Very confused about Retropie 4.7.1 and the Pi 4
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So I have an existing Pi 3b and a new Pi 4 8GB bought to replace it. My Pi 3 install died and I managed to reinstall a fresh version on a 32GB SD card using Retropie 4.7.1 and Raspberry Pi Imager, and it works fine.
But when I try to install 4.7.1 on the Pi 4, again using Pi Imager but with a 256GB card, it goes horribly. Everything takes literally 20x longer and then nothing works anyway. Every game just crashes back to EmulationStation.
Android Central says this:
"PSA about the Raspberry Pi 4
The Raspberry Pi 4 is a great update to the hardware that would make playing some emulated games a lot better. A faster CPU, more and faster RAM, and faster SD card speeds are just what the doctor ordered here. Unfortunately, those hardware changes mean the Retropie image needs to be updated to support them and the developers aren't quite finished baking it.
Right now, Retropie won't install on the Raspberry Pi 4. That's a bummer, but the board is new and the software needs to be written to support it. The latest word from the developers sounds promising:
We are still working on Raspberry Pi 4 support. You may have seen some unofficial images from other people with some emulators working – but please bear with us. We also have some emulators working but don't want to release anything until we are able to realistically support it.
In the meantime, things still work really well on the Raspberry Pi 3 B+. So don't have to be afraid you're going to miss out on anything by using it."
https://www.androidcentral.com/how-install-retropie-raspberry-pi
Which squares with my experience. But the Retropie site itself says this:
"RetroPie 4.7 images are now available, and include a variety of changes and improvements. We marked RetroPie 4.6 as having beta support for the Raspberry Pi 4. We now believe it to work well enough to remove the beta label.."
https://retropie.org.uk/2020/11/retropie-4-7-is-now-available/
And the notes for 4.7.1 don't say anything about having totally broken it.
So... does 4.7.1 work with the Pi 4 or not? Does anyone have it running successfully? What's going on?
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@superfella You already have a thread basically saying the same thing.
At this point I am wondering if you used the right image.
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@thorr69 Well, the conflicting reports about Retropie working on the 4 are new information. As we speak I'm trying the 256GB card in the Pi 3b to see if it's the problem.
I don't see how it can be the image because it's the one built into Raspberry Pi Imager and it works fine on the Pi 3.
But it's very strange that those two sites say the polar opposite and I just wondered if anyone was running 4.7.1 on a 4, because if not I can stop wasting hours and hours trying it.
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@superfella Yeah, pretty much everyone who had a Pi4 is running 4.7.1 on Pi4.
I think your real confusion is that you are treating '4.7.1' as a single entity, when it isn't. The build for RPi3 and RPi4 are completely different. If you used a RPi3 image to build a RPi4 then you would be wildly unsuccessful. When you say:
"As we speak I'm trying the 256GB card in the Pi 3b to see if it's the problem."
and
"I don't see how it can be the image because it's the one built into Raspberry Pi Imager and it works fine on the Pi 3."
I can see here that you probably don't realize the difference. You can't use a Pi3 image on a Pi4 (or vice versa). You can't take the SD card out of a Pi3 and put it into your Pi4 and have it function.
The image needed for RPI4 is:
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/releases/download/4.7.1/retropie-buster-4.7.1-rpi4_400.img.gz
Retropie Imager should install the correct one automatically (as long as it's up to date), but it has its faults and may not have grabbed the right one. I think you should grab the proper image and set it up directly so that you are sure you are using the right software. Something is definitely amiss (based on your original post) and since you are just starting out, it's best to make absolutely sure you are using the right base code. -
@thorr69 I certainly do know the difference - RP Imager makes it very clear and I was careful to use the Pi 3 version for the Pi 3 and the Pi 4 version for the Pi 4.
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@superfella Good!!! That's a major factor out of the way.
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@thorr69 It's kinda hard to miss.
At the moment I'm transferring all my config files to the new Pi 3b install on the 256GB card and it's looking slightly like the card might be the problem, but it'll be a couple of hours until I can tell.
(And I'm not a total noob, I've had the 3b for about two years and put a lot of work in on it.)
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@superfella Please don't open multiple posts for the same issue - you already had a post opened in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/30195/ and you got some replies there.
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