CD-I emulation on Raspberry Pi 4: what am I doing wrong?

[swagford]

So I'm running a Raspberry Pi 4 with the 4.6 version of Retropie and using a 2 TB external USB hard drive to run roms directly from. Deciding to give CD-I emulation a try, I found this guide and followed it completely:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/12671/tutorial-cd-i-emulation-in-retropie-via-lr-mess-warning-slowdown-especially-during-fmv-but-surprisingly-playable

The issue I'm having, that I've been unable to find a solution to, is that no system appears to launch the game(s) from after installing lr-mess (even tried updating from source) and putting the rom files where they should(?) go. I'm assuming it would say "cdimono1" after scrolling through other systems like SNES, Genesis, etc. The guide stated to make a folder named cdimono1 in the main roms directory so my roms are located in: /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/cdimono1/

Since the roms are presumably in the right location, I would think this would be an issue with the es_systems.cfg file, but I copy/pasted the info from the guide directly into two such files (the guide didn't specify where it was located or that there would even be multiple files of the same name); one being located in /etc/emulationstation and the other in /etc/emulationstation/themes/nbba/extras/emulationstation.

I also double checked the emulators.cfg and retroarch.cfg files I had created (located in /opt/retropie/configs/cdimono1/ ) to be sure the copy/pasted information was correct and they are both exactly as they appear in the guide.

Also worth noting is that the main game file is named exactly as it appears in the xml file located in /home/pi/Retropie/BIOS/Mame/hash -- in this case: hotel mario (1994)(philips)(us).chd and is paired with a blank text file named hotmariou.chd. Neither appear in any lists nor does a system list appear. I've also tried putting both in a zip file (named hotmariou.zip) since the recognized extensions include zip and that doesn't appear either.

I'm completely at a loss. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[mitu]

Looks like an issue with es_systems.cfg or you didn't named the rom right (remember that Linux is case sensitive so something like .Chd would not work).

Post the es_systems.cfg file you modified on pastebin.com and provide the link.

[zerojay]

@mitu said in CD-I emulation on Raspberry Pi 4: what am I doing wrong?:

(remember that Linux is case sensitive so something like .Chd would not work).

Case sensitivity has nothing to do with Linux and has everything to do with the file system you happen to be using with it. ext4 = case sensitive, exfat = case insensitive, etc...

[swagford]

@mitu

Here is the pastebin from /etc/emulationstation

https://pastebin.com/bw5mi8Yd

Here is the pastebin from /etc/emulationstation/themes/nbba/extras/emulationstation

https://pastebin.com/L26Q45K8

You'll noticed the path in the second pastebin was changed to ~/RetroPie/roms/cdimono1 opposed to /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/cdimono1 like the first pastebin. Originally, I had both written as /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/cdimono1 and when I noticed all other entries were ~/RetroPie/roms/ I changed it thinking that was the cause of the problem. Not the case.

[swagford]

Also, file names are exactly as I wrote them in the first post. All files are .chd, not Chd or CHD, etc.

[mitu]

@swagford said in CD-I emulation on Raspberry Pi 4: what am I doing wrong?:

Here is the pastebin from /etc/emulationstation
https://pastebin.com/bw5mi8Yd

The file looks ok. The 2nd file doesn't matter, it's not used by EmulationStation (looks like an example for es_systems.cfg).

Check if you don't have a custom es_systems.cfg in $HOME/.emulationstation, that will have priority over the configuration file in /etc/emulationstation.

[zerojay]

@swagford said in CD-I emulation on Raspberry Pi 4: what am I doing wrong?:

@mitu

Here is the pastebin from /etc/emulationstation

https://pastebin.com/bw5mi8Yd

Here is the pastebin from /etc/emulationstation/themes/nbba/extras/emulationstation

https://pastebin.com/L26Q45K8

You'll noticed the path in the second pastebin was changed to ~/RetroPie/roms/cdimono1 opposed to /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/cdimono1 like the first pastebin. Originally, I had both written as /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/cdimono1 and when I noticed all other entries were ~/RetroPie/roms/ I changed it thinking that was the cause of the problem. Not the case.

~/RetroPie/roms/cdimono1 and /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/cdimono1 are pointing to the exact same place. The ~ means "current user's home directory" which is /home/pi/.

[swagford]

@mitu

No es_systems.cfg in $HOME/.emulationstation

@zerojay

I kind of figured, but you never know sometimes. I'm still fairly new to linux based systems.

[mitu]

Try running emulationstation with the --debug parameter and see if you sport any errors/messages about cdimono1. At the very least it should say it doesn't recognize the cdimono1 platform. The messages are aslo logged to $HOME/.emulationstation/es_log.txt.

[swagford]

@mitu

Looked through the log and found this:

Sep 12 10:04:02 lvl1: Unknown platform for system "cdimono1" (platform "cdimono1" from list "cdimono1")
Sep 12 10:04:02 lvl1: Error - folder with path "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/cdimono1" is not a directory!

So I went back and checked the directory and the roms folder was misspelled (cdimon1 instead of cdimono1). Knew it had to be something stupid...

Anyway, the system shows now so thank you for your help!

Now to figure out why it's freezing upon loading the game. I'm getting a screen with very small text in the middle of the screen that I think says "Initializing"? It locks the system and I have to reboot. BIOS problem maybe?

The guide never said what BIOS file you need exactly. Only to put "it" in the main roms folder (which is weird, shouldn't it go in /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS or the cdimono1 folder?). Anyway, the BIOS files I have are cdibios.zip, cdimono1.zip, and cdimono2.zip. Any ideas?

[mitu]

I think it may be the same issue as reported here - either the BIOS is not correct (was updated recently) or MAME actually disabled the system (marked as NOT_WORKING).

You can check /dev/shm/runcommand.log for any errors, but I think they'll be similar to the ones reported in the topic I linked.

[swagford]

@mitu

Thanks so much! I'll give that topic a read and see what I come up with.

[swagford]

Yep, same error. If I'm understanding that thread correctly, the only way around it is to have an older version of MAME? Which you cannot obtain unless you had a backup of it?