OK . I guess nevermind. After hours of changing settings and rebooting and searching for answers, I changed a few more things again and rebooted again and now it works. Im not sure what I did to fix it but so far so good, Ill report back if it resorts to its old self.

@m2306 Thank you for the info!

The power switch on the ControlBlock lead to a small voltage-drop at the switching component (as does every electronically component). From other projects I know that especially additional USB devices can be problematic. I guess that when you disconnect, one or both USB devices (SSD, converter) the under voltage disappears. Alternatively, you could get an active USB hub that powers the additional USB devices and keep the connection between the RPi and the USB devices.

No problem. Glad to hear that things are working for you now!

@petrockblog It appears that I can get the service running by commenting out the line "[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0" and then starting the service. This also allows the service to run on boot. So, why does this line need to be commented out? I'm confused why this would work for everyone else and not my setup (even though I started from a completely fresh RetroPi 4.5).

Glad to hear that you are making progress! It should always be possible to use the ControlBlock together with any USB controller. You would just need to run the input configuration for each device on EmulationStation. All controller types should be recognised and working afterwards. Regarding your question about the need for an additional keyboard: What you would need to do is to configure the emulators such that you have full control with your arcade / gamepad controls only. That should be possible. Hope that helps!

Thanks for getting back to me, and thanks for making fantastic little bits of hardware, I hope it works out with the 3A+ I ordered the B model in the end, I figured that I might regret not having those extra USB ports down the line, and the larger footprint means I'll be forced into making a tidier build :)

Glad to hear that!

@m2306 I also need a few weeks to finish my stuff and get back to the Topic. I will keep you up to date as well!

@petrockblog I guessed as much, just me beeing a linux n00b. Thanks and sorry for wasting your time. Still, this could have been prevented with clearer instructions. It went fine with installing the software though, nice and easy to copy the commands, all clear there. Just small things like this one that you who know command line better maybe don’t realize that others don’t get.. Thanks again.

@m2306 Yes, it's possible to use different gamepads as P1, depending on the system you play or choose at runtime. You can use Meleu's joystick selection tool to do that.

OK, this is probably my last post on this matter. It isn't solved, by any stretch of the imagination, but i do have a workaround! I don't believe that the short has fried anything, the controlblock is still working exactly as advertised, but it DID scramble the outputs. All the outputs are still there, just in different places! If it is possible to re-flash the firmware i think it would restore the normal operation, but that is just a hunch, and as it stands now i am not willing to take the risk. Just in case someone out there ever has a similar problem i'm posting how i rewired the controlblock: WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! THIS WON'T WORK ON YOUR SYSTEM, IT FIXED MY SYSTEM ONLY. I ONLY POST HERE TO SHOW WHAT THE SHORT DID TO MY CONTROLBLOCK! In the end i rewired my project to match the new outputs of the scrambled Controlblock as follows:! Hope that helps, if anyone else finds themself in a similar situation! END WARNING! END WARNING! END WARNING! END WARNING! END WARNING! END WARNING! END WARNING! END WARNING!

A little more searching and I found a great thread that describes this: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/17533/how-do-i-get-these-led-arcade-buttons-to-light-up

I ran the installation with the new instructions and it still fails. I've tried both the standard install process as well as the quick installation. Each time I used a clean install of RetroPie 4.4

I have just pushed an update for the ControlBlock driver. You can now connect a button to P2, "A": Pressing that button will lead to a simulated press of Start + B, as well as a keyboard button press of "F1". Does this work for you?

Glad to hear that you found the problem.