Hi there!
My first goal was to run Retropie on the Orange Pi zero 2w within Dietpi. Thanks to the community support I am now successfully running Retropie and want to gladly share the success!
Running up to Dreamcast, N64 and PSX with delight!
I have a great Bluetooth 8bitdo modkit collection: PS1, N64, SNES, NES and am happy to get the conversation running.
I do have some minor setbacks, issues and want to share the story here.
The ultimate goal is an arcade “travel” box, but the journey may take as long as it needs
Starting on a positive note.
It works!!!
If I load a N64 game and I exit with esc, the Orange Pi Zero 2w freezes or disconnects from the hdmi, I need to hard reset when this happens. I don’t know how to easily killall without access to the terminal.
Is this an OS issue, or a retropie issue?
Edit: when I lower the Dietpi OS resolution, this is less likely to occur. If anyone has any tips and tricks, I’m happy to hear about it.
[Solved] NES, Not able to run. Drops back into Retropie menu.
Was using corrupted roms without headers, such as (U) (E)
[Solved] PSX, So far no succes.
Blackscreen when loading game, crash.
Found a RetroPie specific BIOS pack and replace the whole BIOS collection
[Solved] N64, still can’t exit the game back to the Retropie menu with hotkey and often crashes.
…Disabled ‘0’ mupen64plus hotkey in opt/retropie//all/autoconf.ini
… Added J0B6/B7 at emulation Stop in opt/retropie//N64/Mupen64plus.cfg
Wired Xbox 
J0B6/B7
Bluetooth Xbox J0B10/B11
N64 8 BitDo J0B9/B11
[Solved] Dreamcast, not even appearing in menu
I had .7z files in the Roms folder. Unzipped them.
[Solved] Sound works via HDMI, keep having white screen with sound error messages when loading game.
After setting the sound options specifically to Default/Master and rebooting the device, the warnings no longer appear.
Best ways of working to connect 8bitdo modkit Bluetooth controller with Retropie on the Orange Pi Zero 2w, so far…
Edit: Found out the 8BITDO Modkit controllers switch whenever they want unexpectedly between e.g. szmy power ltd… and P30 Mod kit. Have to set up 2x for every controller, as you don’t know which it picks, in RetroPie. It sucks, but when done it’s all good.
Edit 2: discovered that I can alternate the Szmy and P30 modkit mode by turning it off and then on by holding start+R1 when turning on
Do not install blueman-manager.
Use Retropie Bluetooth menu to connect to the controller. Assure the /var/lib/bluetooth/MACADDRESS/ does not contain the controller device you wish to connect. Delete the controller file, and also from the cache folder, if any issues occur.
[Solved] New error messages crashing my emulation. Only when pressing the start button, with 2 of my 8BitDo modkit Bluetooth controllers.
“Warning: output n/a not found: ignoring”
#______________________________________#
Seems to be only with PSX, but quickly decided to reinstall Retropie entirely.
Still have the error, but only during exiting with hotkey(select) + exit(start)
The file ~/configs/all/videomodes.cfg contained Lr-psx-rearmed = “HDMI-1:0x41”
I removed it and the warning was gone.
It has been two weeks since I have started and I’m trying to think on what to improve to get closer to the final goal.
[Solved] I have noticed that if I run the device on my 1600:900 monitor, it is more likely to crash upon exiting ROMS. I have little to no issues on my 1360:768 TV. I will try my small refurbished old laptop monitor to see how that runs. 720p seems to hit the sweets pot and works fine, lower is also possible.
[Solved ish] I still have Mupen64plus running on 16:9 aspect ratio. I’d prefer it to run on 4:3 too.
The best solution is to set the monitor to 4:3 when launching N64, alternatively set mupen64plus.cfg resolution to your screen size 16:9. It will then adjust to 4:3 ( It will screw up the size when changing monitor with different screen resolution)
[Solved] I would like to eventually load directly into Retropie from turning on the device. Don’t know yet how this can be achieved.
I would like to keep the possibility to get back into Dietpi OS. Can I just force it to start at launch like I’m starting Pulse audio at launch?
Created a script to force opening a terminal and launching emulationstation through the terminal, this script is launched via the Xfce autostart optionmenu
what do you want to start at launch?
Retropie / Emulationstation
you can have a look into dietpi-autostart, maybe custom script options are suitable.
1 Like
Thanks for the eye-opener. I dove into it straight away.
4 issues/errors arose after this:
- user 1000 did not have permission to open the custom.sh [solved it by giving the permission]
- my usb device (mouse keyboard with volume buttons) does not work if I directly launch Emulationstation.
- HDMI sound errors, still have sound. Image 1
- during usage, program can’t use/reach some files. Image 2
Hoping you have an idea and that this is not Retropie related.
Could it be that it starts retropie and Emulationstation if I start it from within the Xfce? The HDMI errors might be only at the initial start-up and still showing before starting game 1.
If it were to be solvable, this might solve the resolution crashes as the device skips xfce resolutions when exiting games, because it will never load xfce in the first place. 
[26.847092] hdmi-audio-codec hdmi-audio-codec.5.auto: Only one simultaneous stream supported!
[26.855771] hdmi-audio-codec hdmi-audio-codec.5.auto: ASOC: error at snd_soc_dai_startup on 12s-hifi: -22
/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh: line 536: fbset: command not found
How did you start retropi usually?
Hey Joulinar,
I am usually entering Xfce first, all my devices obviously load and connect, and from there I use the applications menu to open rpie in the games section.
Optional entry of rpie would be of course via terminal: Emulationstation
Which user you use to login to xfce?
ok means its working from desktop using dietpi user (id 1000) but not from auto start using same user?
Sorry, I see that I did not specify that emulationstation works with autostart from user 1000.
However, when it does, I loose the usb keyboad/mouse functionality.
Bluetooth works and I can start a game with it a controller.
RetroPie sadly cannot enter run command as mentioned above in the loadingscreen. (In this, I should normally be able to choose specific game settings like; default emulator, HDMI output resolution per game etc.)
@Joulinar Do you think this would be an issue more based on Retropie, or somehow the way Dietpi works?
Or could this even be caused by initially installing the system via Desktop and then omitting the Desktop environment?
my Knowledge on Retropie is limited. Maybe @MichaIng has some more experience on this
@Joulinar I have partially figured it out.
After analyzing the behaviour, I suspect the requirement to properly launch Retropie is to open it from a terminal window. This causes the errors by launching it via dietpi-autostart.
When I manually launch Retropie via Xfce desktop icon, it launches with a custom full screen terminal and uses this also, when launching a game, as a “preset option resolution-output” / “emulator choice” menu.
I have created an auto start on login within Xfce (also forced the 720 resolution within the script).
I did find a way to force the first terminal too max out full screen, but the option menu, when prompted, shows up in default size (not yet perfect).
Any ideas? 
Maybe:
[Possibly Solved] Somehow force all terminal windows to launch full screen by default? I have applied a script at startup to maximize all terminal screens open.
Edit: the initial terminal is now forced 100%, so no more borders anywhere
Use Autostart and any kind of terminal yet also omitting the desktop somehow?
