Honestly there is enough information out there about installing retropie or some other front end on a PC that the process is pretty easy and spelled out even for someone as tech stupid as me. Given the price vs performance of relatively old and cheap PCs vs a new pi or even a pi4 for that matter, if I had it to do over again I would just go the PC route especially after figuring out that what some people define as “acceptable” performance for emulators like dream cast and N64 is an entire galaxy removed from what I would consider even playable. So really it all comes down to your specific needs. If your trying to emulate simple games >25-30 years old then a pi3 or 3b+ should be able to do it and honestly there are even exceptions to that depending on the game. If it’s after the last two decades just go PC. But really, sit down and make a list of about 10-20 games that you basically can’t live without, research the hardware needs for them and go with the strongest one.

@dankcushions well, they are OCing the pi4 to 2.16Ghz (cooling tower ? maybe water cooling ?), downclocking the emulated cpu to 30% (so any game that used more than 30% of gamecube's cpu speed is out of reach), and that's still far from perfect. The situation will probably improve when we get affordable SBCs at the level of a snapdragon 845, but we are still probably 2-3 years away from that.

For up 16bit era stuff I'm running a Pi 3B+ in an R2D2 that I think I will make another of when there is official support for Pi4. I also have a GPi case with a ZeroW for portability and such. I've got a few other 3B+ builds sitting around in Retroflag cases. I've got a 10L beer keg that I was thinking of turning into a portable emulation machine but I don't think it would get much use. For more intensive emulation I have and Odroid XU4 in that snazzy N64 style case with the screen on it. It's a great little board but I use my Pi setup a lot more. Not really relevant but I'm thinking of modding my Wii to be able to play GameCube games from an HDD.

@Swedishkiller12 It has more power and an important software part (GLES compatibility) is solved/improved. The emulators on N64 still could need some work, but the Pi 4 will most probably be a big improvement on N64 games. We can't say more than this.

Sounds like retrogame isn't installed, or it isn't loading when booting, or isn't configured properly. If you open the terminal (press F4) and push your buttons and see if the corresponding letters appear. If you see no letters when moving the joystick or pushing buttons, then retrogame isn't working

@lawarmotte no worries, you're not the first person to make this mistake. :)

Thank you! I will try!

@vsilvalopes I know the Dualshock4 new driver (well, it's the same driver for both DS3 and DS4) also adds a device for the touchpad present on the controller (which appears as a mouse), but I don't remember the DS3 controllers having the same touchpads. Can you pair one DS3 controller, then run the following 2 commands lsusb cat /proc/bus/input/devices and post the output ? Have you installed the customhidsonly driver from the RetroPie-Setup drivers section before pairing the controllers ?

@quicksilver Thanks for the summary. I found these threads from you about overclocking: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/16155/overclock-stability https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/16930/overclocking-discussion https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/17544/core_freq-vs-gpu_freq-n64-performance and this thread by @thelostsoul that you participated in: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/17032/stresstest-a-fanless-overclocked-pi-3-b-no I will read them in my next spare time.

I have a Shield Portable, which emulates pretty well. I wish they'd make an updated version with new hardware.

For me I still have my original SNES with games and a Sega genesis new in [slightly abused] box with a large pile of games I picked up on ebay for $32. Both are sitting in a box in a closet, along with an Intellivision, N64, and a brand new Colecovision still in the box. (Plan on eventually getting an n64 everdrive) I ultimately want to have a game room where I can display them on a shelf with a CRT and other gaming "paraphernalia" as @ClassicGMR has mentioned. (Along with a full size Virtual Pinball Cabinet I dream of building) What I do have set up is an early run Dreamcast, which is capable of playing burned games on a CD-Rs (which I eventually want to upgrade to GDEMU) Xbox360 which I installed custom DVD drive FW to allow playing backup discs Hacked Wii U - a very underrated system Wii U contains the entire content of the Wii board for backwards compatibility, including wii's ability to play gamecube discs. Since the Wii U's laser will not read gamecube games, that core is disabled. Wii U and Wii must be hacked seperately as they are 2 different system. The Wii U part is unlocked to play all backups directly from an external hard drive. The wii partition, using Nintendon't, will unlock the gamecube core, and allow games to be read from disc images. It also has an awesome, graphical custom loader which will natively launch wii and Gamecube games stored on a USB thumb drive! 3 Generations of Nintendo all playing Natively one one system, plus nearly all N64 games playable great using Virtual Console Nintendo Switch is the latest console I have - modded of course ;) I know the list contains a lot of newer systems, but for me, those are the ones that benefit most from playing them natively. Especially with how buggy Dreamcast, Gamecube and N64 emulation can be. The older systems I really want more for nostalgic / collectable reasons.

Well something happened that might point to the cause of the problem. I have been using it for the past 3 hours no issues. I decided to plug some earphones in so obviously, the board moved a bit. Well as soon as the board moved, it started to disconnect the controllers and a few seconds after, it froze! So now I think it is in fact the power cord from the PSU that's causing all these issues! I'll replace it and see if it goes away...

I know this post is, like, two years old, and I hope I can get an answer but what did you use to design this?

@ozzy2991 said in A little help here?: I switched to a 5v 2 amp powersupply Still not enough really to be sure that's not your issue.

Ok, Thanks for your help!

Wow, it looks awesome.