@Ashpool thanks for the reply! ... you've helped me rule out some things and gave me more to think about and research. I'm determined to get RetroArch working seamlessly with both a keyboard and my arcade controls (none of which resembles a gamepad go figure!)

@mitu ok thanks! I'll take a look at this...

In the end, I made a new retropie image and then made sure to properly configure the controller at startup. The other issue was related to faulty card reader.

@craigbot said in Noob: can someone please help me understand input and input devices?:

I tried xboxdrv according to the instructions, but it doesn't seem to be there:

It's not installed by default, you need to install it first, from the drivers section of the packages.

FYI anyone reading.

I added a sleep 1 to the ydotool script at launch and a sleep 1.5 to my emulationstation auto launch script for a more stable result.

@sleve_mcdichael That worked! If I hold down select, now any of the quick menu hotkeys open the menu. Hey, I can go with that! Cool, then that's problem solved!

@mitu Thanks for the suggestion. I thought as much, but worth checking.

@CobraDesign47 said in Retroarch no Core installer:

. Could someone help?

RetroPie doesn't have a 'standard' RetroArch installation w.r.t. cores. Cores are managed manually from RetroPie setup and they're automatically set to be started depending on the system where the ROM/game is located. You don't need to start RetroArch and then open a core/content like you'd normalluy do on a bare RetroArch installation, instead you launch the game/ROM directly from EmulationStation.

As for the original question - did you configure your keyboard in EmulationStation - as an input/controller ? It should automatically configure the keyboard for RetroArch also.

By default, configuring the keyboard from EmulationStation will configure it as P1, if you wish to make the keybord work as P2, then you'll need to manually modify the retroarch.cfg configuration file for RetroArch and replace the player # in the bindings, i.e.

input_player1_a="X" input_player1_b="Y" ... #etc

with

input_player2_a="X" input_player2_b="Y" # and so forth

You may try the standalone px68k emulator and configure a keyconf.dat to map the key to something on an EN-US keyboard. The key code for OPT1 is 0x7 (see here). You may even do this temporary - if there's a game that supports saves on a user/floppy disk you can then re-use the disk with the game started on the libretro core.

Thank you for your answer. Actually I played a bit with retroarch.cfg, with someof the controllers pluged in in differents usb port and it seems to work now ! Not exactly sure what really made it work though :)

@UrHombreAbe said in Keyboard:

I would not know where to begin in connecting via SSH

Maybe the documentation page I pointed at earlier ? If that's something that you're not familiar/confortable, maybe try a different keyboard ?

Issues solved.

The problem was that emulationstation didn't have permission to right to /opt/retropie/configs/all. All keybidnings are working fine now.

@mitu Ahhh on the keyboard to be PAIRED? No, I did not understand. Thanks, I'll try that.

edit: of course, it now works. I can't quite believe I didn't understand that part of the instructions haha

@tmxretro the "h" key is the default retroarch "reset content" hotkey and, without a controller connected, there is no default "enable hotkey" hotkey configured, so all the other ones (like "reset content") will work on their own, with just a single keypress.

You can toggle game focus with the "game focus (toggle)" hotkey (default: scroll_lock, configurable from settings > input > hotkeys > game focus (toggle)). While game focus is enabled, other hotkeys (including "exit emulator") will not function, passing full keyboard control to the loaded core; press scroll_lock again to disable game focus and return hotkey functionality.