Almost finished home RasPi 3B, Issue with Controllers, Need fresh minds

tjayhawk32

@mitu Apologies, I follow.

The reason I said a few lines back that I didn't know 'which' retroarch.cfg to go into might have something to do with this.

I have one here
https://imgur.com/81FbkC3
which is at /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg

And this much more complete one
https://imgur.com/DWuZAeA
Which is at /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/retroarch.cfg

Is this unimportant or does the second one need to be a directory back?

EDIT: Also, I'm going to double check this but I am 95% sure this issue of too many controllers = emulator no longer loads is exclusive to the libretro emus, so far with the exception of DGEN which just went to a red screen and paused there.

mitu

@tjayhawk32 said in Almost finished home RasPi 3B, Issue with Controllers, Need fresh minds:

And this much more complete one
https://imgur.com/DWuZAeA
Which is at /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/retroarch.cfg

That file is not used by RetroArch on a normal RetroPie installation, only the former.

tjayhawk32

@mitu Ah, so it's at least supposed to be there.

Does the first one look wrong or that it's missing something? Not totally sure what to to next.

tjayhawk32

Here's what I think I'm gonna do today later...
I ordered an external hard drive that I'm going to use for ROMs instead of the SD card I have in there to be able to get more stuff on there.

I was going to try to clone it, but if I just do a complete fresh install, would that fix this controller issue in your reasoning?

And do I need to clear the SD card first? (I have all the ROMs on another external drive...scraping again will suck though.)

And @mitu , I see how many times youre reaching out on here to guys in need of help. You're an all-star, thank you.

mitu

@tjayhawk32 said in Almost finished home RasPi 3B, Issue with Controllers, Need fresh minds:

I was going to try to clone it, but if I just do a complete fresh install, would that fix this controller issue in your reasoning?

Unlikely, this seems like a hardware limitation - but don't take my word for it, since I'm not an USB expert. Out of curiosity, did you try this combination on a PC ? Do all USB controllers get detected and working all at once ?

DetroitKp

@mitu Hi Mitu. Why does 'Save Configuration' in RetroArch or 'Save Configuration on Exit' mess up the controller config? I think that was one way to make controller modifications.

mitu

@DetroitKp Because RetroArch is started for each system with a different config file - see here. When you're saving a config, you're saving the system's config file and if you're starting on another system, you get a different config (not the one you saved).
If you need to make modifications to the controller config, use the Core input remapping - explained on the same page. This saves the configuration as a remap (.rmp) file which touches only the input, without interfering with the global settings, plus you get the ability to map it per game or per core. If you use 'Save configuration', you get the same settings for all games from the same system, which might not be what you want.
There are also another side effects, but I can't find the that old topic (a few years old) that discusses this.

tjayhawk32

@mitu

@mitu said in Almost finished home RasPi 3B, Issue with Controllers, Need fresh minds:

Do all USB controllers get detected and working all at once ?

Is there an easy way to do this without installing Ubuntu and RetroPie on my PC?

mitu

@tjayhawk32 said in Almost finished home RasPi 3B, Issue with Controllers, Need fresh minds:

Is there an easy way to do this without installing Ubuntu and RetroPie on my PC?

Yes, you can use your Windows installation and install RetroArch to see how it works - it has also a Windows version. You'll have RetroArch standalone, so no Emulationstation or joystick/gamepad configuration dialog - you'll have to do that from RetroArch.

mitu

Or you could download Lakka, which is a live Linux distro with just RetroArch, just like RetroPie, but based on a different Linux distribution model.

tjayhawk32

@mitu Starting now.

Also idk if this matters, but all of the controllers are active in the menu.

tjayhawk32

@mitu
https://imgur.com/qsbEsK2

I can't get it to log anything, so hopefully this helps. There are a total of 8 ports being used on the hub for this, with a few of those having dual ports like N64, Genesis and DC.

Curious if the ones that showed up as 'not configured' were the reason those emulators stopped launching, I tried selecting the ones that did configure back on the RetroPie, and even unset, with the same crash result on Genesis.

BuZz

@tjayhawk32 Your email is bouncing due to a full email box. Please disable email notifications or fix this or I may have to remove your account.

tjayhawk32

@BuZz I fixed it on my end, but do you mean they're bouncing and you were getting them back?

BuZz

@tjayhawk32 yes. When your email box was full the emails bounced. If you have limited email space I would turn off category subscriptions and just check topic notifications on the forum.

tjayhawk32

Understood. Sorry about that.

tjayhawk32

@mitu I've done a fresh install. Im going to plug in and configure the controllers one at a time.

What scripts/tests should i run and document in between each to see when/if it starts messing up?
.

mitu

@tjayhawk32 There's no scripts to be run, just configure the controllers - one by one - and then start RetroArch, see if all of them are detected and if they work (at least the controllers that's slotted for Player1).
See if/when they stop working and try to unplug one and notice if the configuration is stable again. Start with only 1 powered hub (maybe you have a 7 port hub), so that's only 1 USB port on the Pi that's taken.

tjayhawk32

@mitu Got it.

Do you think it matters where the 2-port adapters go in the sequence? (like before or after one-port adapters for whatever reason)

mitu

@tjayhawk32 I don't think the order matters. The Pi has only 1 internal USB hub, any port would go over the same data path.