Indeed I can load the ROMS without the USB connected.
I want them to stay om my USB or Network so I will try the second link also.
Thx for the information.

@mistermints fun times!

Run through the setup tutorial here

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/11443/tutorial-how-to-add-drastic-ds-emulator-and-configure-it-and-add-roms-with-retropie-manager/9

Then scroll to my post at the bottom for the correct syntax for /.emulationstation/es_systems.cfg

I have a feeling that will resolve your issue

You can try to use the SD Card Copier that is now available in Raspbian. I don't know if it's available in Jessie tho, so I'm not sure if you could install Raspbian within Retropie and copy your running SD to an SD connected via USB.
Otherwise you need to set up an extra Card just with Raspbian and use two card readers to clone your card. The tool will clone your card to smaller/bigger cards and shrink/expand the filesystem automatically.
I only tried it with my OSMC card and got an error message on the new card, but OSMC is not suppose to have the filesystem size changed afterwards and i was using an older Noobs version. So I'm not sure if it would work with Retropie flawlessly and i don't have spare cards to test it.

@jonnykesh , I've had good luck with Universal (mentioned above) and it makes it pretty easy to tweak some that might be missed.

@jeffjordan Another nice trick with the neogeo.zip is this: If you are using lr-fbalpha to play these games, you can stick the neogeo.zip file in the BIOS directory instead of a ROMs folder. FBA will check there for the neogeo and use it. That way, it is out of the games list regardless of filters/metadata.

@mitu So that was interesting ! Well, the theme had problem, fixed by changed to nes-mini theme (beautiful one !)
But problem was, from the USB transfer method, folder was generated like "SNES" but emulationstation need "snes"...

Thank you for your help !

@proxycell said in Building packages with retropie_packages.sh has terrible results!:

it comes with some packages I'd rather avoid

Which can easily be uninstalled through the setup script too.

Yeah I second the idea that you can manually download and create a game set for your dad. I believe he just wants few to try out first? then it won't be too much and takes lots of time from you.

@Trailjacker I fixed it I just switched emulators by entering the config setting of the n64 emulator

@thomen Normally, I would suggest checking RUNCOMMAND, but you mentioned you are using Attract Mode. I would have expected Attract Mode you to be explicit about which emulator gets used, meaning, you would know what emulator because you had to set it up that way.

Perhaps someone more familiar with Attract Mode can add a better answer.

Figured out how to do it indirectly.

In \retropie\configs\all\emulationstation\es_systems.cfg
<system>
<name>mame-mame4all</name>
<fullname>Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator</fullname>
<path>/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-mame4all/roms</path>
<extension>.zip .ZIP</extension>
<command>/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 SYS mame-mame4all %ROM%</command>
<platform>arcade</platform>
<theme>mame-mame4all</theme>
</system>

In \retropie\configs\mame-mame4all\mame.cfg
rompath=/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-mame4all
samplepath=/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-mame4all/samples

Put all game zips in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-mame4all/
Duplicate empty zero byte zip file names under /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-mame4all/roms to generate the menu in subdirs.

This also fixes issue where sample.zips shows up in emulation station menu.

Okay, so all versions will probably be fine. It has nothing to do with debugging for emulating.

Did you follow these steps: https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Running-ROMs-from-a-USB-drive#automatic-mount-easiest-method
As that is in my opinion the easiest way.

After using ClrMamePro and updating my ROM set... and finding out that i didn't have to go through all of that....
i already had the correct ROM set version. All i had to do was copy over dkong.zip and then ReStart EmulationStation.
Donkey Kong showed up and played just fine after that. Thanks for all the Great Advice.!!!!!
Later, David, ThunderBoyDavid

I had to set the Scraper to "No-Intro" instead of "theGamesDB". That did the trick.

look here

click on an emulator an it will tell you what format they need to be

From the Docs there is a link to a Google spreadsheet with compatibility list of the games for the lr-fbalpha emulator. It contains the full name of the game for each rom version. I use CTRL+F in Firefox to open the search bar.

I usually use the base version, as it is the "normal" one (normally). @user50217 Thanks for pointing out this. I was thinking about to reorganize my Neo Geo collection and this is an important information to me. To be more precise, I meant the information about NGH home version of rom and NGM. I thought its only depending on the bios.

got it to work using fba, thank you all

It is very noticeable on certain games. Try WWF No Mercy on n64, it's night and day the PAL Vs NTSC versions.