PCSX-Rearmed: A great emulator for Pi-Zero but will it work with a Gameboy Zero?

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i_am_chap
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PCSX-Rearmed: A great emulator for Pi-Zero but will it work with a Gameboy Zero?

Post by i_am_chap » Fri Jul 14, 2017 12:11 pm

Back when I first received my Raspberry Pi Zero, I racked my brains for hours trying to get it to run Playstation games without poor framerate and crackly sound. But after much blood, sweat and tears, I can confirm that the optional PCSX-Rearmed emulator does indeed appear to work well. Sound, graphics and all!

Note - I'm talking about pcsx-rearmed, which is available from the "optional packages" menu within Retropie Setup, and NOT lr-pcsx-rearmed which is the default PSX emulator that comes ready installed with Retropie. I don't know what it is about it being a standalone, non-libretro emulator, but from my own experience, it appears to be the superior PSX emulator on Raspberry Pi Zero. (And despite the many online discussions about how to optimise lr-pcsx-rearmed for Pi Zero, hardly anyone seems to mention using pcsx-rearmed instead...)

HOWEVER, since completing my Gameboy Zero build using Kite's superb SAIO board, I am no longer able to run pcsx-rearmed on my Pi-Zero. Instead of booting up and running the chosen game, it displays a few screens of blue vertical lines before turning to a shade of green. At this point, the whole system is unresponsive, not even to the safe shutdown switch. The Pi must be hard reset.

I've been trying all sorts of things to get this emulator working again as it did before but so far, no luck. I suspect it may be something to do with the display settings that seem to be causing it to crash, though I may be wrong. For the working version, I had used a Retropie 4.2 SD card image taken from the official webpage, then the Pi was connected to a computer monitor via HDMI. Since completing the Gameboy build, I am now using Kite's most-up to-date variant of the Retropie SD image (SAIO 20170401-1) and the Pi is now connected to a 320-240 LCD screen through the SAIO board itself.

Maybe the Pi's looking for a HDMI connection that isn't there. Maybe this emulator just doesn't work with a DPI screen. I don't know. I've tried tweaking the video mode and framebuffer res for the emulator but haven't seen any difference so far, and I haven't had any luck . Could there be one or two lines of code that might help? If anyone has any recommendations, or if you'd like to try this for yourself and see what you find, I'd really appreciate it!

Thanks

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Re: PCSX-Rearmed: A great emulator for Pi-Zero but will it work with a Gameboy Zero?

Post by tinkerBOY » Fri Jul 14, 2017 6:16 pm

Can't you use the official RetroPie image on your Kite build?

I will try that emulator now and update you later.
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Re: PCSX-Rearmed: A great emulator for Pi-Zero but will it work with a Gameboy Zero?

Post by tinkerBOY » Fri Jul 14, 2017 6:40 pm

I tested the emulator on my build with retropie 4.2 and my screen just blue then goes black. Buttons will not response.
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New! tinkerBOY PowerSwitch v1.0 with Safe Shutdown
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tinkerBOY Controller v2.0 - GPIO buttons and builtin PWM Audio and Amplifier
tinkerBOY Controller v1.1 - simple pcb button
* DPI Adapter - better display for GBZ
* keyboard converters - IBM XT/AT Soarer's Converter | ADB to USB Converter

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Re: PCSX-Rearmed: A great emulator for Pi-Zero but will it work with a Gameboy Zero?

Post by Chrisagu28 » Sat Jul 15, 2017 1:50 am

I am curious of this as well. cause if this is able to get working then I might opt in for a second set of L and R solder buttons. Would love to play crash bandicoot on my GBZ. Maybe Kite might have a answer. following this thread.

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Re: PCSX-Rearmed: A great emulator for Pi-Zero but will it work with a Gameboy Zero?

Post by i_am_chap » Sat Jul 15, 2017 5:59 am

Thanks for your responses. I have found a solution! I'll share in just a second.

Zeroboy, I did try the standard Retropie SD image with my Gameboy Zero just to see what would happen but unfortunately, it wouldn't boot up at all! Or at least, the screen doesn't display anything. I'm pretty sure the Gameboy buttons wouldn't work either, and there's a bunch of other features optimised for use with Kite's board. Kite's SD image is pretty essential tbh, especially as I'm not adept enough to make my own tweaks to the original image.

Anyway, here's the solution I found. As I mentioned in my original post, there's surprisingly little written online about using pcsx-rearmed with a Pi Zero so information was pretty hard to find. However, I did find a Reddit post (link below) from about a year ago by someone who was having their own (different) issues with getting the emulator to work. It seems that when you install pcsx-rearmed onto your Pi, it doesn't seem to look in the right place for some necessary files by default. The Reddit guide explains how to change a couple of lines in the psx emulators.cfg so that the emulator behaves more predictably, and in this case, it solved my problem! Check the link here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comme ... o_version/

Now, there were one or two lines of text that were different in the guide to how they appeared in the psx config file on my system. This might be due to the guide being a year old and a little outdated, though I'm not sure. Either way, as long as the correct lines of text were changed exactly to what was described in the guide, it worked perfectly for me. Also, the problems that the OP described in the second half of the guide (once pcsx-rearmed had been booted up, having to navigate the options menu blind etc.) did not apply to me, so the first half of the guide was enough to resolve my problem.

