THANK YOU @dankcushions ! Your pointer was half of the solution so let me write the other half in case anyone else searches for this answer. Setting the resolution in the retroarch Options menu did not have any effect until I also turned on "Alternate render method" in the same menu. At that point all resolution changes took immediate effect (upon leaving the retroarch UI) and now this all works perfectly. I will write up the rest of my method to launch rom-less system soon! Thanks again.

I am going to answer this one myself in case anyone else needs this info in the future. After looking through the run_mess.sh script itself, I was able to see that the message "hn613128pc64.bin NOT FOUND (tried in pv2000)" was trying to tell me that lr-mess was looking for the BIOS file in a pv2000 subdirectory of the main BIOS directory. Once it was placed there the logic to skip the software list/hash started working properly and I was able to launch roms that did not match the official hashes.

Nobody?

@VictimRLSH That's interesting, but a totally different category of thing.

@tobas I used the binary install on a 3b. So I know it works that way. Check the experimental install menu, I think the binary install is in there.

@rkoster Cheers, but as I said, unfortunately I'm unable to install lr-mess for reasons I don't understand.

This guide has been updated to provide details on optimal mapping for Creativision. I went to the controller overlay images and checked every button used in every game; the suggested mapping should make all games playable except Music Maker, which requires a keyboard. I'll try doing the same for the Arcadia-2001, but it used way more buttons way more often. Football, for example, uses all 12 buttons on the keypad, and some of them are contextual.

@SpudsMcToole @mitu I was able to run Casio PV-1000 using lr-mess. It took me 36 hours to compile lr-mess on my Raspberry Pi 3b (stretch) with the original power supply, a swap of 2gb and a gpio CPU fan. After the compilation a hash folder is created in /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/mame/hash. The file pv1000.xml contains the description of the roms with the valid sha1 hashes. You can check if your rom has the same hash with "sha1sum <yourrom.bin>". If it's the same, you have to zip it. The name of the zip file should be the "software name" which is defined in the pv1000.xml. And the bin file name inside should be the "rom name" which is defined in the pv1000.xml So for your rom the zipfile should be "tutankhm.zip" but the file inside should be "tutnkham.bin" <software name="tutankhm"> <description>Tutankham</description> <year>1982</year> <publisher>Casio</publisher> <info name="serial" value="GPA-103"/> <info name="alt_title" value="ツターンカーム"/> <part name="cart" interface="pv1000_cart"> <dataarea name="rom" size="8192"> <rom name="tutnkham.bin" size="8192" crc="a0b606d8" sha1="56efa2ab7c4a6db7b44714e46c5bf2ba71983ee8" offset="0000" /> </dataarea> </part> </software>

(I've also tried installing Quasi88, which seems to have gone fine, but attempting to boot a game disk just leaves me looking at a black screen saying "V2 4MHz". I can access the menus with F12, but nothing in them gets me anywhere.) EDIT: Ah, wait - so far as Quasi88 goes, it seems I was just really unlucky in my choice of games. I managed to pick a 100% fail rate of ones it doesn't seem to run (eg Xevious and Pac-Man). Other stuff like 1942, Bomb Jack and Dig Dug all work. They still don't in AdvMESS, though.

@John_RM_70 Aha! The key was renaming the BIOS file to dragon32.zip! (From d32.zip.) Many many thanks for that. Now I have the Dragon OS screen showing, if I could only figure out why the A key won't work (leaving me only able to type "CLODM") I'd be sorted...

@teller B-Em uses the library Allegro 4.x and other libraries so I think it would need Raspbian installed.

@Darksavior Nearly everyone has coding skills, to a degree. Even a limited ability can net some amazing results. Ever play around with even Game Genie? I started with BASIC, years ago. How simple things were then, heh. C++ can be pretty crazy, and I will probably never have a "full" fluent grasp of it. But, one day at a time, anyone can learn more and more...and achieve results.

@BuZz After waiting for FBA to get neocd support, I finally got around to trying it. It doesn't support chd and it doesn't support cd audio. Any chance for a binary of lr-mess in the future? It takes over a day to compile and tends to fail the last time I tried, and atm it seems to be only emulator with proper neocd support.

@mitu That just gives me a segmentation fault. If it's too much trouble then I'll just try asking the person that compiled lr-mess successfully and hope that he can share it. The reason I wanted to try is because the person said he could succesfully run neogeo cd chd games. If latest mame can also do this now, I wonder how much work would it be to backport it for the mame2003-plus guys.

I forgot to say, I found these command lines in the /opt/retropie/configs/emulatorname/emulator.cfg for each emulator and removed the %ROM% parameter.

You should also give the Amstrad CPC, a go. Great games, and when programmed properly they were often very colourful games that looked best across all the 8-bit computers. I got the Pi Amstrad emulator working, and it looks and runs great. Again, I own the real thing, but I can't use the same TV as the Pi, since the Amstrad came with it's own 14" monitor. So a comparison isn't apples to apples. But it's close. That Micro Men docu, was good. But, like you said, a few liberties were taken when it came to Sir Clive. I believe he was portrayed a bit too nicely, probably for TV. Some people from that era have said he has often a bit of a bastard, and wanted things completed yesterday.

@edmaul69 And Bless you for taking a look into this. I am just so unsure of what I am going wrong...