what I choose. Should I use another emulator perhaps, which one is currently the best for Pi2? And Mame, advmame runs very slowly on Pi2 for me unless I have the settings all messed up. I always used mame4all-pi with perfect result on PiB, is that working on Pi2 yet?[/quote]

read further back in this thread.

[neighbourhoodnerd]

[quote=86742]Hi, I’m completely new to this so apologies for the noob question. I’ve just ordered the rasberry pi 2 model. If I follow the instructions to install Retropie will it still work?[/quote]

Hi Danny. The current version will not work on the Rpi2. There is a beta build available for the Rpi2 which you can find on page two of this thread posted by Buzz. It’s working but there are some bugs!

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the updated image everything is so much smoothers on the pi2.

Iam guessing we’ll see a (huge?) performance improvement once raspbian is updated to support armv7/neon extensions (especially for pcsx).

Currently pcsx compilation fails as soon as i activate neon support.

[Anonymous]

Thank you neighbourhoodnerd. Would someone be kind enough to tell me whick is the best tutorial to use for installing retropie. I’ve come across quite a lot of tutorials on the Internet and they all seem to say different things. I Will also be using a Mac if that should make any difference to anything. Thanks in advance and I apologise if I’m posting in the wrong section.

[MarcoCol]

I got the pi2 and with the image from two days ago it starts without problems.
I am completely new in this Raspberry-Area, but I think it’s a fantastic hobby which I want to learn. And for my latest project it seems to be the perfect solution. It’s a Retro-cabinet.
So with the new image for pi2, there are only a handfull emulators. How can I add all (or most of) those others?
Will there be a complete build like the old one, in the next time?

[chito]

[quote=86764]Thank you neighbourhoodnerd. Would someone be kind enough to tell me whick is the best tutorial to use for installing retropie. I’ve come across quite a lot of tutorials on the Internet and they all seem to say different things. I Will also be using a Mac if that should make any difference to anything. Thanks in advance and I apologise if I’m posting in the wrong section.[/quote]

Ive actually created an updated set of instructions for the 2.4.2 image and the RPI2 beta of the beta. Ive got it on github so that it can be version controlled. If your on a Mac then use cyber duck to connect to the pi using a SFTP connection. Keep in mind this is the first draft. so if things dont make sense let me know. I can already see grammatical mistakes and areas that could be explained better. eg what are hot keys and how to use them.

the format is md which is github’s markdown language. you can open it in a txt editor also but it wont look as nice. Still all the info is there.
you could so go to this site and paste the contents in there to see it rendered.
http://www.markdownviewer.com/

Note: these instructions assume that you have already burned the image to the SD card. if not use this http://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/installing-images/

update: didnt allow me to upload md files. Had to change the file to txt. You can still view it as is or use the that website.

[Anonymous]

Thank you chito. I have everything I need apart from SD card which will be with me on Monday. I’ll follow your instructions and let you know how it goes. Thanks again.

[Anonymous]

Hello

[petrockblog]

new image (for both rpi/rpi2 owners)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_knGioK16E6TlVpa3hmRi1PRHc/view?usp=sharing

This image should be released officially shortly. It includes the sdl1.x fixes – so hopefully less problems with black screens.

I will provide an image with rpi2 optimised binaries for testing soon.

[pmurch]

Buzz,
One issue using your latest image:
-I seem to be getting a segfault in some games that I believe previously worked in Mame4all… MK2/MK3 for example.

Any debug info I can send you to help figure this out? Do I need a new binary?

[moothead2]

I’ve set up my wired DS4 controller in the Retroarch Controller setup in RetroPie_Setup.sh but it doesn’t do anything in any of the emulators. Is there a .cfg I need to change and if so where is it located?

Thanks.

[tomb]

@moothead2

This probably sounds silly but have you pressed the PlayStation button before pressing the buttons on the Dualshock 4? This usually works for me.

[petrockblog]

[quote=86787]Buzz,
One issue using your latest image:
-I seem to be getting a segfault in some games that I believe previously worked in Mame4all… MK2/MK3 for example.
[/quote]

mame had some hardcoded optimisations in the makefile specifically for the rpi1, which may have caused some incompatibilities. These have been removed now. It was also being compiled with the older gcc 4.6 compiler too due to the way the makefile was written, so I have now corrected that. This could mean we get a speedup on the rpi1 too with the newer gcc (or not).

I have now built an image specifically for the rpi2 with most (not all) emulators optimised for the cortex-a7. It won’t work on rpi1 machines. You can try it here and see if mame4all works for you

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_knGioK16E6bkZ1M1VrQjZuR1E&authuser=0

[chito]

Your awesome Buzz!!

could you let us know what emulators are left to optimise?
If they are ones i dont use then this image could be what i need

[petrockblog]

not sure exactly as still checking/going through. Possibly jzintv. mupen64plus has some optimisations, but may be able to use an additional change or so. there may be others too.

[pmurch]

Awesome! I’ll give it a try as soon as I get home tonight.
If you let us know which ones are unoptimized, I will be happy to test the new ones.

[Author]

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