Using 1P and 2P Joysticks for P1 in Mame?

Riverstorm

@jimd0586 said in Using 1P and 2P Joysticks for P1 in Mame?:

figured it out, i wasn't holding the button down long enough when mapping!

Great! It's good to see it working.

I don't know if it's applicable at all but when I was running under powered my Pi buttons seemed to lag a little in responding to key presses or I had to press them multiple times. It's not always the power supply though sometimes a cheap cable or a long cable can cause a power issue even with a beefy power supply. If you do you'll see a small colored square in the upper right hand corner. Both cause turbo mode to be shut down.

Red square = over-temperature
Rainbow square = under-voltage

You can override the warnings but there are risks obviously.
Add these lines to your /boot/config.txt

Removes the overlay warnings:
avoid_warnings=1
Allows turbo even when low-voltage is present:
avoid_warnings=2

jimd0586

I was just gonna ask about that... I added a USB powered light strip to light my marquee. I knew it would draw power but now I'm seeing that rainbow square more often. I also noticed that MAME Sunset Riders is even slowing down a bit... I have the pi3 overclocked to 1350(as high as I could get and run stable). Should I reduce fps or resolution for my emulators or should I unplug the light strip?

I think unplugging the strip might help but ultimately I still have slowdowns in some games regardless. Any tips to get slower games and emulators to run better?

N64 is a good example, but some other emulators like MAME and FBA still lag a bit.

Any help appreciated. @Floob @Riverstorm

Riverstorm

@jimd0586 said in Using 1P and 2P Joysticks for P1 in Mame?:

I was just gonna ask about that... I added a USB powered light strip to light my marquee. I knew it would draw power but now I'm seeing that rainbow square more often.

I think Floob is more versed in these matters than I am as a lot of what I learn is from his videos. :) You could try some tweaks and see what kind of results you get but ultimately I would focus on your power supply to make sure it's within specs. I don't know but would be hesitant if changing FPS or lowering resolution would reduce the power draw.

Overclocking itself does use more power and the more USB ports you have populated the more power you need.

I had an issue where I had a quality power supply but I was using a 10' USB cable that was causing some vdroop so that might be worth looking into also.

My Pi 3 is stable at 1300. I thought it was stable at 1350 until I started using more cores while compiling and that's when it started locking up so I bumped it back down to 1300. The reason you don't see crashes/freezes as often in emulation is usually they are running on a single core. Running at 1300 I was able to drop my overvolt to 4 which helped a bit with power consumption.

If it fits in your budget I think I would invest in a higher amperage/voltage power supply and check your power cable to verify it is using a quality gauge wire.

jimd0586

@Riverstorm

Thanks. Any idea what kind of power supply I can use?

I'll drop my OC to 1300.

I just recall a video that showed N64 running slowly on the pi and that you had to reduce the resolution or something to get it to run properly.

Riverstorm

@jimd0586 said in Using 1P and 2P Joysticks for P1 in Mame?:

@Riverstorm

Thanks. Any idea what kind of power supply I can use?

I'll drop my OC to 1300.

I just recall a video that showed N64 running slowly on the pi and that you had to reduce the resolution or something to get it to run properly.

I would think any of the reputable Pi re-sellers would be sufficient. I buy a lot of stuff from MCM Electronics and Adafruit. Really there are several places.

You might be fine at 1350, even 1400, every Pi is different so definitely experiment with that overclock.

The resolution you're talking about is probably 640x480. Here's a thread by @Twitch0815 with some great info on the N64. It also has a Wiki link he created with suggested overclock settings to try.

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/140/how-to-use-overclock-and-mupen-core-options-to-significantly-increase-64-game-playability-quality-and-stability

jimd0586

@Riverstorm

Boy, my existing power supply came from an ebay kit. I am pretty sure it is supplying enough juice. Is there a way to find out if the power usage/consumption/supply is the issue?

Riverstorm

@jimd0586 said in Using 1P and 2P Joysticks for P1 in Mame?:

@Riverstorm

Boy, my existing power supply came from an ebay kit. I am pretty sure it is supplying enough juice. Is there a way to find out if the power usage/consumption/supply is the issue?

Do you have the specs? On the power supply itself you'll see something like 2.5A 5.25V. It should have the information on it.

jimd0586

@Riverstorm
Output: 5.0V ---2.5A

It came in a kit.

Riverstorm

@jimd0586 said in Using 1P and 2P Joysticks for P1 in Mame?:

@Riverstorm
Output: 5.0V ---2.5A

It came in a kit.

It sounds sufficient. Who's the manufacturer? You might need a slightly higher voltage.

This is getting out of the area I can help with. Running that lighted marquee with USB 2.0 for power. A unit load is defined as 100mA. A device may draw a maximum of 5 unit loads (500 mA) from a port. I think there's some wiggle room there so some manufacturers may go out of spec and pull a higher maximum current but you might need to play around a little.

If you're seeing issues with the marquee unplugged then you need to keep removing things and remove overclocking altogether until it stops. Then start adding things. I still suspect the power supply or possibly the cable but maybe you're getting some overdraw with the marquee. I would play around with it a bit the answer has to be there. :)

Floob

@jimd0586 said in Using 1P and 2P Joysticks for P1 in Mame?:

I was just gonna ask about that... I added a USB powered light strip to light my marquee. I knew it would draw power but now I'm seeing that rainbow square more often. I also noticed that MAME Sunset Riders is even slowing down a bit... I have the pi3 overclocked to 1350(as high as I could get and run stable). Should I reduce fps or resolution for my emulators or should I unplug the light strip?

I think unplugging the strip might help but ultimately I still have slowdowns in some games regardless. Any tips to get slower games and emulators to run better?

N64 is a good example, but some other emulators like MAME and FBA still lag a bit.

Any help appreciated. @Floob @Riverstorm

I'd make sure your Pi3 has the right PSU - 5.1v 2.5A
http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/plug-in-power-supply/9098126/

I dont overclock mine (or play N64), but if you want to run N64 a little smoother its worth checking the thread Riverstorm mentioned.
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/140/how-to-use-overclock-and-mupen-core-options-to-significantly-increase-64-game-playability-quality-and-stability

For MAME, I would check which emulators support that game, and try them all.
For example Sunset Riders has been supported for quite a while:
http://www.progettoemma.net/index.php?gioco=ssriders&lang=en

So more than one of the MAME emulators may play this - e.g. often mame4all is faster than lr-fba-next for example.
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs

jimd0586

Thanks you two. Honestly, you guys are a big help.