Super Retro-Cade

[WD_GASTER2]

hey glad someone is going to town with this .
reading the article now.

 

[kuwanger]

tried that too right now and also a brick

Random thought. The likely reason that it doesn't work is because the nand is at mmcblk2. So, in uEnv.txt change "boot=/dev/mmcblk0p1 disk=/dev/mmcblk0p2" to "boot=/dev/mmcblk2p1 disk=/dev/mmcblk2p2". I'm not saying it'll work (I haven't tested it), but it at least makes sense.

 

[PSX_Specter]

Random thought. The likely reason that it doesn't work is because the nand is at mmcblk2. So, in uEnv.txt change "boot=/dev/mmcblk0p1 disk=/dev/mmcblk0p2" to "boot=/dev/mmcblk2p1 disk=/dev/mmcblk2p2". I'm not saying it'll work (I haven't tested it), but it at least makes sense.

Thanks for the advice. I will test this later and report back.

 

[PSX_Specter]

Thanks for the advice. I will test this later and report back.

No luck. Tried formatting the nand to FAT32 before flashing. Also no luck. Afterward, I had to format the nand to EXT-4 to get my original back up image to boot. As a side note, both lakka partitions were visible and browseable on the nand and I had no problems editing the uEnv.txt. I wouldn't be surprised if a simple fix is required to get lakka booting from the nand, but it's beyond my current linux/unix skills.

-Edit: I did not need to reformat the nand to get the original image to boot, turns out the SRC didn't like my usb card reader being plugged in when it tried to boot.
-Edit 2: I found that using sun8i-h3-orangepi-pc-plus.dtb on the orange pi lite lakka image will make the nand visable. You can load the built in games with lakka, if nothing else.

 

[ArugulaZ]

A thought occurs. Why would you need to hack the system internally if you can just boot software from the SD card? Seems safer and more easily reversible that way.

 

[WD_GASTER2]

because that would free up the sd card slot to load stuff off the sd card.
frankly i use the android cfw and a usb stick for more expansion

No luck. Tried formatting the nand to FAT32 before flashing. Also no luck.
-Edit 2: I found that using sun8i-h3-orangepi-pc-plus.dtb on the orange pi lite lakka image will make the nand visable. You can load the built in games with lakka, if nothing else.

this how i dumped and flashed the internal nand as well.

 

[PSX_Specter]

A thought occurs. Why would you need to hack the system internally if you can just boot software from the SD card? Seems safer and more easily reversible that way.

Having lakka able to boot from the internal flash would free up the SD card slot, and possibly eliminate the need for a fast SD card. The system seems virtually unbrickable since it will always boot from the SD slot even if the nand won't boot. Having the SD card slot free means you can format your card to fat32, meaning you can transfer roms more easily.

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because that would free up the sd card slot to load stuff off the sd card.
frankly i use the android cfw and a usb stick for more expansion

We can has your hacked dash?

 

[WD_GASTER2]

its still a bit off. i have to program some stuff to finish the generations dash port.
i am at an odd spot with it, if you will. my dash was made to play nice with explusalphas emulators (which you can install) but it can only load retroarch separately as an app (i am still trying to find out if retroarch has an onbroadcastlistener which is needed to load a game from an external app to retroarch.)
explusalphas emulators have an onbroadcastlistener which lets you load a rom to an emulator from an external app (which my generations dash did with the sega flashback)

I also need someones help that is good with photoshop to help with the gui that i am working on

 

[PSX_Specter]

Can't wait to see what you've been cooking. Will it be bootable from flash or SD only?

 

[WD_GASTER2]

it works from both.
hell as a matter of fact you only would need win32diskimager to burn it to an sd card technically. it can run as an "emunand" firmware off the sd or as internal nand firmware.
though to be honest 2 things also happened recently that are interrupting with this.
1)I got a data east my arcade as a gift. this THING IS AMAZING. it literally is a full blown android image (almost like a tablet)
it has so much potential its absurd.

2)i got a go retro-portable (if i manage to play castlevania in a handheld like this, i would be happy ;.; )

so im messing with all 3 with my admittedly limited free time

 

[PSX_Specter]

it works from both.
hell as a matter of fact you only would need win32diskimager to burn it to an sd card technically. it can run as an "emunand" firmware off the sd or as internal nand firmware.
though to be honest 2 things also happened recently that are interrupting with this.
1)I got a data east my arcade as a gift. this THING IS AMAZING. it literally is a full blown android image (almost like a tablet)
it has so much potential its absurd.

2)i got a go retro-portable (if i manage to play castlevania in a handheld like this, i would be happy ;.; )

so im messing with all 3 with my admittedly limited free time

That's awesome. Hoping the data east machine is network capable. That will influence my buying decision.

 

[WD_GASTER2]

the darn thing may be able to even support wifi or ethernet off the bat. pretty bananas.

