Retropie and amiberry

Geoff

Hello

Having had Amiga machines back in the day I came across the Retropie and Amiberry. So nostalgia overtaking me I bought a Raspberry Pi 4b thinking all the old games might be resurrected, but alas no and hence I have joined this forum for assistance.

I have installed Retropie and Amiberry and followed this article to the letter to try and get a game working.

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/19302/tutorial-painless-amiga-emulation-using-amiberry/1

I am using the Amiga Forever kickstart ROMS and they are stored in the BIOS directory. I have one adf game in the Amiga ROM folder for testing purposes but when it's run all I get is a black screen.

Any pointers on what is going wrong would be most appreciated.

Geoff

BadFurDay

@geoff that article is quite old and there have been substantial changes to Amiberry which means it wont work following such an old guide. Use this one instead: https://github.com/midwan/amiberry/wiki/Using-Amiberry-with-RetroPie---Installation-and-Setup

Also you should look to use WHDLoad instead of floppy disk images, much quicker load times and no disk swapping. The Retroplay lha files work as they are (no unzipping them needed) for an almost plug and play experience.

Geoff

@badfurday said in Retropie and amiberry:

Also you should look to use WHDLoad instead of floppy disk images, much quicker load times and no disk swapping.

In your quote above, how do I set up the WHDLoad?

Thanks

BadFurDay

@geoff follow the guide I linked to, to set up the emulator with the bios needed. Download .lha WHDLoad games, Retroplay does a load of them but I can't link to them here. Put the .lha files in your amiga rom folder and scan the games as you would any other system. I say it's almost plug and play because the Amiga is a computer system, some games work great with a joypad, some need a keyboard and mouse.

Geoff

@badfurday At present I do not have any .lha roms only adf which I can get running by setting all the details in the configuration screen and running it from there.

When you say "scan the games as you would any other system" do you mean for viruses?
If so do I scan them on my Win 10 system or do I nee a virus program on the raspberry pi.

Thanks for your help

Geoff

BadFurDay

@geoff I mean scan them in your frontend, I assume Emulationstation which may scan when it starts but I use Attract Mode which you manually scan once. So it then creates a gamelist or romlist. You might also want to 'scrape' them too, to get some artwork so your fronted looks nicer.

You should switch to .lha files, have a look for them as they are much better than .adf disks.

Geoff

@badfurday Could you tell me where to find Attract Mode please.

Zering

@geoff Forget about Attract Mode, it won't help you solve your problem in the least.
As BadFurDay said you need to find Amiga games in .lha format, look up the information that he gave you regarding that.

BadFurDay

@geoff if this is all new to you forget Attract Mode, stick with Emulationstation. When you add games and they show when you go into Amiga then forget everything I said about scanning or scraping. Get the WHDLoad .lha files instead of .adf and make sure you set up Amiberry as per the link I sent.

Geoff

@badfurday @Zering

Yes totally new to Amiga emulation. I've managed to get one .lha game to play and another which doesn't at the moment.

These two files are in the ROMs folder and show up in the Amiga list. Should the programs just start from here or do I need to do anything in the +Start Amiberry configuration section?

Thanks
Geoff

Zering

@geoff By launching an .lha rom from ES you're running the start menu anyway. If one of your roms doesn't work, then chances are you can bring up the Amiberry menu (with F11 i think) and tinker with options that will allow you to get it started.

Geoff

@zering F12 enters the configuration menus, in the Quickstart section should I have anything in the WHDLoad auto-config:box?

BadFurDay

@geoff if one game works the other should too. I would suspect, but might be wrong, that the issue is the game itself (so the .lha file, maybe try find it from another source) or if the game uses a different Kickstart rom maybe the issue is with that?

yserra

@geoff Amiberry runs ADF as well as WHDLoad (.lha) games. The black screen issue is usually pointing to a problem with your BIOS files.

If you installed the correct BIOS Kickstart files in the /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/ folder as described here and you get a black screen, then the common issue is you are trying to run Amiga 1200 games with the default Amiga 500 configuration, or any game for a certain Amiga machine with the default or the customized configuration for another Amiga machine.

Some steps you can do:

double check the names of your BIOS files
make sure all Amiga 1200 games have AGA in their name, so Amiberry will automatically chose the right Amiga 1200 configuration and not the Amiga 500 default configuration,
Launch the +start Amiberry script from Emulation Station, go the Paths panel and make sure the line Configuration Files: is pointing to /opt/retropie/configs/amiga/amiberry/conf,
Also, when you are there, click on the Update WHDload XML button (this XML helps to identify the correct configuration for your WHDload games)
Make sure you didn't change the default Amiga 500 nor Amiga 1200 configurations. You should never change the defaults in CPU and FPU, Chipset, ROM and RAM panels. Especially, you should never activate the JIT option to run a game. If you are not sure, simply reinstall Amiberry.

Geoff

@yserra Things are now progressing well and the games that I have are now all running OK.
Thanks for everyone's help.