Please don't bump your topics in short amount of time.
Have you tried setting the control type to Dualshock - see https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Playstation-1/#the-controller-problem-digital-only-analog ?

I tried using inputFolder for both [nes] and [atari2600], but neither seemed to do much

The scraping dialog that you start from RetroPie-Setup doesn't read your .ini file to look for folders, but expects the standard RetroPie folder structure.

If you changed the folder in the .ini file, run the scraper manually:

/opt/retropie/supplementary/skyscraper/Skyscraper -p nes -s screenscraper ... other flags ...

EDIT: just to make it easier, you can probably symlink the folders from your SMB mounted drive to the actual RetroPie folders, i.e.

/mount/network/Arcade -> $HOME/RetroPie/roms/arcade /mount/Consoles/Atari Xyx -> $HOME/RetroPie/roms/atari5200 /mount/Consoles/Nintendo Entertainment System -> $HOME/RetroPie/roms/nes etc.

@nitrohepcat So...
Situation A) Do you want left shoulder to be "2" and right shoulder to be "2"?
OR
Situation B) Do you want left shoulder to be "half of 2" and right shoulder to be "half of 2"?

I'm not sure you map a controller input to "half a keyboard key".

If the switch maps ZR/ZL to axis (instead of buttons), then EmulationStation (where I assume you try to register them) will ignore them as buttons. Have you tried to map them to LT/RT (the should trigger buttons) ?

that said, if you want a dedicated x86 emulation box, you don't need windows and can run retropie directly: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Debian/

@dankcushions my issue there isn't just hardware based. There is very little support for Sega Naomi , let alone Lindbergh, RingEdge, and NUu2 emulation in RetroArch. These systems are PC based to begin with, and so far I've only seen any of them successfully emulated in Windows based emulators.

@tim-s-up Glad you got it working, @lostless is the one that provided the solution though :).

@mahoneyt944 actually some games in mame2003 support analog! eg afterburner, outun. but yes, to use analog in games that have native digital controls, you need to use the retroarch 'analog to digital' option (although i would instead recommend setting via the configuration editor as RGUI meddling can be dangerous).

but note that if you enable it globally for the lr-mame2003, you will lose analog controls in natively analog games (although that's only a handful).

I've just had the same problem, and looking for a solution that runs on Linux, led me to looking in the Memcardrex code, I've come up with the following:

dd if=<file.gme> bs=1 skip=3904 count=131072 of=<file.srm>

It turns out the GME files are really just the same as SRM files with a 3904 byte header in front, the above commands strips that header and leaves a raw memorycard file.

Thanks for troubleshooting this

I don't think this is documented anywhere, perhaps it should be.

I think that's what's implied by

To update WHDLoad: simply delete the directory or the HDF file

but I agree is not that intuitive and most of the time users will start the emulator without the BIOS files, so the document may need some details.

@huhogany Hi. where do i even find that line /opt/retropie....etc, etc? I am so lost and confused. Do I look for it on pc or use the pi4 gui screen? i have no idea where to find this. Is it a command line?

UPDATE: I got it to work. What I did...

Updated post fixes in vman 512 image... reboot
options
system tools
audio settings
set audio output to headphones

Ooops nevermind! I figured it out, you need to reinstall the emulator after, I forgot that step!

@mitu oh i figured it out, my parents have an internet filter, and my pi's internet is off. thanks for the help!

@stuckinthe90s You are using a disposable email address which is bouncing. Please switch to a working non disposable address or I will have to remove/disable your account.

How did you 'downloaded' ? If you've used the binary install, you'll get Mame 0.229 and lr-mame based on the 0.229 MAME version.

@cmftblynu Thanks for replying. I tried everything but that. It makes sense as the resources to run vice are pretty high on a Pi.

At any rate, I figured out how to disk swap in lr-vice, so I'm sticking with that. After all is said and done, that was the goal. I only used Vice because it ran so well for so long and I knew my way around it really well.

Now that lr-vice64 is up to speed and supported well, I'm going to stick with it.

I even went to far as to tweak the background image by TreyM to look more like my room and desk did back in 1984. Lol.

Thanks again,

@mitu

thank you very much to taking for my problem :)

@reflex1992 you didn't supply the file name of your image. please also supply a verbose log as requested. you can still retrieve them after a crash, as long as you don't reboot or launch anything else.