theflyingape / retroarch

my digital content, configurations, and scripts in support of retrogaming from 1976

⛔ 🪙 → 🖱️ ⌨️ 🎮 → RetroArch → 🕹️ 🛸 👾 📺

My harvesting and personal contributions of digital content in support of retrogaming / retrocomputing from 1976

Digital content is accessible out of my ☁️ Drive 📚 Bookshelf and 💿💾 Retro folders.

Boot image

There, you can find a boot image into a beautiful Debian 12 Bookworm KDE Plasma desktop (or console) with the latest RetroArch and its emulation cores to run content off my playlists made for 🍓 Pi 4/400 and Pi 5.

$ lsblk -S  # find your target device NAME (NVME drive, SD card, USB stick)
$ xzcat RA-playlists-bookworm.img.xz | sudo dd of=/dev/[NAME] bs=4k status=progress
$ sync

Its first boot may take a little longer – be patient – and it may even reboot itself one more time after startup completely finishes. Once that has settled, you must configure your network, sound, and connect any bluetooth devices using the system panel controls.

Both desktop and console auto login as pi using password Freedom

Technical Layout

This RetroArch configuration is designed to be ‘plug & play’. And while it allows for some flexibility to make some runtime modifications, it returns back to its original state after reboot. This is intentional, not to annoy you, but to protect from changes that lead to incidental havoc to gameplay.

That said, feel free to drop to a terminal shell prompt (you can press F12 off the console menu) and check out the differences between the default and my template configuration:

$ cd /retroarch
$ ll *.cfg
$ diff default.cfg template.cfg | less
$ micro template.cfg

Thus, template.cfg gets copied over to retroarch.cfg → which points to the pi temporary runtime memory space. It is the base configuration that gets loaded first. Subsequently, the other configuration files listed – aptly named to follow the console playlist menu – are appended in the order received to override the base values.

There is a convenience script that can fetch and build RetroArch and some key emulation cores:

$ make-retroarch.sh

Cores

This table represents the emulation cores installed and referenced within the various playlists. It is useful to know the name of the core for Netplay connections to another host – as both the core and the content should be (optimally) identical:

1. Arcade :: 1976 - 2004
   • FinalBurn Neo
   • MAME
   • MAME 2003-Plus
2. Computers :: 1977 - 1999
   • MAME - Apple II / IIgs / Macintosh
   • Atari800 - Atari 800
   • Commodore
     • PUAE - Amiga
     • VICE x64sc - 64
     • VICE x128 - 128
     • VICE xpet - PET
     • VICE xplus4 - 16 / Plus4
     • VICE xvic - VIC 20
   • DOSBox-Pure - PC DOS / Win98
   • px68k - Sharp X68000
3. Consoles :: 1977 - 2013
   • Atari
     • Stella - 2600
     • ProSystem - 7800
   • blueMSX - ColecoVision
   • FreeIntv - Mattel Intellivision
   • Beetle PCE FAST - NEC PC Engine / CD
   • NeoCD - Neo Geo CD
   • Nintendo
     • Mesen - NES / Famicom
     • Mupen64Plus-Next - N64
     • Snes9x - Current - SNES / SFC
   • Sega
     • Dreamcast / Naomi - Flycast
     • Genesis Plus GX - MS/GG/MD/CD
     • PicoDrive - 32X
   • Sony
     • PCSX ReARMed - PlayStation
     • LRPS2 - PlayStation 2
   • vecx - Vectrex
4. Handhelds :: 1989 - 2014
   • Beetle Handy - Atari Lynx
   • Beetle NeoPop - Neo Geo Pocket / Color
   • Nintendo
     • gpSP - Game Boy Advance
     • Gambatte - Game Boy / Color
     • PokeMini - Pokemon Mini
     • Beetle VB - Virtual Boy
   • PPSSPP - Sony PlayStation Portable

Overclocking

These are relatively safe values to bump the CPU + GPU clock up in /boot/firmware/config.txt

[pi4]
# enables highest gpu settings at the expense of dual displays
hdmi_enable_4kp60=1
# overclock +10%
over_voltage=4
arm_freq=1980
gpu_freq=550

[pi5]
dtparam=nvme
dtparam=pciex1_gen=3
kernel=kernel8.img
# overclock +15%
over_voltage=3
arm_freq=2760
gpu_freq=920

If using an NVME drive on Pi 5, enable it to boot:

$ sudo rpi-eeprom-config --edit

[all]
BOOT_UART=0
POWER_OFF_ON_HALT=1
BOOT_ORDER=0xf461
PCIE_PROBE=1
WAKE_ON_GPIO=0