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    Pi Zero 2 released

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General Discussion and Gaming
    zerozero2
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    • dankcushionsD
      dankcushions Global Moderator @George Spiggott
      last edited by

      @george-spiggott
      bit of a useless overclock for retropie, mind - core_freq and v3d_freq are far more beneficial to pi3 (and by extension pi zero 2) as bandwidth and gpu is the limitation, not cpu.

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      • P
        ParadoxGBB
        last edited by

        Hey all,

        Looking to maybe get one with a GPi Retroflag case, had a few questions for those willing to humor me (thanks in advance!):

        1. About how much time do you get on a reasonable emulator, say NES, via the AAs? Anyone try rechargeables?

        2. The case appears to not have an open port for HDMI out, but it looks like you could drill a hole up the top to do so and run the script to toggle between the displays. Has anyone tried this? Or suggest a different case?

        3. Someone mentioned no HW video decoding on this board, has anyone attempted to run Kodi 8.7 (hopefully Matrix one of these days) on this through HDMI? Can you get 720p?

        My dream device would be to have a handheld on a plane. It looks like this would be perfect because you could even power it with a USB bank if you needed to. And then, be able to check into a hotel room, plug this device into the TV's HDMI, and connect home via Plex, controlling it with my phone.

        I have a Pi3 with a GameHat but while it can do the latter scenario OK, the handheld part is a bit too clunky for my preferences and it's not really that easy to travel with, although it was a fun experiment. This looks much better and not too underpowered.

        Thanks again!

        mituM cnotoC 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • mituM
          mitu Global Moderator @ParadoxGBB
          last edited by

          @paradoxgbb said in Pi Zero 2 released:

          Someone mentioned no HW video decoding on this board, has anyone attempted to run Kodi 8.7 (hopefully Matrix one of these days) on this through HDMI? Can you get 720p?

          That's not true. It's basically the Pi3B in a smaller package, even the Pi0 has HW video decoding (MPEG4).

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          • P
            ParadoxGBB @mitu
            last edited by

            @mitu Apologies, didn't mean to spread misinformation! If that's the case Kodi should be ok based on my experiences on my Pi3B.

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            • J
              jpwhiting @retropieuser555
              last edited by

              @retropieuser555 with the following I get some sound, but it's very buzzy, i.e. it's not really routed through the gpi case somehow in /boot/config.txt:

              # dtoverlay=pwm-audio-pi-zero^M
              
              dtoverlay=hifiberry-dac
              

              What does the recalbox beta image have in /boot/config.txt ? does audio work on that?

              I found that here by the way: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2021/raspberry-pi-zero-2-powers-null-2-retropie-gaming-handheld

              mituM retropieuser555R 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • mituM
                mitu Global Moderator @jpwhiting
                last edited by

                @jpwhiting see https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/31555/no-sound-retroflag-gpi-case-with-pi-zero-w-2-solved/ for using the new Zero with the GPICase.

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                • J
                  jpwhiting @mitu
                  last edited by

                  @mitu Thanks, that helped. Still getting some buzzing though during game play in all emulators I've tried so far. Sound effects come through ok, but music is very quiet and the buzzing overwhelms it.

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                  • retropieuser555R
                    retropieuser555 @jpwhiting
                    last edited by

                    @jpwhiting his info about the display is interesting, as it'd be nice to find a solution to not being stuck on the legacy driver on the gpi case. As it was the only reason the original pi zero couldn't play the source port of mario 64 it played fine on a hdmi putput

                    Pi 5 4GB

                    Retroflag GPI with raspberry pi zero 2 w/ wifi

                    Retroachievements:- lovelessrapture

                    UnknownU 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • UnknownU
                      Unknown @retropieuser555
                      last edited by

                      So happy to hear the zero got an upgrade. I have wanted to build a handheld for a long time, but the zero just wasn't quite enough power for it to be worth it. Until now!

                      You can't beat the classics(unless you copy them).

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • B
                        Brunnis
                        last edited by

                        Started experimenting with RetroPie on my Zero 2. Installed the latest weekly image (from Oct 29) and then used the RetroPie-Setup script to update it (including operating system packages). Everything seems to work fine, including audio.

                        By the way, there's no easy way of using FKMS or KMS video drivers with RetroPie on this hardware, right? It seems the old BRCM stack is still the default on pre-Pi 4 hardware and trying to use FKMS or KMS results in EmulationStation not starting (which isn't too surprising, of course).

                        mituM T 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • mituM
                          mitu Global Moderator @Brunnis
                          last edited by

                          @brunnis said in Pi Zero 2 released:

                          By the way, there's no easy way of using FKMS or KMS video drivers with RetroPie on this hardware, right?

