Earliest Pi that can successfully run Retropie

ZombieMedia

Hi there,

So, I have a lovely little Pi3 running retropie, and it runs a dream.

I've discovered that I also have a few older Pi models knocking about my house (not sure which versions off hand). But if I were to set up another retropie (maybe for my kids), what's the earliest model that would successfully run it?

Cheers chaps

D

obsidianspider

@ZombieMedia You should be able to run it on a 1st generation Pi, but newer games would be slow.

ZombieMedia

@obsidianspider said in Earliest Pi that can successfully run Retropie:

@ZombieMedia You should be able to run it on a 1st generation Pi, but newer games would be slow.

So roms up to 16bit would be okay?

obsidianspider

@ZombieMedia It's my understanding that a Zero is essentially a really small 1st generation Pi, so anything a Zero can run should be ok (Up to SNES/SFC/Mega Drive/Genesis, etc.), but heck, throw RetroPie on an SD card and try it out. :) If anything, it'd be good to hear back from you on what games did work well and what didn't. It may encourage someone else to make use of some old Pi they have in a drawer.

ZombieMedia

@obsidianspider
Awesome - thanks man

I may dust one off over the weekend and see what I can do with it!

I'll update as I go

D

monstermadeofman

Surprisingly a Pi zero can also run certain earl PSX games without overclocking!

cyperghost

@ZombieMedia Well.... there could be issues with NeoGeo and some SNES games (those that used a SuperFX-Chip). Be sure to run the Pi1 with a least 900MHz and try to raise to 1000-1100 MHz. Take care with the overclocking if you use a non 40pin GPIO model... the old B v1 and v2 series aren't as robust as the newer B+ (40GPIO pin) series. The Zero runs out of the box with 1GHz.

Imho all 8bit titles are no problem and the 16bit systems ... esp. the Genesis run at full speed. Even PSX can be used....

@monstermadeofman
You're welcome :)

ZombieMedia

Turns out that I had no time at all on the weekend to tinker with the old pi at all...

Hopefully this week :)

kinghoostine

@ZombieMedia I have a rpi 1b with 512mb ram. I just got retropie running on it. I had issues with a 8g sd card. Anyways it's seems to run most nes games without any lag. However most snes games I've tried are somewhat laggy and the audio is somewhat distorted. Now there may be some adjustments I can make to optimize, but I probably won't mess with it too much. That's just what I have experienced.

barbudreadmon

@kinghoostine Are you using lr-snes9x2002 (previously "pocketsnes") ? It was running fine on my overclocked rpi1 2 years ago.

kinghoostine

@barbudreadmon I will have to check what the standard emulator is for snes. I also have a Bluetooth keyboard and a WiFi adaptor that are no longer needed that are more than likely taking up resources. I wasn't going to tinker with this one because I have a rpi3 coming but now I'm hooked.

kinghoostine

@cyperghost 900mhz is for sure minimum. 1000 is the best setting for over clocking my rpi1 b to alleviate lag. Also setting the sound latency to 48 in retroarch settings gets rid of the distortion. I cannot speak to how damaging over clocking is to this device, 1000mhz is an aggressive setting.