Easiest way to access file structure?

Agrajag

I have Retropie running on a Canakit 8GB setup with everything stored on a 32GB microSD card that's connected via ethernet to my home network. It's running great. We have a sort of NAS/server in the house with a complex folder structure for our roms that Retropie is pointed to with a SMB share. That also works fine.

However, based on recent replies to topics I've posted, with respect to MAME things get much more complicated. Our MAME roms are pretty much current as it's pretty easy for PC-based cores to use those. Retropie, if I understand this all properly, seems to do better/prefer older cores (like MAME2003, etc) with ROM sets that are specific to that core. Given that, I might be better off just moving the MAME roms from the SMB share to local storage with better-matched ROM versions.

If that's accurate then what is the easiest way to access the file structure on the Pi4? I can't just easily point Windows Explorer at it and see it and would prefer not having to manually remove the card every time to do any sort of ongoing file copies and moves.

Thanks...

BreadPie

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Transferring-Roms/

I normally just get the retropie's IP address on the network and open it in Windows Explorer and transfer that way. But, you could also install the WebManager package, enable it at boot, and transfer through that.

Agrajag

@breadpie Thanks! Both great options.

Agrajag

@breadpie Wanted to note that I tried going to the RetroPie IP address (It was 192.168.1.178 and now I've set it to static for future use) and it didn't work. Just didn't resolve.

Is there some step I overlooked? I just tried going there in Chrome and in Explorer. No go on either front.

BreadPie

@agrajag Before I go down the rabbit hole of other possibilities, it sounds like you tried it in your browser. That may be partly my fault and partly Microsoft's for having similarly named software. I'll apologize for my half. Go instead to Windows File Explorer, and type either

\\RETROPIE

or

\\192.168.1.178

into the bar at the top. Let me know if that works.

This is not necessary to do in order to get the above to work, but if you want to use a browser, then you need to install the web manager. Install it by going into Retropie Setup, updating the setup script, then going into Manage Packages->Experimental Packages and it's near the bottom as "retropie-manager" After installed, go to configuration, and enable it on boot. To access it from a browser you would then type:

http://192.168.1.178:8000/

Agrajag

@breadpie Nah. I tried File Explorer and Chrome (not Internet Explorer), and yeah, I hate that they named them so similarly.

What I forgot was the double-slash.

BreadPie

@agrajag Ah, so success now then?

Agrajag

@breadpie Looks like it, and thanks again for that. Time to put this to use.

I wanted to get meta data for all my Favorites and using the scraping tools seems overkill for this unless I find out how to scrape just a game at a time. Scraping MAME with 30,000+ roms will take an insane amount of time and space when I really just care about say, 150 titles there, plus the various console titles.