Asus Tinker Board

Charononus

I have a WIP branch. Will do a PR against the main development when more complete. Unfortunately the performance and video sync seems poor running under the X environment.

Asus sent me details about a framebuffer driver, but it required a kernel patch and it's a bit outside of the RetroPie mandate.

Perhaps if they include that in new images it could be used. I need to do more testing with gles/SDL retroarch backends. I will update the thread when I have something to report. Cheers

Cool to hear about some progress. Hopefully ASUS works on their image some more. I really would like something a little more powerful than a pi in that price range to run retropie on. This seems like the best one I've seen if it can all be worked out.

enderandrew

@jamesbeat RetroPie looks like a great software stack, but I'm worried about performance on the Pi 3 specifically for the N64 and Dreamcast emulators.

A Pi 4 seems a ways off so I've been considering running it on a PC or another SBC. I'm curious to hear about your PC setup. The Tinker Board seems promising, but a decent Linux GPU driver seems to be holding this up. I'm curious what they're using for the GPU under Android then.

Does anyone know of another SBC that does work with RetroPie that is slightly beefier than the Pi 3?

PhoenixJedi

Wondering if any progress has been made on this yet... There's a lot of local places that have tinker boards across the US (like Micro Center). This would allow us to make a much more powerful retropie.

ADAMSITE

I recently acquired a Tinker Board to play with RetroPie. While this is still an ongoing process, I did run into the same SDL2 and mali-fbdev problems mentioned above. When I contacted Asus, they provided source code modifications to compile fbdev support into the Debian kernel. Even after I recompiled my kernel and forced the core components of RetroPie to compile, I still end up with the error message about being unable to initialize SDL2.
I'm not really surprised by my results thus far. The Tinker Board is relatively new to the market (the oldest post in this thread is six months ago). I'll just have to keep trying different options and with the help of the internet, everything will eventually work correctly on the Tinker Board.

DannyBeatz

Launchbox says that it can launch through Kodi.

I just bought a tinker board in hopes to make an emulator. I have seen a lot of people being able to install and run Kodi on the tinker board.

On PC I have used a launchbox as it makes your library of roms look a little nicer then other emulators and adds box art to the roms etc all that crap. They have wrote that there is a plugin called big box that you can download for Kodi on the Launchbox website.

I dont know if this helps anyone. I will give this a shot when the board arrives on wednesday and tell you guys what happened. If anyone wants to give this a go and report back what happened that would be really helpful.

PhoenixJedi

Any luck on this? I'm waiting on a success to grab a tinker board myself.

MultiDJRoni

@BuZz Are there any updates yet? I just used my Raspberry for another Project so i will buy a new one soon just for RetroPie. Is there support for thinkerboard now or still not for a while?

Depending on that i will buy a second raspberry or a tinkerboard.

Thanks for your answer and have a nice day!

BuZz

@multidjroni No. I have said I will update the thread when I have news.

Ecks

Doesn't the Tinker Board have something like Ubuntu on it so you could run retropie that way or do they use a totally different OS because i never really researched it.

DannyBeatz

So far I have just been running this on android.

Ecks

@dannybeatz said in Asus Tinker Board:

So far I have just been running this on android.

Right now they have Debian which is also in beta as well but worth a shot to try out and see if the Linux version of RetroPie will work.

BuZz

@ecks It won't work. Different hardware. RetroPie image targets the RPI specifically.

Ecks

@buzz said in Asus Tinker Board:

@ecks It won't work. Different hardware. RetroPie image targets the RPI specifically.

But what about this then because that doesn't look to be on RPI and i have seen video's of people installing it on older laptops as well.

BuZz

@ecks That's a source build for X86 because we support OpenGL targets on top of X.

The tinker board support will also be a source install on top of X. Code changes are needed.

Ecks

@buzz said in Asus Tinker Board:

@ecks That's a source build for X86 because we support OpenGL targets on top of X.

The tinker board support will also be a source install on top of X. Code changes are needed.

But it still doesn't hurt for him to try it out and find out if it might work out because if i had a Tinker Board and a old 8gb SD card (which i would install the OS onto) i would test it out.
Also if he is using Android he could always use RetroArch as well since it is kind of similar in a way.

BuZz

@ecks It would be a waste of time though as it won't work. The RetroPie image wouldn't even boot as the boards have different hardware / firmware / boot systems.

As for a manual source install on top of Ubuntu - it will need code changes. I have already got stuff working, but it's not finished. Anyone with some knowledge can try out my WIP branch - https://github.com/joolswills/RetroPie-Setup/tree/tinker_board - but note I won't offer any support at this stage as it's still a WIP.

PhoenixJedi

@buzz said in Asus Tinker Board:

@ecks It would be a waste of time though as it won't work. The RetroPie image wouldn't even boot as the boards have different hardware / firmware / boot systems.

As for a manual source install on top of Ubuntu - it will need code changes. I have already got stuff working, but it's not finished. Anyone with some knowledge can try out my WIP branch - https://github.com/joolswills/RetroPie-Setup/tree/tinker_board - but note I won't offer any support at this stage as it's still a WIP.

I'm hoping you get this fully functional. The tinker board's specs alone might bridge the gap and let N64 run smooth..

herb_fargus

@phoenixjedi the n64 doesn't even run smooth on a PC so I wouldn't hold your breath

PhoenixJedi

@herb_fargus said in Asus Tinker Board:

@phoenixjedi the n64 doesn't even run smooth on a PC so I wouldn't hold your breath

I have it running quite smooth on an overclocked PI3 at 1400. I don't like to OC it though, even though i have it heatsinked and fan cooled.

Ecks

@herb_fargus said in Asus Tinker Board:

@phoenixjedi the n64 doesn't even run smooth on a PC so I wouldn't hold your breath

I sort of wonder what kind of PC you're running because my back up system with a C2Q and a GTS 450 can play N64 games at 60 frames and looks pretty smooth.