edit for posterity, and I might be an idiot
While researching a similar post on this forum (https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3287/noob-xbox-controler-question/8) I discovered that connecting the charging cable/mount to an xbox 360 wireless controller does not make it a "wired" controller; a truly wired controller cannot be used "wirelessly." In retrospect, this now seems painfully obvious...

AgentlemanNinja, I'm not sure exactly what your controller situation is, but if you are running a true wireless controller with the charging cable, like I was, that might explain your problem.

Hope this is helpful.

This FoFix is very interesting. I might not ever get 'The Monkeys: Rock Band', but this could be the next best thing.

@bfenty Glad you got it working! That problem stumped me once or twice--it's sometimes good just to have another pair of eyes on it.

Ahh, I mounted it in the mnt as another folder and just redirected the es_systems to look there for the roms. I didn't even think to do it this way. thanks for the tip bud

I figured this out and wrote up a basic script to turn the backlight on and off for my secondary display. It's in a post in my Super Famicom build thread.

I am not aware of crashes because of CEC, but I know that some joysticks, in rare cases can make Kodi crash. Try running Kodi without any controllers attached and if the problem remains, post you Kodi log.

No problem:

vbs@vbs-XS35:~$ grep -a4 "(fbset)" /opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh # get default fb_res (if not running on X) fb_orig="" if [[ -z "$DISPLAY" ]]; then fb_orig="$(fbset)" fb_orig="${fb_orig##*mode \"}" fb_orig="${fb_orig%%\"*}" fi

Well, I probably clicked that option in the runcommand menu "Select framebuffer Res" but I think I chose "320x240" which was the initially value anyway. But ok, that might be the reason! Thanks!

Is the micro SD card in a "normal"SD holder? Maybe write protection is on....

I have a class 10 16Gb Sandisk and it worked straight away.
http://n2.sdlcdn.com/imgs/a/n/5/SanDisk-SDSDQUAN-016G-G4A-16GB-SDL002017071-1-e591e.jpg

@dankcushions I've managed to get it working now. Needed to unzip the file!

Now to move the roms over. ( God help me)

Thank you for your help!

Update

Yesterday I went ahead and FTP'ed the retroarch.cfg to this folder on the SD card:

\retropie\configs\from_retropie\configs\all\retroarch.cfg
-- Note to be honest I am at work and not in front of the RPi3 so I am guessing that was the path to the file.

I rebooted the Rpi3 and went down to the game-room to see what the controls now did. Well they worked! They all did something and that was great. No they are not all correctly mapped to the MAME/iPAC2's default settings. One example of an issue is that in MAME to exit MAME you traditionally do a P1 & P2. On this current button configuration I have to do a P2&P1. This will need to be changed in the config.

I also noticed that Player 1's buttons correspond to getting into and out of menus. I will need to disable those menus and the white dialog config box in the end.

Otherwise MAME setup is looking good!

One question is this can I create a retroarch.cfg file for just the MAME versions I am using and let the original mapping work for all other consoles? What I eventually want to do is to have matching USB joysticks on a hook on either side of the cab in case I want to hit some SMB3 or old school SNES game.

Thank you,
Battlecat

@DrMaxwell Thank you very much for your reply!

Here is a screenshot of how I had it setup.
Originally I set it up with a keyboard being connected to the Pi, however I have moved on to SSH.0_1473220343423_Capture.JPG

@zarrath I can't really give you a point by point description, but there is a guide on the RetroPie wiki that teaches you how to make themes. I should point you in the right direction at least.

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Creating-Your-Own-EmulationStation-Theme

One simple thing I can tell you, if you just want to hide some text to stop it showing up, you can use <fontSize>0</fontSize>. This effectively tells ES to make that element have a font size of 0, so nothing can be seen. You use it like this:

<text name="md_description"> <fontSize>0</fontSize> </text>

This would stop the description from showing on the screen. If you wanted to move the existing elements, or change their size, you would need to play with <size> and <pos>.

Also keep in mind that you may have to make changes to each theme.xml within the system folders as well as changing carbon.xml, but that would depend on what you want to change.

@edmaul69 ok cool. Thanks mate.

I ended up just building it from scratch. I tried what you said. After one of the reboots it started saying my es_systems.cfg was messed up and had to fixed manually. I used the bak that was there and that did nothing. Its no big deal. Its always been an ongoing project