keyboard not responding lr-fuse zx spectrum

[JaseDaMase]

Hi. I am after a bit of help and advice with reference to the lr-fuse zx spectrum emulator on my pi3. I have had no problems in the past but today I was filling in some gaps in my boxart, copying pictures and assigning paths via emulation Station same as I have been doing since I started with retropie but today I went to play a game via the emulator and my USB keyboard does not respond to any key presses. Tried a different keyboard and same. Tried a different emulator (c64) and it works fine so can only assume it's the specific emulator. I have deleted and reinstalled but the same issue. It's weird as it has previously worked fine. I have also tested it on the non libretro fuse and keyboard works fine. Any ideas or solutions? Thanks.

[elshiftos]

Exactly the same problem here, and after a bit of playing around I have come to the conclusion that upgrading from retroarch 1.6.7 to 1.6.9 is the cause.
I restored an image of a Retropie installation that has Retroarch 1.6.7 and the keyboard works fine. It is for this exact reason that I don't update anything when it is working - if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

The question is, does anyone know how to install a specific version of Retroarch, either manually or otherwise? Hopefully this issue will be addressed in a future Retroarch release.

Thanks

[tashman]

Why not try the standalone version of fuse, i.e the non-libretro version? Install from the retropie config - manage packages - optional packages.

I switched from using lr-fuse to standalone fuse quite recently and find it quite slick. You use F1 to change settings and/or exit games back to emulationstation.

One change I had to make was to get rid of the annoying red cassette symbol. To do that F1 -> General -> Status Indicator (or similar). To get the value to stick you need to select Autosave settings in the same menu - I think use use space bar to toggle the values (thanks to @BuZz for finding that solution).

[tuki_cat]

See below

[tuki_cat]

@elshiftos @JaseDaMase

Hi,

I think I may have solved this.

This link takes you to a section of the lr-fuse readme file. link text

To set up the keyboard go into the retroarch menu when in lr-fuse. Under quick menu go to controls and change user 3 to sinclair keyboard.

Exit the gui and the USB keyboard should work. If you want to keep this setting then remember to save the settings in the gui.

[elshiftos]

@tashman

Thanks for the reply. I have tried the standalone version and agree that it is quite slick, however, for quick and easy action without having to plug in a keyboard, I prefer the LR version.
I am planning to build a self-contained emulator using a pi zero, and for this I will definitely use fuse-sdl. Thanks for the tip to remove the red cassette. My tip is to go into options - filter and choose one of the 2x/3x modes as it reduces the size of the annoying mouse pointer!
Another annoyance is that it maps the left analog stick of controllers to joystick direction instead of the more logical d-pad.

[elshiftos]

@tuki_cat
Thanks tuki, your suggestion resolved the problem I was having running lr-fuse in retroarch 1.6.9! :)

On my RP SD card that has retroarch 1.6.7 installed, there are only 2 players - 1 kempston, 2 cursor, and yet the keyboard works fine in games. I guess this demonstrates how fragile RP can be and how important it is to make an SD card backup of a working setup!

Thanks again

[elshiftos]

Just a side-note and slightly off-topic. I was having having problems with the configs not saving in lr-fuse, despite having 'save on exit' turned on.
When running a game rom, 'Configuration override loaded' flashed up briefly.
When I tried to manually save the config from within rgui, I got a 'failed saving config to' message.
After much searching and way too many hours wasted, I discovered some fuse-related cfg files in the following path. After deleting them I'm glad to say lr-fuse is running just fine in retroarch 1.6.9 - phew! :)

/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/config

[tashman]

@elshiftos that makes sense. I've only ever used the spectrum emulators with a keyboard. In fact I hardly ever used joysticks on real spectrums back in the 1980s. Give me Q, A, O, P and Space anyday :-)

[JaseDaMase]

@tuki_cat Thank you so much for this solution, only just booted my pi up for first time in ages and forgot all about it.

[tuki_cat]

@jasedamase No problem - glad it helped