Pi Zero arcade issues

dankcushions

Can the resolution really be responsible for slowdown issues?

yes. pis are very memory bandwidth limited and driving a high resolution gives a measurable performance penalty, especially on older pis.

onto your configs:

/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg - this is non-default. whilst it DOES have the resolution settings i referred to above, it may have some hidden gotchas. you should revert to default by renaming it to retroarch.cfg.bak and renaming /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg.rp-dist to retroarch.cfg

/opt/retropie/configs/arcade/retroarch.cfg - looks fine

/boot/config.txt

hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode=16

you could try

hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode=4

which is 720p

i would also be curious if mame4all-pi suddenly starts working with a reduced resolution.

FormulaFox

@dankcushions Guess that makes sense. All my previous experience is on Pi 3 and 4 so it's not odd I never encountered it before.

Anyhow, result of changes: Mame4all still freezes as before. Altered Beast has improved is playing full speed at all times and has only occasional brief audio glitching. Asteroids fails as before. Galaga runs exactly as before. Galaga '88 runs even SLOWER than before.

Everything has a black border around it, but that is to be expected since I'm now on a 720 setting on a 1080 display.

dankcushions

@formulafox i presume you're not seeing the 'lightning bolt' power symbol in the corner at any point?

Galaga '88 runs even SLOWER than before.

that doesn't seem right, but maybe it's within the margin of error. i have an idea to speed this up, if you're feeling brave:

edit /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/libretrocores/lr-mame2000.sh
change the line

    isPlatform "arm" && params+=("ARM=1" "USE_CYCLONE=1")

to

    isPlatform "arm" && params+=("ARM=1" "USE_CYCLONE=1" "USE_DRZ80=1")

then update the emulator from source (will take a while)

note that changing scripts like this will cause retropie_setup to complain when you update it in the future. to revert this change, run:

git checkout /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/libretrocores/lr-mame2000.sh

(you can always apply the change again after you update)

Everything has a black border around it, but that is to be expected since I'm now on a 720 setting on a 1080 display.

it shouldn't - 1080p displays should display 720p fine natively, but there may be a tweak you need to do: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Overscan/#my-image-has-a-border

FormulaFox

@dankcushions
No lightning bolt at any time. I know what that means and I would have tackled it first thing if it was showing.

I'll try the other suggestions to see what I get. Obviously I'll have to get back to you later once the update from source finishes.

I get the feeling that this is going to work, because my PC is again refusing to recognize that the Pi exists on the network. That's the way my luck works - if I'm on course to find a solution, something else will get in the way.

I'm going to reinstall Paragon Linux File Systems For Windows to edit the file that way(I didn't use it before because I've had bad luck with it SAVING my changes to the card, but I'll just keep redoing this until it cooperates). The stubbornness of this Pi will not stop me!

If it comes down to it, I'm willing to attempt a mild overclock to see if that helps. (I have an aluminum heat sink on this thing, but no fan)

Also, before making the attempted emulator tweak I checked out some of the border fixes. Just had to change disable_overscan from 0 to 1. Fixed it right up.

FormulaFox

@dankcushions
Hokay, so, here's the situation...Altered Beast dipped slightly in performance - still plays full speed with no slowdowns but audio issues returned in full force.

But something else has been noticed. Since I am considering trying to overclock the Pi, I did my due diligence and checked to make sure the CPU was running at the advertised clock speed of 1GHz. It is not. It is running at 700MHz.

Could this have been the problem all along? I know from messing with a Pi 3B that I overclocked to 3B+ performance(1.4GHz) that a few hundred MHz goes a long way.

(I'm heading in to work soon and I sleep after work, so any overclocking will take place tomorrow if there may be a benefit to it)

dankcushions

@formulafox said in Pi Zero arcade issues:

But something else has been noticed. Since I am considering trying to overclock the Pi, I did my due diligence and checked to make sure the CPU was running at the advertised clock speed of 1GHz. It is not. It is running at 700MHz.

i don't think so. how are you measuring the clock speed? rpis downclock when idle. looking at your config you have the cpu speed commented out which should mean it runs at default (1GHz)

overclocking could help, mind.

FormulaFox

@dankcushions
I used vcgencmd measure_clock arm in the terminal.

I just looked at the config.txt file and noticed the overclocking line reads as follows(emphasis added, obviously):
"#uncomment to overclock the arm. 700 MHz is the default.
#arm_freq=800"

I am definitely going to uncomment that and set arm_freq to 1000 when I get up just to see what we get.

EDIT: A thought occurs. The Retropie build for the Pi Zero is also meant for the Pi 1. Which, IIRC, uses a 700MHz chip. Could something have glitched out and set up some sort of hardware config that assumed it was being set up on a Pi 1?

dankcushions

@formulafox said in Pi Zero arcade issues:

@dankcushions
I used vcgencmd measure_clock arm in the terminal.

I just looked at the config.txt file and noticed the overclocking line reads as follows(emphasis added, obviously):
"#uncomment to overclock the arm. 700 MHz is the default.
#arm_freq=800"

yes, you get the same comment on pi4 builts. raspbian have never update the comment, but it still defaults to an appropriate value for the hardware. don't worry about that message.

FormulaFox

@dankcushions

Whelp, uncommenting that and setting it to 1000 resulted in a failure to boot. It froze on the EmulationStation screen. If the chip doesn't even like being told to clock itself to what it's already doing, then I can be pretty confident this particular chip does NOT want to be overclocked.

dankcushions

@formulafox hmm, it's possible this is a known issue but should have been fixed by the a firmware update years ago: https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/pi-zero-w-read-this-first/4117

what exact image did you start from? have you tried updating the firmware as per that link?

FormulaFox

@dankcushions said in Pi Zero arcade issues:

@formulafox hmm, it's possible this is a known issue but should have been fixed by the a firmware update years ago: https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/pi-zero-w-read-this-first/4117

what exact image did you start from? have you tried updating the firmware as per that link?

It should be 4.7.1(the file still sitting on my desktop is "retropie-buster-4.7.1-rpi1_zero.img") as provided in the Retropie download section. I have not attempted to update the firmware, but I can give that a go when I have some more time after dinner.

FormulaFox

Temporary failure resolving 'archive.raspberrypi.org' and 'raspbian.raspberrypi.org' when I try to follow those instructions. Tried multiple times.

I'll have to try again later.

dankcushions

@formulafox works for me - the those websites are up. perhaps a problem with your wifi/network connection.

In any case, in the event that it doesn't fix your issue, you can see here for some ways of measuring the speed: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=266260#p1618068, if they are different to how you were doing it. try both?

without having a zero i can't really diagnose but this sounds to me like some kind of power supply/hardware issue. might be worth asking on the rpi forums, as this isn't really a retropie issue now.

FormulaFox

@dankcushions
Yeah, I checked the sites myself and had no issue. I don't see how it could be the connection on the Pi, though, since the wifi works for anything I do via the GUI - both the main Retropie interface and the setup interfaces. Scraping, updating, etc, all works until I go into the terminal. I'll probably have to seek help elsewhere as I suspect that's still outside of your ability to assist.

Thanks for the help, though. I at least now know some stuff to look at should other problems arise in the future.