@mitu said in BBC Micro on Pi400 running RetroPie:

replace the path with the full path (/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/bbcmicro. I don't think ~ is expanded here.

You were quite correct. Putting in the full path made a difference. On lauching Emulationstation I got the BBC Micro option with the Acorn logo and artwork. When I selected that I initially got a prompt asking me which emulator I wanted to use (BBC Micro or BBC Master). I selected BBC Micro and the emulator started and the first .ssd "disc" was loaded. I checked, the extension was lower case for both files, but it is worth bearing in mind.

I made some further progress by setting up a second system profile for the BBC Master. I didn't get prompted to select the emulator this time and it took me a while to find the configuration file where this is configured. All that was needed was to change the 'default' setting to point to the already configured Master option. There seems to be no artwork provided for the master so I ended up creating some on a similar theme using the artwork for the Micro as a starting point.

I encountered one rather unusual problem with the artwork. I used Inskape to edit the .svg artwork files supplied with the emulator and discovered that Emulationstation does not show any text that was added using fonts (XML <font> tag). Perhaps that explans why all text in the artwork has been created with each individual letter created as a <path> object., i.e. a polygon. When I followed this original approach, drawing each individual letter (which took some time), everything then appeared as it should. I do find it a little odd though.

The good news is that I now have both emulators working from RetroPie.

The Master didn't like one of the items on the demo disc - a demo of some window manager. Maybe I need to select the 512 emulation as opposed to the 128? Will need to experiment with that. In the meantime I will need to do some work to convert my existing .mmb file to .ssd files. I will then be able to try some games.

@folly Thank You @folly. You are the best!

@BobbyJoe I was wondering if you could share your tweaks?

I followed the instructions in that link (I am using RetroPie 4.6 installed from the official image).

When I try and run a game it returns to the RetroPie screen. The log has the following error: "Unsupported bit depth".

I tried following the advice of @SpudsMcToole here, https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/20471/what-the-heck-s-happened-to-advmess, but wasn't clear what lines he deleted from his .rc file to get the BBC Emulation working via advmess.

Any hints and tips you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

A year and a half later, there is still no solution to fix the sound in the beebem.
Here's what we have so far:
The sound does not work at all or sometimes only works for a few seconds, if we turn it off and on again in the menu.
I looked in the src folder and saw that a large portion of the sdl.cpp file contained sdl sound entries, but I'm not skilled enough to determine where the problem is.
In the same emulator running through teminal windows inside desktop raspbian, the sound works ok.
I also read that support for alsa audio driver needs to be added but I don't know if anyone has done this successfully and how.
Another problem is that the emulator crash (with some GTK error) when using the floppy requester in the internal menu but this can be overcome using the command line options.
For now, the lack of sound is the biggest problem and I hope someone will know how to customize this emulator for retropie.
I have contacted the author by email regarding these issues but for now I have not received an answer.

@mediamogul That sorted the Channel F (with a bit of tweaking), cheers.

The Astrocade I'd already fixed, and it works fine for every game I've tried EXCEPT Space Fortress (unfortunately the best game on the system), which used to run fine but now goes at about 1fps. I tried using your .RC file instead, but the exact same thing happened.

The really freaky one is the Arcadia, though. I can get it to run no problem, right up to the point where I start any game, at which point it plays them by itself. No matter how I set the controls, the player ship will just lurch around, moving and shooting (or whatever) all on its own, regardless of whether I touch the controls or not.

But here's the REALLY wacky part.

If I boot up Pleiades on the Arcadia, it plays through the first three stages by itself. It's pretty good - it clears them all. So I wondered if I'd (somehow) recorded and then played back a previous game. But THEN, and only then, it gives me back control for the last stage (the one where you steer onto an airstrip dodging the parked ships). Keyboard and joystick both control the ship perfectly.

Once I've steered to the target and completed the stage, the Pi takes over and plays by itself again.

If anyone can explain any of THAT, I'm all ears.

I'm still using AdvanceMame, but have lr-mess compiled so will probably give that a go with the BBC Micro B and with the Electron, which I haven't had a go at emulating yet.

I had another look at the stardot forum again. Still no one working on a Linux or Raspberry Pi variant of Beebem or of any other BBC emulator unfortunately. All the current emulation is in relation to MacOS or Windows.

With emulating the Acorn Archimedes, I've seen somewhere on the web that it can be done using a Raspberry Pi, but as it is based on RiscOS, Retropie is a no go.

@Stevezx81 You have to create it yourself. Just open a new document in the folder then save it with the name I gave you.

@SpudsMcToole

Also, earlier today I answered your question on how to get the Bally Astrocade running with MESS. You can use either of those examples to get just about anything else running.

@chipowski

No problem. Glad it's working.

@herb_fargus One day, hopefully. Thanks for the update.

@chipowski Thanks. I used to have it working with CHAIN LOAD. Now it doesn't, but I'll try with RUN ELITE instead.

@teller In my advmess.rc file, I have:

input_map[key_lshift] keyboard[0,lshift] or joystick_button[0079_0006_3,2] input_map[key_rshift] keyboard[0,rshift] input_map[key_shift] auto bbcbp128[home_pi_retropie_roms_bbcmicro_thrust]/input_map[key_lshift] joystick_button[0079_0006_3,2] or keyboard[0,lshift] bbcbp128[home_pi_retropie_roms_bbcmicro_thrust]/input_map[key_rshift] joystick_button[0079_0006_3,2] or keyboard[0,lshift]

Obviously, the joystick buttons will be different for you. There's unfortunately not a lot of consistency overall between everyone's setups, so experimentation is probably the only way to get there.

Nevermind, I discovered what I am doing wrong.

So........ I feel so Slow. Also remember to rename your bios files from .bin to .rom.... But now I got it to work.... Happy me..