                          You can do that, but you'll have to re-install from source every package, since we don't provide KMS enabled binaries. Of course, depending on the choice (fkms/kms driver), some packages will not be available (splashscreen, audio, emulators that depend on the BRCM stack, etc.). You might as well do that on a Pi3, since it has more RAM, and transfer back the image.

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                          • B
                            Brunnis @mitu
                            last edited by

                            @mitu said in Pi Zero 2 released:

                            You can do that, but you'll have to re-install from source every package, since we don't provide KMS enabled binaries. Of course, depending on the choice (fkms/kms driver), some packages will not be available (splashscreen, audio, emulators that depend on the BRCM stack, etc.). You might as well do that on a Pi3, since it has more RAM, and transfer back the image.

                            Right, that was simple enough. Thanks! Just recompiled EmulationStation and it now starts up fine.

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                            • T
                              thomasca @mitu
                              last edited by

                              @mitu I utilized the config.txt from that thread, but still can't get audio over the headphone jack or speaker to work yet. I'm still get a no sound device error when starting games.

                              mituM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • mituM
                                mitu Global Moderator @thomasca
                                last edited by

                                @thomasca Not sure what topic you're referring to - may start a separate topic and add more info.

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                                • B
                                  Brunnis
                                  last edited by

                                  Got RetroArch working with KMS as well, by recompiling. Now, the more troublesome part will be to try to get the GPI Case display working under KMS. I don't know if anyone has done it. Found this recent thread on the Raspberry Pi forums, which offers some pointers, but no conclusion:

                                  https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=322556

                                  If anyone knows of any more useful resources (or anyone that has done this before), I'd be grateful if you'd let me know.

                                  retropieuser555R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • retropieuser555R
                                    retropieuser555 @Brunnis
                                    last edited by

                                    @brunnis yeah I couldn't understand it. It's clearly possible I just can't figure out how to recompile that device tree files without getting errors. The good though is if one person figures it out is the gpi case is uniform and we can all just use the same dts file

                                    Pi 5 4GB

                                    Retroflag GPI with raspberry pi zero 2 w/ wifi

                                    Retroachievements:- lovelessrapture

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                                    • B
                                      Brunnis @retropieuser555
                                      last edited by

                                      @retropieuser555 Ahh, that was your thread! Bummer that you didn't get it working. I'll see if I can give it a shot, but my main enemy these days is that I often have too little time available to deep dive on stuff like this.

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                                      • T
                                        thomasca @mitu
                                        last edited by

                                        @mitu Sorry, I was talking about the link you provided to the separate thread with a version of config.txt that fixed sound.

                                        I forgot to copy over dpi24.dbto to the overlay folder though. After I did that, it started working.

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                                        • B
                                          Brunnis
                                          last edited by Brunnis

                                          I've been testing my Zero 2 with a few SNES games and I am a bit suprised of the poor performance in Star Fox. I know it's a SuperFX game, but performance seems to be worse than I remember it from back around 2016-2017 when I was testing a lot with my Pi 3. Running RetroPie on a 1080p display using either FKMS or KMS, the Star Fox intro scene when the Arwing fly through the tunnel gives very noticeable audio crackling. Even overclocking the Zero 2 to the same clock frequency as the Pi 3, i.e. 1.2 GHz, does not fully solve the problem. Combining the overclock with lowering the resolution to 720p does seem to get it to run at 60 FPS without issues.

                                          This makes me wonder though... Does anyone know if anything has changed in the past few years that affected performance in any significant way? In my old Pi 3 testing, I could run at 1080p and no overclocking and it would handle Star Fox perfectly fine. Even with threaded video disabled and using the KMS video driver. Do you have any ideas, @mitu or @dankcushions ?

                                          All testing done on snes9x2010, by the way.

                                          EDIT: It seems it will work without audio crackling at 1.2 GHz, 1080p with threaded video enabled. As I mentioned above, I believe threaded video could be disabled in this game a few years ago.

                                          dankcushionsD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                          • dankcushionsD
                                            dankcushions Global Moderator @Brunnis
                                            last edited by

                                            @brunnis i've no idea i'm afraid - haven't played it and don't have a pi3 anymore :( @Darksavior may know - I believe they mentioned this game before.

                                            whilst the zero 2 is sort of a slightly downclocked pi3, i wonder if the cache/memory etc are clocked the same? would be curious to know all the various frequencies it reports. core/memory overclocks often gave good results with the pi3 so it could be crucial.

                                            B 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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