pi400 RetroPie - How to get keyboard working? [particularly with Spectrum emu]

Chris3535

@drdoak OK so just so I am understanding this correctly... When I get the pi 400 am I not able to do the following..

Pick and load a spectrum game and once its loaded it might for example as you to type your name in.. So what your saying is you can't use the pi 400 keyboard to do this?
I imaged you would be able to use the keyboard to type your name in and then when you start the game use your joystick to play the game.. But your saying this is not possible?

Does this only affect the spectrum emulator or is it all of them?

drdoak

@chris3535

I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm saying that, so far, I personally haven't been able to get it to work - although I may be missing something blindingly obvious (I'm certainly not a RetroPie expert!).

@mitu & @BuZz may be able to help - their replies suggest that they believe it ought to be possible.

I'm sure lots of others will want to do the same kind of thing - so I imagine that someone will have a solution eventually.

BuZz

@drdoak I've already given a solution above. Installing the standalone fuse emulator.

Chris3535

@buzz sorry am new to this.. How do you install the fuse emulator? And can this still be accessed within retro pi menus

mitu

@chris3535 See this doc page for how to install a new emulator. The fuse emulator is in the optional packages section.

Chris3535

@mitu so if I went to the optional section and installed fuse. Does this mean there would be 2 spectrum emulators when re start retro pie? Would the Roms default to both?

And finally if I decided to just get a normal pi4 and plugged in a USB keyboard would this solve the issue with the default emulator?

mitu

@chris3535 said in pi400 RetroPie - How to get keyboard working? [particularly with Spectrum emu]:

Does this mean there would be 2 spectrum emulators when re start retro pie? Would the Roms default to both?

You can select the emulator from the Runcommand launch menu, when you start a game. You can change the default emulator for all roms or choose the emulator per-rom - your choice.

And finally if I decided to just get a normal pi4 and plugged in a USB keyboard would this solve the issue with the default emulator?

No, why would it ? The built-in keyboard on the Pi 400 behaves the same as a regular keyboard, so it wouldn't make a difference.

Chris3535

@mitu Sorry for the basic questions and thanks for your help

rbbrslmn

@chris3535 I had the same problem as in original thread. Installing fuse gave me a new set of problems as I don't know how to make a global save of options with that. However lr-fuse was usable by setting the option for controller port 3 as Sinclair keyboard and saving that as core remap file

Molokkoplus

Having the same issue, but with Vice and Commodore64. The optional package manager will only let me install the vice version with the gamepad frontend. And when I try to install manually via sudo apt, it says the repository doesn't contain it.
As @drdoak already pointed out, using the Pi 400 just like one of these old machines, is one thing I was really looking forward to.
Any hints still highly appreciated. thx

mitu

@molokkoplus said in pi400 RetroPie - How to get keyboard working? [particularly with Spectrum emu]:

Having the same issue, but with Vice and Commodore64. The optional package manager will only let me install the vice version with the gamepad frontend. And when I try to install manually via sudo apt, it says the repository doesn't contain it.

Not sure what the problem is, the 'package manager' can be operated by keyboard just as well as a gamepad. After installing Vice from RetroPie's package list, you can then select it as the default emulator during a ROM/game start-up from the Runcommand launch menu.

Mike1889

@mitu , I have a system set up with 4 controllers on my pi400 and would like to use the keyboard to search for the game that I would like to play, from the ALL GAMES list. Is there a way to do this ? I do not want to use the keyboard as a controller, only as a way to input for game selection. Thank you!!