Know your versions: Lessons for installing RetroPie

Installing RetroPie is traditionally very, very easy to do. Like, stupid easy. But you know, since we do sometimes run into a few issues  when installing RetroPie, we’re going to talk about a recent installation of RetroPie 4.7 which was a bit of a mess, but in the end, really wasn’t so difficult after all. Confused? Yeah, so was I. Read on:

Background: After a very long wait between versions, RetroPie 4.7 was released this month with a host of new features and improvements, including the fact that is running on Raspberry Pi OS (buster) . In fact, not long after the initial release, RetroPie 4.7.1 was pushed out with a few bug fixes which were related to performance issues that affected EmulationStation‘s scraper and frame rate. Long story short, I was keen to upgrade my existing RetroPie setup to the latest version.

How to resolve issues when installing RetroPie 4.7.1 (or any other version)

Now all of that is great news but the installation this time around was anything but smooth. I decided to go with a fresh installation of RetroPie 4.7.1 and ran into a few snags which I’ll detail here:

1. First I downloaded the new RetroPie image for RaspberryPi 4 and wrote the image to my SD card.
2. After booting into the new image, the boot process hung with the following message:

pi@retropie:~ started daily apt upgrade and clean activities

3. The PI was clearly hung so I rebooted and still ended up at the command prompt. Clearly, it seemed that EmulationStation was not launching.

Troubleshooting EmulationStation autostart

4. To make sure that EmulationStation is set to launch automatically, run the following command:

pi@retropie:~ sudo ./RetroPie-Setup/retropie_setup.sh

Navigate to Configuration / tools -> autostart and select Start Emulation Station at boot

5. Once autostart was set, I rebooted and still EmulationStation did not launch automatically. Time to try launching EmulationStation manually by running:

pi@retropie:~ emulationstation

After trying to launch EmulationStation manually we see the following errors. This is a pretty good indication of a hardware issue. In fact, this is the kind of error you may get if the image isn’t compatible with your hardware:

Nov 28 00:32:24 lvl0: Error creating SDL window!
Could not get EGL display
Nov 28 00:32:24 lvl0: Renderer failed to initialize!
Nov 28 00:32:24 lvl0: Window failed to initialize!

Checking your Raspberry Pi Model

6. How to see what model Raspberry Pi you have

At this stage I checked my Raspberry Pi hardware version and revision number from the command line using this command:

cat /proc/device-tree/model

Result:

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Plus Rev 1.3

Well shit. That would explain the display issues with EmulationStation wouldn’t it?

If you go back up to Step 1, you’ll see that I had downloaded an RetroPie image for Raspberry Pi 4, when in fact, I have a Raspberry Pi 3. Ouch. I could have sworn I had a RPi 4, but clearly that is not the case.

7. Wallow in self pity/embarrassment.

8. At this point, I went back to download the correct image for my Raspberry Pi model and I restarted the installation. This time the installation was very smooth and predictable and we now have a functioning RetroPie 4.7.1 system.

Setting up 8Bitdo bluetooth controllers

Final Note: Setting up bluetooth controllers (classic SNES 8Bitdo or others) has often been a challenge for many. Thankfully, RetroPie.org now has a great document on how to set up an 8Bitdo Bluetooth controller on their website. Check it out.

Happy gaming, and don’t forget to check your versions!

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