Where are the ROMS?!

[pbizzle]

Hi all

im a noob, but thought I had a handle on the step by steps on the wiki to get my Picade pf the ground-
I have-
mounted image on SD
sucessfully got my dual arcade joystick to talk to the pi
formatted a USB drive to fill with ROMs
copied them all in to the appropriate folders and then plugged it into the pi and waited for the flashing to stop (so they are now copied on the SD card, correct?).

But when i plug it into the Pi, and fire it up theres nothing there, or at least i dont know where to find them. The image seems to still be there and operating fine, i can navigate through everything but no games?

apologies if i have missed anything

edit here are some images that might go some way to explain my predicament- http://imgur.com/a/cJES3

take the MAME4ALL as an example. they can be seen on the file explorer but not sure where to launch them from.

also on the USB stick i had the snes (and other) ROMs in their correct folder but they have not been copied over, although the MAME4ALL seems to have had no problem.

[Brigane]

@pbizzle
Did you first plug the USB drive into the Pi so It can make the necessary folders retropie/roms?
The how-to is written here: https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Transferring-Roms#usb-stick

[pbizzle]

@Brigane hey yeah all the directiories are there, I've dropped al the Roms into the corresponding folders.

Do I just remove the USB after or is it supposed to stay in? I thought the files were automatically transferred to the sd card?

[pbizzle]

@Brigane here are some images that might go some way to explain my predicament- http://imgur.com/a/cJES3

take the MAME4ALL as an example. they can be seen on the file explorer but not sure where to launch them from.

also on the USB stick i had the snes (and other) ROMs in their correct folder but they have not been copied over, although the MAME4ALL seems to have had no problem.

i feel like im close!!

[dankcushions]

@pbizzle it looks like there are a lot directories in the mame folder... that doesn't seem right. they should be zip files. eg roms/mame-mame4all/pacman.zip

[Brigane]

@pbizzle

• Go to terminal and type the following:
  sudo nano /etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg

• Now you need to change the rom path for every system you have roms for on your USB drive. Now search for Nintendo Entertainment System (ctrl+w)
  For example: <path>/media/usb/retropie/roms/nes</path>

• Now Emulationstation knows that your NES roms are on the USB drive instead of the SD card.

• Remember to save the es_system.cfg before quit back to terminal(ctrl+x). Now you can just type "Emulationstation" and Press Enter to go back to Emulationstation and your roms should show up. It might take a while to load the roms if you got many.

• Remember it's a good idea to make a backup of the sd card before you make any changes

[dankcushions]

@Brigane whilst it can work, this isn't supported - please instead use the automatic method from https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Running-ROMs-from-a-USB-drive

IF you want to run games from your USB stick (ie, not using the SD card for any roms). but it sounds like @pbizzle just wants to transfer roms from USB to SD, which is a pretty standard so it makes me think there is something more fundamentally wrong if it's not working.

[pbizzle]

@dankcushions ok thanks i guess that 12 hours of unzipping all those was wrong then D: . Also do i need to copy anythign into the BIOS folders to make it work or is that already taken care of in the Retropie/Emulation station image

[dankcushions]

@pbizzle said in Where are the ROMS?!:

@dankcushions ok thanks i guess that 12 hours of unzipping all those was wrong then D: . Also do i need to copy anythign into the BIOS folders to make it work or is that already taken care of in the Retropie/Emulation station image

yeah many systems need things in the BIOS folders for them to work - you should check out the wiki for the systems you're using. however they don't need anything in the BIOS for the files to transfer to SD card and appear in emulationstation.

[pbizzle]

@dankcushions should all the ROMs be .zip files?

[dankcushions]

@pbizzle said in Where are the ROMS?!:

@dankcushions should all the ROMs be .zip files?

not for all systems, no. you can find out the possible extension(s) for a given system by looking at the wiki page. eg https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Super-Nintendo-Entertainment-System