Anyway, try it for yourselves! I'm currently having some issues setting up the controls to work properly, though I remain optimistic :) Let me know if you have any issues of your own.

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Re: PCSX-Rearmed: A great emulator for Pi-Zero but will it work with a Gameboy Zero?

Post by i_am_chap » Sat Jul 15, 2017 6:20 am

Chrisagu28 wrote:
Sat Jul 15, 2017 1:50 am
I am curious of this as well. cause if this is able to get working then I might opt in for a second set of L and R solder buttons. Would love to play crash bandicoot on my GBZ. Maybe Kite might have a answer. following this thread.
Chrisagu28, I had the same dilemma when preparing to build my GBZ. I absolutely do recommend installing a second set of L and R buttons! Even if you didn't use them for Playstation games, they're still useful as assignable function buttons for navigating other emulators, and let's face it, on a Gameboy Zero, buttons are pretty limited!

I did have an alternate solution if I wasn't able to get pcsx-rearmed working, so you always have other things to try to get your Playstation games running. Kite himself posted on his support thread in response to Pi Zero users suffering from poor PSX emulator performance. To get better performance out of the default lr-pcsx-rearmed emulator, you can make a couple of tweaks to the config file. Unfortunately, there seems to be a bit of a trade off between video and sound, so while your games should run more smoothly, you will have to sacrifice sound quality. But it still beats NOT being able to play Playstation games on a Game Boy, right? ;)

See below:
kite wrote:
Sat Apr 29, 2017 12:33 pm

I made some changes to the PSX config file to desync the audio from video, which made the audio VERY bad however the video was playable! Unless the game is 2D (E.g. rayman) then the Pi Zero isn't quite there yet.. if you're ok with terrible audio but playable video, put this in:

/opt/retropie/configs/psx/retroarch.cfg

Code: Select all

video_vsync = false
audio_sync = false
fastforward_ratio = 1.0
audio_out_rate = 44100
PS you'll also get better performance by turning off wifi
I haven't tested what Kite advised extensively, but I had a quick try and it does make a noticeable improvement.

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Re: PCSX-Rearmed: A great emulator for Pi-Zero but will it work with a Gameboy Zero?

Post by tinkerBOY » Sat Jul 15, 2017 10:28 am

i_am_chap wrote:
Sat Jul 15, 2017 5:59 am
Thanks for your responses. I have found a solution! I'll share in just a second.

Zeroboy, I did try the standard Retropie SD image with my Gameboy Zero just to see what would happen but unfortunately, it wouldn't boot up at all! Or at least, the screen doesn't display anything. I'm pretty sure the Gameboy buttons wouldn't work either, and there's a bunch of other features optimised for use with Kite's board. Kite's SD image is pretty essential tbh, especially as I'm not adept enough to make my own tweaks to the original image.

Anyway, here's the solution I found. As I mentioned in my original post, there's surprisingly little written online about using pcsx-rearmed with a Pi Zero so information was pretty hard to find. However, I did find a Reddit post (link below) from about a year ago by someone who was having their own (different) issues with getting the emulator to work. It seems that when you install pcsx-rearmed onto your Pi, it doesn't seem to look in the right place for some necessary files by default. The Reddit guide explains how to change a couple of lines in the psx emulators.cfg so that the emulator behaves more predictably, and in this case, it solved my problem! Check the link here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comme ... o_version/

Now, there were one or two lines of text that were different in the guide to how they appeared in the psx config file on my system. This might be due to the guide being a year old and a little outdated, though I'm not sure. Either way, as long as the correct lines of text were changed exactly to what was described in the guide, it worked perfectly for me. Also, the problems that the OP described in the second half of the guide (once pcsx-rearmed had been booted up, having to navigate the options menu blind etc.) did not apply to me, so the first half of the guide was enough to resolve my problem.

Anyway, try it for yourselves! I'm currently having some issues setting up the controls to work properly, though I remain optimistic :) Let me know if you have any issues of your own.
Thanks for that guide. Got it working to play Tekken 3 but the screen is flickering though the speed is a lot better than the default emulator. Do you know how to fix the flickering issue? Will try some other game tomorrow.
New! tinkerBOY PowerSwitch v1.0 with Safe Shutdown
Game Boy Zero Controllers available @ tinkerBOY.xyz * Support
tinkerBOY Controller v3.0 - built-in usb controller, usb audio, and usb hub
tinkerBOY Controller v2.0 - GPIO buttons and builtin PWM Audio and Amplifier
tinkerBOY Controller v1.1 - simple pcb button
* DPI Adapter - better display for GBZ
* keyboard converters - IBM XT/AT Soarer's Converter | ADB to USB Converter

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