 

[PSX_Specter]

the darn thing may be able to even support wifi or ethernet off the bat. pretty bananas.

If so, I want one to watch sling tv on my desk. Oh... and to play games, too, I suppose.

 

[WD_GASTER2]

I noticed there is a few facebook groups where this thread is making the rounds at...
to those that read the thread here (i rather post this here to keep my anonimity)
Part of the reason lakka is still a little buggy has more to do because a proper kernel needs to be compiled for the device...


for other questions being asked in those facebook groups:
RetroOrange Pi DOES boot on the device but the screen just turns completely black after its finished loading... kind of a bummer. if someone figures a way around this one more power to them.

Also to the folks at the Madlittlepixel group:
Hi!
lol.

 

[kuwanger]

RetroOrange Pi DOES boot on the device but the screen just turns completely black after its finished loading

Have you tried altering boot/script.bin to point to a different file? If that doesn't work or you'd like to go in a little less blind, you can always add a line in rc.local above the "exit 0" to dump dmesg out to a file and maybe that'll give you some clues. I'm supposed to be getting some more microSD cards today, so I plan to try to get RetroOrange Pi working as I actually quite like the Emulation Station interface.

Edit: Just checked and RetroOrange Pi boots straight to Emulation Station. It took like 5+ minutes on first boot, and I'm using a relatively fast Sandisk 64GB A2 card. Subsequent boots and it took over a minute. Getting past the gamepad screen and Emulation Station is killed, probably by the Out of Memory killer. Disabling zram doesn't help. Adding a 1GB swapfile works except Emulation Station is pretty much unusable. Overall, I'd say it's a no go.

 

[PSX_Specter]

Have you tried altering boot/script.bin to point to a different file? If that doesn't work or you'd like to go in a little less blind, you can always add a line in rc.local above the "exit 0" to dump dmesg out to a file and maybe that'll give you some clues. I'm supposed to be getting some more microSD cards today, so I plan to try to get RetroOrange Pi working as I actually quite like the Emulation Station interface.

Edit: Just checked and RetroOrange Pi boots straight to Emulation Station. It took like 5+ minutes on first boot, and I'm using a relatively fast Sandisk 64GB A2 card. Subsequent boots and it took over a minute. Getting past the gamepad screen and Emulation Station is killed, probably by the Out of Memory killer. Disabling zram doesn't help. Adding a 1GB swapfile works except Emulation Station is pretty much unusable. Overall, I'd say it's a no go.

I had the same experience with Retrorangepi, and wondered if a swap file would help. Thank you for saving me the headache. I wonder if retropie can be downloaded/built on the device in a debian environment. The original raspberry pi got it done on 256MB of ram

 

[SonicMC]

Out of curiosity. Do you think the dump of the super retro-cade would run on an orange pi?

I only have the retrobit generations and an orange pi pc plus. so couldn't try it myself.

 

[WD_GASTER2]

I personally have no interest in trying that.
I am pretty sure there could be plenty of legal issues surrounding that too.

 

[PSX_Specter]

I personally have no interest in trying that.
I am pretty sure there could be plenty of legal issues surrounding that too.

Maybe we super retro cade owners are already guilty of receiving stolen property?

 

[kuwanger]

Actually this is one reason why I'm curious if higan/bsnes works at all well on the Super Retro-Cade. Lakka includes higan balanced/accuratcy so I really should check that out. Mednafen is also licensed under the GPLv2 and includes snes (through bsnes) and genesis (through genesis plus which apparently is based on either an early GPL fork) so at least that principally allows for Retro-Bit to keep releasing the system if they switch cores, remove snes9x/genesis plus gx, and start releasing the source code. But as is, yea, it's pretty clearly not legal* to distribute images even without all the Irem/Capcom/Data East/Techwhatever stuff because Retro-Bit has no right to distribute it which means further distributing it is further distributing pirated material.

Now, aside from that doing tests to see if an image works on your own Orange Pi (I don't have one) should be as legal as any other personal use tests. Copyright only kicks in during distribution.

* IANAL, but that's my pretty clear understanding of Genesis Plus GX's very explicit non-commercial license and SNES9x's non-commercial without permissions with at least the 2005 and later branches having one author's copyright comment explicitly saying they'll never offer permission.

Edit: Just a small follow up. Read the wrong libretro dir. Lakka has higan not bsnes mercury performance. No idea why Lakka failed to include it (maybe it's no better than higan balanced?). In any case, higan balanced runs Super R-Type at ~22fps. The Snes9x2010 core runs at a steady 60fps. So, I don't think it'd be trivial (or maybe even possible) to switch cores, so they'd probably have to remove the games or figure out a way to get Mame running the snes games to use the same hardware and become licensing compliant--I don't think they could just demand people d/l the snes9x core off their website to an sd as any sort of legal loophole. Fun enough although it might be the placebo effect, I'd say Lakka with the snes9x 2010 core runs smoother than their build of snes9x.