Raspberry Pi SD Card Image Sharing

[mvolke1]

Hey All,

I've put together a couple console Raspberry Pis, ones that I hook into my TV and play with SNES USB controllers. They work great.

I'd be happy to share my SD card images if anyone has an arcade version they'd also be willing to share. I'm going to make my first bar top with a Pi.

Any takers?

Also, is this something that's been done in the past? It's so easy to just make a copy of an SD card image. 

[DeLuSioNal29]

Are we talking with or without roms?  I'm hoping the latter.  (No Rom sharing allowed obviously)

[mvolke1]

Without, naturally. I thought someone may have a nice interface they'd be willing to share.

[Ginsu Victim]

I'd be interested in downloading those images if you do put them up.

[nitrogen_widget]

Right now I have a console only image on my RPI i'm planing to use in a bartop.
It's based off mobious and everything is done with ssh & ftp.
It has advancemenu, advanced mame, & mame4all-rpi on it.

I don't care for emulationstation 1 or 2 all that much.

I'm planing to strip out the roms, menu animations, & artwork before I shrink the partition for back up.
as it stands now the backup is 15gb because it's on a 16gb card.

but, that will be as time allows and depends on when I get the GPIO's wired up for controls.

[sharpfork]

I have a model B+ and am interested in an exchange like this for sure.

[mvolke1]

I'm glad you guys are willing to share. It would be so much easier for Pi users to just share images, since it's so easy to just share that image. IDK why others haven't been doing it. 

[Generic Eric]

I would enjoy receiving such images, but don't have any to share.

[sharpfork]

I'm just getting into the RasPi as emu brain space and am wondering if someone could provide a rundown on the top front ends and/or distros and their strengths and weaknesses.  This might help us set some guidelines for folks like me who are considering putting together new ROMless game packs for the images.

[mvolke1]

Here's a review on PiPlay, formerly PiMAME



I have done both PiMame and Retropie. I had a harder time getting roms onto the RetroPie than PiMAME, but more roms worked on Retropie, which is why I ultimately went with it.

PiMame has the built-in web based FTP, but it failed a lot for me. I used CyberDuck to add roms to the Retropie, which gave me a lot of headaches, but after a long fight, I won.  :bang head:

I do have one customer fronted a friend made for me, and he did an excellent job. Looks beautiful. All custom.

[DeLuSioNal29]

That "MAME in a box" idea is pretty slick. 

I see a mini display port.  Can that be converted to:  HDMI, DVI or D-sub VGA?  How are you guys connecting it to your TVs?  Any pics would be great.

[nitrogen_widget]

That "MAME in a box" idea is pretty slick. 

I see a mini display port.  Can that be converted to:  HDMI, DVI or D-sub VGA?  How are you guys connecting it to your TVs?  Any pics would be great.

Right now, HDMI or HDMI to DVI for a monitor.
HDMI to VGA does work however you need either a powered convertor or one that specifically works with the pi or you need to do a voltage hack for the non-powered dirt cheap ones on ebay & amazon.

[mvolke1]

That "MAME in a box" idea is pretty slick. 

I see a mini display port.  Can that be converted to:  HDMI, DVI or D-sub VGA?  How are you guys connecting it to your TVs?  Any pics would be great.

For my console, I just plug HDMI straight into my TV from the Pi's HDMI output.

For my arcade, I have an LED monitor, and got this cheap adapter on Amazon. Some people needed to do a little coding to get it to work, but I didn't. Worked right out of the box. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007KFVQXI/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[sharpfork]

I don't care for emulationstation 1 or 2 all that much.

Why not?

[mgb]

I'm all for thisbut as of right now, I have nothing to offer as far as images go.
The only setup I currently have on my pi is for accepting serial text strings from fire alarm panels. Not much fun there

[ark_ader]

That "MAME in a box" idea is pretty slick. 

I see a mini display port.  Can that be converted to:  HDMI, DVI or D-sub VGA?  How are you guys connecting it to your TVs?  Any pics would be great.

Right now, HDMI or HDMI to DVI for a monitor.
HDMI to VGA does work however you need either a powered convertor or one that specifically works with the pi or you need to do a voltage hack for the non-powered dirt cheap ones on ebay & amazon.

Works pretty well actually as I had my adaptor working on a VGA monitor.

