cubieboard5 (aka as cubietruck plus or allwinner h8)

Jaapdaniels1984

I understand this is not really a concern, is it possible to get a cubieboard5 working with retropie? it's an opensource board... i can't install right away since it doesn't recognise my console. since i don't (yet) know anything about programming. hope this is allowed to ask... thanks for reading anyway.

BuZz

@Jaapdaniels1984 it is possible with some code changes I guess. From someone who has a board.

Jaapdaniels1984

i've got one, and if someone would explain what is should look for i'm happy to set it up myself, but like i said, i never worked on anything ale then a c64 to program...

BuZz

@Jaapdaniels1984 You will need to understand how RetroPie works (with a knowledge of bash scripting), and knowledge of the cubie board 5 hardware and os to adjust it all to work (It is possible to get retropie working under any platform that has accelerated X and opengl also - I don't think that board has hardware accelerated opengl, but I could be wrong).

It's not really something I can guide you through.

Jaapdaniels1984

@BuZz it's lubuntu 14.04 or better said, linaro based, allwinner h8 arm (64 bits octacore, 2.0ghz, cortex-a7, powervr sgx 544), 2gb ddr3...

BuZz

GPU has opengl es. So RetroPie could be adapted - but as I said, it will require some coding knowledge.

Jaapdaniels1984

@BuZz bash is not really a problem, and i have a friend that understands c++ programming, but he's got no experience in coding for ARM systems. i don't know where to start reading the code and it looks to be a lot to read.

vbs

@Jaapdaniels1984
I think a good start would be to clone https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup.git to your board, run retropie_setup.sh and try to install the main components (which will probably fail). Then work your way through the scripts and see how to fix it.
All the different modules (emulators and also main components like emulationstation) are separated into different scripts you can find inside the folders scriptmodules/emulators and e.g. scriptmodules/supplementary.

Maybe first milestone would be to get Emulationstation compiling and running (scriptmodules/supplementary/emulationstation.sh).

Jaapdaniels1984

@vbs i can't install since i my platform isn't recognised... saying i need to manual setup __platform or something.

vbs

@Jaapdaniels1984
Then you will have to look into the code that recognzies the platform and adapt it accordingly I think.

Look in function get_platform in RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/system.sh

Jaapdaniels1984

@vbs found the code, is there a way for me to print/show what platform it detects? since this could be helpfull for progress later, and maybe for each progress step i could offer the modded sourcecode to someone here to look if it's the right way to go for public.

vbs

@Jaapdaniels1984
There might also be better way but you could add debug outputs to the script that write into a text file.

Also for really working with the code and make it available you should fork Retropie-Setup on github to your own account. Then you can make your changes in your own branch and make it available to others.

Jaapdaniels1984

@vbs i'll be on vacancy next week so i won't be able to check for some days, will let you know if i make some progress.

Jaapdaniels1984

@vbs somehow i can't get the debug to report what's __platform... it gaves me just __platform instead of what is found in the label... might be doing it wrong... used echo __platform just before error discription...
like i said it's first time i try something like python/c i only know how html (only the basics), (visual) basic, assembly and turbo pascal works.

Jaapdaniels1984

@vbs it seems function get __platform() { seems to be incompitable with my OS:
Distributor ID: Linaro
Description: Linaro 14.0.4
Release: 14.04
Codename: trusty

vbs

@Jaapdaniels1984
Yes I understand. Making RetroPie work on your platform is probably quite a bunch of work. Will require changes at many places and permanently checking what does work and what does not and then trying to fix it. If you are going to go on that journey then feel free to ask questions if you get stuck. But be prepared to invest a good heap of time into digging and understanding how RetroPie works.

Jaapdaniels1984

@vbs i can get it to get pass the platform, but then it says my os is incompitable...
my os is a modded lubuntu, just minor modded, though kernel is ehh... lets say not really how i expected it to be...
i'm willing to go through a painstaking pile of work... buti can't get it to show wht's in __platform... i expect the function tries to read a file that simply is never made in my linux. that's how much i understood of python 2.7 explenation... fixating it to be rpi3-64 gives me the eroor of incapable os... wich seems to be an error i'll have to face a lot... it seems they didn't just mod the OS to work with other hardware, they removed a lot of things too... the software centre was missing... and i'm missing a lot of libaries that i thought were standard with lubuntu (they said it was ubuntu but it's more like lubuntu).

backstander

@Jaapdaniels1984
Try something like sudo __platform=whatever ./retropie-setup.sh for now but later you'll need to figure out how to add your platform to the code once you get a lot of it working :)

I learned this trick when trying to get the Raspberry Pi version of RetroPie to install in QEMU but EmulationStation didn't work because QEMU doesn't emulator the graphics card.

Jaapdaniels1984

@backstander thanks, now i got the installer to work... adding Linaro to the same line as ubuntu was in system.sh and using your manual command... using rpi3-64 instead of whatever.

Jaapdaniels1984

@backstander i forgot... the script for reading my pltform is just not working for my OS... it'll respond with emptyness... i think that my OS missing some txt and cfg files, had this problem before with setting up audio... there was just no default alsa mixer set, nor was the file there with the info... if someone could tell me where lubuntu/ubuntu stores this information i can make a patch for the cubieboard5... like i said for some reason it is as if the software for this board is stopped developping when it worked for the basics...it's missing quite some stuff i thought to be standard with ubuntu... then again, i knew that it would need some polishing...