Retrogaming, Retropie, Raspberry Pi shenanigans!

[y0ur5h4d0w]

hi all! 

i'm building my very fist bartop, googling around i found out that one of the "easiest" way to make one is to use a Raspberry Pi using RetroPie, i've basically already ordered everything except for the Raspberry, my question is, which version and kit is the most worth to buy? I almost zero knowledge about raspberry and the whole system but i'm actually curious about getting some knowledge! Right now i was looking at a couple Raspberry Pi3 or Pi3 Plus kits i found on ebay or aliexpress that around 100 and 140€, was wondering if there's someone who can advice a sweetspot between performances and price since i'm building it for me right now
I live in italy and i'm seeking mostly on Amazon but i don't mind ebay or aliexpress too if there's something worth!

On RetroPie website 's guide they advice to use this one:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/CanaKit/page/19109D80-639C-40C8-9222-DC6775C304EE

...but honestly in italy this full kit costs between 170 and 200€ and i'd like to use the VGA to HDMI adapter i already have

These 2 are the links to ebay and aliexpress kits i've found for the pi3 which are almost half the price

https://www.ebay.it/itm/114094743859?hash=item1a9093a133:g:t0YAAOSwi5VeNc7o

https://it.aliexpress.com/item/32945416376.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.7296270aOWyHkQ&algo_pvid=2f641e50-7c39-4c3f-b1f0-8bb47504c71a&algo_exp_id=2f641e50-7c39-4c3f-b1f0-8bb47504c71a-7&pdp_ext_f={"sku_id"%3A"66160471373"}

[Kilrah]

Don't know about the Italian market specifically but a bare 4GB Pi4 should be around 60-70€. The accessories included in the starter kit are where you can save since you may not need them all/be able to find those you need way cheaper. 

[rikitikitavi]

If you are certain that Pi3 (model B/B+) is sufficient for your purposes, then you probably don't need a big size SD card (unless ps1/CD games).

A charger, unless your bartop kit includes smth.

A little heatsink that you can stick to the chip is a good idea, while a fan is most probably an overkill.

 

If you are not sure which Pi or if paying extra for Pi4 worth it -> google/youtube your (required) systems performance. I mean if you only play smth like NES, you might be better off with a much cheaper Pi Zero

 

Can't say if you can find any good price, but I wouldn't pay more than ~USD 120 (total) for a basic Pi3B+ kit (charger, case, SD, heatsink).

[ADarkBard]

I used a Pandora's Box 6 for my bartop. Works flawlessly.

[OhioYJ]

On 12/2/2021 at 8:36 AM, y0ur5h4d0w said:

I almost zero knowledge about raspberry and the whole system but i'm actually curious about getting some knowledge!

What systems do you want to emulate? Im using RetroPie for a couple small systems. Typically I've been using the 3B+ Pi for them. The only thing I've using the Pi 4 so far for is my PiHole. I actually prefer the 3 for these projects strictly because of the full size HDMI. It's convenient not to need a special dongle or cable. 

 

The Pi 3 runs all the 16-bit and prior stuff no issues. When you start to get into 64-bit stuff or CD based consoles, people will say it works. It requires a bunch of tinkering in my experience. It also seems there isn't one thing that works for everything (64-bit / CD stuff that is). Whereas on a PC with more power all that stuff just works without the fuss. So I pretty much leave the Pi based emulation to SNES / Sega and older. So for me a bunch of NES and Atari primarily. Now I will throw arcade out there as well, as I've run quite a few Arcade titles on mine, and they run pretty well too. 

[steelo]

On 12/2/2021 at 8:36 AM, y0ur5h4d0w said:

hi all! 

i'm building my very fist bartop, googling around i found out that one of the "easiest" way to make one is to use a Raspberry Pi using RetroPie, i've basically already ordered everything except for the Raspberry, my question is, which version and kit is the most worth to buy? I almost zero knowledge about raspberry and the whole system but i'm actually curious about getting some knowledge! Right now i was looking at a couple Raspberry Pi3 or Pi3 Plus kits i found on ebay or aliexpress that around 100 and 140€, was wondering if there's someone who can advice a sweetspot between performances and price since i'm building it for me right now
I live in italy and i'm seeking mostly on Amazon but i don't mind ebay or aliexpress too if there's something worth!

