Help a confused newbie

suikodentir

Some questions on how exactly roms are read, I followed the tutorial and copied games over, and sure enough it worked.

But then even with usb stick removed I can select the games and play them, how is that possible its not copying them to sd card is it?

Also I wanted to make a backup pen drive which will also be used on my travel pi, but its no longer creating the folders

Can I just create the folder names or does it need to be done by the pi?

mitu

@suikodentir I think it needs to have a folder called retropie-mount and when you insert the stick, the other folders (w. roms) are copied over.
As for the games still appearing after removing the stick, I guess they're still on the sdcard (not removed).

suikodentir

slightly awkward now, I am transferring my roms back across to usb, but now the pi wont boot I assume as its now looking for usb stick.

Frustrating so far!

Is there no way to boot from sd but load games from usb? Or at least boot normally from sd then it recognises the usb?

mitu

@suikodentir If you follow the docs at https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Running-ROMs-from-a-USB-drive/, it should work - either with the USB drive or not. Did you change the boot sequence completely to boot form the USB for the RPI ?

Trailjacker

You don't need the usb inserted every time to play games and that sounds like it is working fine. Heres the basics for copying roms to the sd card if you need clarification:

To copy roms to a Retropie build with usb, you need a fat32 formatted flash drive.

Then create a folder called 'retropie' and insert it into the Pi. Retropie will then create rom subfolders in the 'retropie' folder. You cna then take the usb stick to a desktop/laptop/etc. and whatever roms you paste in those folders will be copied to the Pi when it's inserted the next time. Give it plenty of time to copy if you have many or large files. Then remove the usb drive and you're good to go.

Why do you want the Pi to run on usb ? That seems to be more of a pain than using the sd card unless you are testing multiple units and need a quick swap.

If your pi doesn't seem to boot I would check the hdmi connection or tv input and make sure its not something simple first.

I'd also insert the sd card into a PC/MAC and see if it can be read at all. If not, your card is now bad or corrupted. Hopefully you are not unplugging the card or pi until you perform a software shutdown.

suikodentir

Not sure what I did, I think I broke something as all I did was change the name of the unit so I can recognise it easier when accessing it from my windows pc

All I get now is a screen saying something like directory not found and asking for a username and password (when I put in default it gives me some screen with a basic image of a control pad but no way to boot into retropie)

Typed in "emulationstation" and it gives me error

Trailjacker

@suikodentir You need to reinstall the Retropie image.

suikodentir

Thanks done all that, ok now my final questions it should be.

I was thinking of putting Kodi next to retropie, confused on how to do that, also about the emulators themselves confused on hot keys and such.

I just used one of my already assigned buttons for the hot key when it wanted one on menu.

But how do I for example go to a save state menu, or a cheat menu?

mitu

@suikodentir Usually you press 'Hotkey + X' to bring up the RetroArch menu, from which you can access the cheats options.
A list of the key bindings is in the docs - check out https://retropie.org.uk/docs/RetroArch-Configuration/#hotkeys and substitute 'Select' with the Hotkey you selected.

Trailjacker

For default controller mapping here is a link:

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/RetroArch-Configuration#default-joypad-hotkeys

Oops mitu just beat me to it