ODroid XU4 and RetroPie

Lamaman1971

I've just got my hands on an ODroid XU4 - Im using it for a development project (nothing to do with Emulation) and wanted USB3. Anyway - obviously - wondered if there are any plans to enable RetroPie on it? Im guessing not - but it IS a rather tasty bit of hardware and runs Debian rather well. Ive seen the earlier thread but thats now 5 months old.

herb_fargus

@Lamaman1971 lakka has support for it as far as I've seen and that covers a good part of what's in retropie

None of the devs have that board either and time is limited so we've spent our time primarily with the pi

Lamaman1971

Yeah - fair enough - thought Id ask is all. It is noticeably quicker - or it seems to be from my limited use anyway - might open up some previously unusable or hit and miss emulators. Since we are going to be waiting for the Pi4 I might have a look at Lakka.

tipoto

You should maybe try the OGST image:
http://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=98&t=7322

This image is really well done and has all the emulators you need.
The big problem with the XU4 on Linux is that there are some tearing issues, BUT, the timing is maybe not too bad for you since Hardkernel is working hard, right now, to release an official version of the Kernel version 4.9.X, which should probably fix this horrible issue. A pre-realease is available and they are debugging as much as they can: http://forum.odroid.com/viewforum.php?f=146

Here is a video I've done, showing Attract-Mode working on my XU4 with OGST (it's work in progress and a lot of systems are missing) :

Here are a bunch of videos that could interest you ;)
https://www.youtube.com/user/Mretaprime/search?query=XU4

roleo

Hello, I am trying to install RetroPie on ODROID XU4 and, at the moment, it seems to proceed ok.
My goal is to run reicast.

I downloaded and installed the Ubuntu 16.04 image: ubuntu-4.16-minimal-ODROID-xu3-20160706.img.xz
I updated all the system: apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get dist-upgrade
The dist-upgrade is mandatory otherwise the user part of mali driver is misaligned with respect to the kernel part.
I followed the instruction on https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Odroid
sudo apt-get install -y git
cd
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup.git
I added a new section in the system.h file:

--- RetroPie-Setup.ori/scriptmodules/system.sh  2017-03-24 08:28:55.056280190 +0000
+++ ./RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/system.sh    2017-03-23 19:29:05.785427385 +0000
@@ -229,6 +229,9 @@
             ODROID-C2)
                 __platform="odroid-c2"
                 ;;
+            ODROID-XU3)
+                __platform="odroid-xu3"
+                ;;
             "Freescale i.MX6 Quad/DualLite (Device Tree)")
                 __platform="imx6"
                 ;;
@@ -304,6 +307,15 @@
     __default_makeflags="-j2"
 }

+function platform_odroid-xu3() {
+    __default_cflags="-O2 -mcpu=cortex-a15.cortex-a7 -mfpu=neon-vfpv4 -mfloat-abi=hard -ftree-vectorize -funsafe-math-optimizations"
+    __default_asflags=""
+    __default_makeflags="-j2"
+    __platform_flags="arm armv7 neon mali"
+    __qemu_cpu=cortex-a15
+    __has_binaries=0
+}
+
 function platform_x86() {
     __default_cflags="-O2 -march=native"
     __default_asflags=""

Before starting with compiling retroarch I added the following file:
https://github.com/Pivosgroup/buildroot-linux/blob/master/package/amlogic/opengl/src/include/EGL/fbdev_window.h
in /usr/include/EGL/
because the definition of the struct fbdev_window is missing in this version of mali headers.
I created a symlink /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libMali.so -> /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/mali-egl/libmali.so
otherwise emulationstation doesn't build correctly.
Finally I started retropie_setup.sh and I successfully compiled and tested the main packages: retroarch and emulationstation.
Now, I will try to build the emulators.

Lamaman1971

Wow - thats amazing - please keep the forum updated - watching with interest as to how you get along with the emulators! Cheers, Mark

BuZz

Just FYI, Thanks to Odroid who kindly sent me one, I have an XU4 and will be looking into adding official support to the codebase.

roleo

@BuZz
Good news! Thanks to you and to Odroid!

I successfully compiled lr-imame4all, lr-mame2003 and lr-fbalpha.
I also compiled reicast (changing 2 line in cfg.cpp and cfg.h) and I am very happy about the performance.

I have only 1 problem: the keyboard doesn't work in emulationstation.
I tried to use libsdl 2.0.4 instead of 2.0.5 but I didn't solve the problem.
So I compiled xpad driver and now I'm using a xbox 360 pad.

BuZz

unfortunately I cannot easily just include that header file - as the licence doesn't allow it (I dont really want to include a proprietary arm header or need to have to install it). However the latest Khronos headers also define the struct we need (just differently named).

I am trying to clarify on the odroid forum - http://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=95&t=26541

Assuming they are moving to the Khronos headers for all their systems, that would be the best olution (they just need to add / update them). I can then modify retropie to use the new struct name.

BuZz

My current plan is to hardcode the struct where needed. Saves having to worry about different includes.

BuZz

FYI - https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/pull/1942

roleo

@BuZz
I agree with you, it's only a simple struct with 2 int...

Thank you for your work.

Steve0

Thank you for working on this... I can hardly wait to run this on my XU4. Been tinkering with the various platforms and would love to be able to run one as clean as the Retropie. I can't help with programming.. too much of a noob, but I'm happy to test anything to give you another eyeball on it.

rmilyard

I too just picked up a XU4 to play around with. It would be awesome to run something as great as Retropie on this XU4.

So if that is this post the best place to keep updated on status? Also willing to help with testing or whatever might need to make this come true.

Wulf

@BuZz thanks for looking into this! I hope you get somewhere with it, if not, well, your effort is appreciated.

BuZz

@Wulf Odroid-XU4 basic support is working - you can install it manually on top of the Ubuntu Minimal image. However, not all emulators are available. Most libretro cores are, and most sdl2 emulators.

stikoyan74

I have managed to get retropie installed, i did the basic install, all the core and main packages are installed. I cant get emulationstation to auto start, its set to autostart in the setup menu, but on bootup I get the message - emulationstation should not be run as root. if you used 'sudo emulationstation' please run without sudo

Wulf

@BuZz thanks, I'm looking forward to using this (have to wait for USB adapter for eMMC flash module, I lost my original). BTW, is there a list of which emulators or/aren't working?

BuZz

@stikoyan74 you need to create a user and install under that via sudo (add user to sudo group).

BuZz

@Wulf no list, but only those that should work should show up (excluding experimental section).