On RetroPie website 's guide they advice to use this one:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/CanaKit/page/19109D80-639C-40C8-9222-DC6775C304EE

...but honestly in italy this full kit costs between 170 and 200€ and i'd like to use the VGA to HDMI adapter i already have

These 2 are the links to ebay and aliexpress kits i've found for the pi3 which are almost half the price

https://www.ebay.it/itm/114094743859?hash=item1a9093a133:g:t0YAAOSwi5VeNc7o

https://it.aliexpress.com/item/32945416376.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.7296270aOWyHkQ&algo_pvid=2f641e50-7c39-4c3f-b1f0-8bb47504c71a&algo_exp_id=2f641e50-7c39-4c3f-b1f0-8bb47504c71a-7&pdp_ext_f={"sku_id"%3A"66160471373"}

Depending on what systems you wish to emulate, a raspberry pi zero ($10 USD) should be plenty to run Atari/NES/Genesis/SNES era games. Sometimes you have to play with the settings for some 16 bit titles (starfox comes to mind), but it's not difficult in retropie. If you wish to emulate N64 and above, you'll have to go with a rpi 4...I've tried it on a rpi 3 and it was a stuttery mess.

[y0ur5h4d0w]

On 12/2/2021 at 5:51 PM, Kilrah said:

Don't know about the Italian market specifically but a bare 4GB Pi4 should be around 60-70€. The accessories included in the starter kit are where you can save since you may not need them all/be able to find those you need way cheaper. 

 

On 12/8/2021 at 5:49 AM, rikitikitavi said:

If you are certain that Pi3 (model B/B+) is sufficient for your purposes, then you probably don't need a big size SD card (unless ps1/CD games).

A charger, unless your bartop kit includes smth.

A little heatsink that you can stick to the chip is a good idea, while a fan is most probably an overkill.

 

If you are not sure which Pi or if paying extra for Pi4 worth it -> google/youtube your (required) systems performance. I mean if you only play smth like NES, you might be better off with a much cheaper Pi Zero

 

Can't say if you can find any good price, but I wouldn't pay more than ~USD 120 (total) for a basic Pi3B+ kit (charger, case, SD, heatsink).

 

On 12/10/2021 at 1:10 AM, ADarkBard said:

I used a Pandora's Box 6 for my bartop. Works flawlessly.

 

On 12/10/2021 at 2:58 PM, OhioYJ said:

What systems do you want to emulate? Im using RetroPie for a couple small systems. Typically I've been using the 3B+ Pi for them. The only thing I've using the Pi 4 so far for is my PiHole. I actually prefer the 3 for these projects strictly because of the full size HDMI. It's convenient not to need a special dongle or cable. 

 

The Pi 3 runs all the 16-bit and prior stuff no issues. When you start to get into 64-bit stuff or CD based consoles, people will say it works. It requires a bunch of tinkering in my experience. It also seems there isn't one thing that works for everything (64-bit / CD stuff that is). Whereas on a PC with more power all that stuff just works without the fuss. So I pretty much leave the Pi based emulation to SNES / Sega and older. So for me a bunch of NES and Atari primarily. Now I will throw arcade out there as well, as I've run quite a few Arcade titles on mine, and they run pretty well too. 