I picked this up on Amazon for $9.99.  A bit of a wait for shipping but it works great with the projector (as mine has no HDMI) but you cannot watch Bluerays  on it... but for anything else  like the Pi, it is pretty decent and it requires no power.

[mvolke1]

I have this one, which was $4.09: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007KFVQXI/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Like many of these things from China, it'll take a while. I ordered an inline power switch like a month ago. Still waiting  :bang head:

But it was super duper cheap.

[nitrogen_widget]

I don't care for emulationstation 1 or 2 all that much.

Why not?

emulationstation 1 has a bug in it that hangs the system in portrait mode.
Emulationstation 2 is still in beta and still doesn't have a proper screen saver.
Both require an XML file to find your ROMS which means If have to manually edit the file or re-scrape the emulator to add it.
That's another thing, I don't care to babysit the front end when it comes to scraping a large rom collection & I don't care to edit the XML when it scrapes the wrong rom data.

I'd rather use advanced menu.
I put my roms in a folder.
I put my snaps in a folder.
I tell it where to look & it works.
Plus it will at least do a slideshow of the games instead of just diming the screen.

I realize I sound like i'm complaining a lot.
I don't think it's a bad front end, It just isn't the front end for me.

[Aceisback]

emulationstation 1 has a bug in it that hangs the system in portrait mode.
Emulationstation 2 is still in beta and still doesn't have a proper screen saver.
Both require an XML file to find your ROMS which means If have to manually edit the file or re-scrape the emulator to add it.
That's another thing, I don't care to babysit the front end when it comes to scraping a large rom collection & I don't care to edit the XML when it scrapes the wrong rom data.

I'd rather use advanced menu.
I put my roms in a folder.
I put my snaps in a folder.
I tell it where to look & it works.
Plus it will at least do a slideshow of the games instead of just diming the screen.

I realize I sound like i'm complaining a lot.
I don't think it's a bad front end, It just isn't the front end for me.

Doesn't sound like complaining, sounds like pointing out some facts or experiences 

I just finished setting up my first Pi system using the latest Retropie image. I don't understand your statement regarding the xml file to find the roms. I just copy my roms into the appropriate folder via SSH or filezilla and they show up in the menu for the appropriate emulator on the next restart of emulation station. I have not had to edit anything as the image was pretty much plug & play for my setup except for some xbox360 controller issues that I finally got worked out. Is the xml file something on older versions? I am still learning this stuff so I want to make sure I am not missing something, but so far, everything is going pretty smooth and am now trying to decide what kind of cab or box to put it in. I am making a micro or mini cab.

I do like the Advmenu if that is the one included in the PiPlay image. Only reason (so far) I did not use the PiPlay is that Stella opens in a small screen and I have not found any solution to make it full screen yet.

[nitrogen_widget]

The gamelist.xml file was evil.

It is generated when you run ES the first time & relies on scrapping to populate it.
So even if you allready have snaps to go with your roms you can't use them without running the scrapper that insists on downloading them.
Which could take hrs depending on how many roms you had.

Or, if you want to manually edit the gamelist.xml for each rom you could use your own screen shots.

There are a few scripts you can run on the RPI forums to help you generate an xml that will also add the screenshot so you don't have to scrape but again it's kind of a pain on the RPI to do all that.

If something has changed since then i'd be interested in hearing.

[Aceisback]

I will look into that. I have not done anything with snaps or anything. I do know that some of the information on the Retropie is apparently outdated with the latest image. There are rom folders already setup for each emulator and you just copy the roms into the folders and they show up as a list under each emulator entry of the menu. Many of the solutions and fixes for different issues listed on their forum did not work for me, yet I found my own solutions based on the info provided. Other than that, it is working really well now, just does not have any flashy themes or anything yet. That may be where the xml editing comes in.

Thanks for the heads up!

[nitrogen_widget]

I will look into that. I have not done anything with snaps or anything. I do know that some of the information on the Retropie is apparently outdated with the latest image. There are rom folders already setup for each emulator and you just copy the roms into the folders and they show up as a list under each emulator entry of the menu. Many of the solutions and fixes for different issues listed on their forum did not work for me, yet I found my own solutions based on the info provided. Other than that, it is working really well now, just does not have any flashy themes or anything yet. That may be where the xml editing comes in.

Thanks for the heads up!

If it works for you great!