 

On 12/10/2021 at 3:27 PM, steelo said:

Depending on what systems you wish to emulate, a raspberry pi zero ($10 USD) should be plenty to run Atari/NES/Genesis/SNES era games. Sometimes you have to play with the settings for some 16 bit titles (starfox comes to mind), but it's not difficult in retropie. If you wish to emulate N64 and above, you'll have to go with a rpi 4...I've tried it on a rpi 3 and it was a stuttery mess.

thanks everyone guys! in the end i found this ebay listing for around 90€ (85 after using the xmas coupon from the ebay app) that looked pretty interesting and i bought it   RaspberryPi Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi 4-STARTER KIT (4gb) 5051259227293 | eBay
 

now my question is: 

retropie seems to NOT like the fact that i want to run my roms from an external HDD  i've tried all their guides for automatic and manual rom mount but somehow after using the manual mount of my HDD retropie seems not to recognize it after the reboot... i was thinking about running retropie straight from the HDD since is a 500GB 5400rpm (slow i know) is it possible? if it's not a really good solution, are there some alternatives to retropie? 

[IPD]

a 128GB micro-SD card isn't enough to house all your gaming needs?

 

I mean, if it's not--that's fine, but you may be pushing the limits of what a Pi can do with bigger games (read newer and more graphic intensive).

 

I bought mine prebuilt of ETSY.  

[y0ur5h4d0w]

2 minutes ago, IPD said:

a 128GB micro-SD card isn't enough to house all your gaming needs?

 

I mean, if it's not--that's fine, but you may be pushing the limits of what a Pi can do with bigger games (read newer and more graphic intensive).

 

I bought mine prebuilt of ETSY.  

right now i'm running a 500gb WD scorpio blue that i suppose is 5400rpm and games looks pretty nice and smooth so i guess i'd stick with a 256gb SSD soon... at least and HDD or SSD is way more reliable then an SD card (and waaaaay faster in case i need it)

[steelo]

4 hours ago, y0ur5h4d0w said:

 

 

 

 

thanks everyone guys! in the end i found this ebay listing for around 90€ (85 after using the xmas coupon from the ebay app) that looked pretty interesting and i bought it   RaspberryPi Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi 4-STARTER KIT (4gb) 5051259227293 | eBay
 

now my question is: 

retropie seems to NOT like the fact that i want to run my roms from an external HDD  i've tried all their guides for automatic and manual rom mount but somehow after using the manual mount of my HDD retropie seems not to recognize it after the reboot... i was thinking about running retropie straight from the HDD since is a 500GB 5400rpm (slow i know) is it possible? if it's not a really good solution, are there some alternatives to retropie? 

I am not as familiar with Linux as many other posters on here, but I know you can mount a HDD. It's a little strange in Linux though (especially if you're accustomed to Windows) as you have to mount the drive and kind of create a directory on your SSD to 'link' to your external drive. So, after you mount the drive, retropie will see this new directory as the external HDD. It's doable, but a little intimidating for new users (and it's still confusing to me). Google is VERY helpful in finding out how to do this...

 

Here's an example of the command line I used to mount an external pen drive on my pi, please note 'usbstorage' is the directory linked to the pen drive. You will most likely also need the first 2 lines as they give read/write access rights.

 

sudo chown -R pi:pi usbstorage
sudo chown -R 775 usbstorage
sudo mount -o uid=pi,gid=pi /dev/sda1 usbstorage

 

 

Here's a really good link that I used to figure this out...

 

https://geekworm.com/blogs/news/how-to-mount-usb-storage-on-raspberry-pi

[OhioYJ]

1 hour ago, y0ur5h4d0w said:

right now i'm running a 500gb WD scorpio blue that i suppose is 5400rpm and games looks pretty nice and smooth so i guess i'd stick with a 256gb SSD soon... at least and HDD or SSD is way more reliable then an SD card (and waaaaay faster in case i need it)

I know I found having my entire collection of ROMs on a retropie a mess to navigate. I use the HTPCs for that kind of emulation. That way I can open a folder and just double click a ROM I want. On my RetroPies I cherry pick ROMs that way selecting things from the GUI front end is manageable. I don't want to scroll through a en entire collection to find one thing. Not to mention most of the time it's a handful of titles you play regularly anyways. I switch them out every so often, but I have several that are always on there.

[centurion_08]

Any idea what they gona pack in Rasp4?

[IPD]

I have a Pi4.  Hardware is completely different than whatever emulator software you are running.