Tutorial 10: Retroarch Advanced Config - Monku R1, R2, R3
-
Author: Brian A. Ree
Sections
0: Tools Needed
- A Monku Retro 1,2,3 / ODROID-C1+,2,XU4: link C1+ link C2 link XU4
(It's expected these devices are configured with Ubuntu and MATE. Click here
for R1 and R2 devices, and here for R3 devices.)
1: Introduction and Tutorial Goals
This tutorial will show you how to configure your retroarch software for all the devices we have build
tutorials for - Monku R1, R2 and R3. If you don't have one the information here could still be useful.
You can apply the knowledge to whatever system you're working on. But, all the testing done for the settings is broken
down by R1, R2 and R3 devices. If you want to build a Monku - Ubuntu based ODROID device like the one's we work with in this
tutorial click here for R1, R2 devices,
and here for an R3 device. Ok let's get to it.
Actually, a quick aside. I wanted to cover some small things that we may need to do ahead of time. If you're using the web browser on
your device make sure that your system time is up to date. Close retroarch and make sure you have a network connection. Click on the
Time in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Then click the Edit button, and then click the Time Settings button.
The system time should update via NTP in a few moments. Now you can browse the web without any error messages blocking you.
Now that that's out of the way, the next thing we need to do is check the volume of the system. I didn't check this and was perplexed why
the in-game volume was so low. Turns out the volume setting in MATE was too low. Close retroarch if it's open. Click the speaker in the top
right hand corner of the screen and make sure the volume is set to the max.
2: Monku R1 RetroArch Config
Let's take a look at the default emulators I like to use for the systems that run on the Monku Retro 1, ODROID-C1+, device.
All emulators were tested at 720p. The boot.ini files we use to set the device to the proper resolution can be found here.
You can copy the files into the /media/boot/ folder. To set the device to the desired output simply copy the target file
and overwrite the current boot.ini file then reboot the device.
Atari 2600: Stella
Atari 7800: ProSystem
ColecoVision: BlueMSX
GameBoy: mGBA
GameBoy Color: Gamebatte
MSX-1: fMSX
MSX-2: fMSX
NES: FCEUmm
Virtual Boy: Mednafen VB
Sega GameGear: Genesis Plus GX
Sega Master System: Genesis Plus GX
Sega SG-1000: Genesis Plus GX
When you run a ROM for the first time you will be prompted to choose the default emulator for that ROM only.
Fear not if you make a mistake or find that an emulator doesn't run things correctly you can choose to reset the
emulator association from the menu that comes up when you select a ROM. This will reset things to their default and you
can then choose a different emulator the next time you run the ROM.
If you want to exit a game press L1 + Select + Start + R1 and choose to close the current game. Press
L1 + Select + Start + R1 again to cose the menu and return to the game. To adjust emulator specific options
scroll down after pressing L1 + Select + Start + R1 and choose the Options entry. For the most part
you shouldn't have to adjust these settings for the emulators running on the Monu Retro 1 device, but just so you know where
it is.
Now on to the retroarch settings. We'll cover some general settings followed by screen shots of the configuration
I've been using for video, audio, and drivers. Don't adjust settings that aren't listed below, some settings are driven
and you don't need to worry about them.
Video Settings:
Suspend Screen Saver: ON
Start in Fullscreen Mode: ON
Windowed Fullscreen Mode: OFF
Show Window Decorations: OFF
Remember Window Position and Size: OFF
Integer Scale: OFF
Threaded Video: ON
Vertical Sync: ON
Hard GPU Sync: OFF
Black Frame Insertion: OFF
Crop Overscan: ON
Bilinear Filtering: OFF
A complete listing of the video settings follows in the next few screen shots. Take a look.
Again you can safely ignore the window size settings as these will be driven by the fullscreen mode
option. I had to turn fullscreen mode off to capture the screen shots but you should be fine.
Next up we'll go over the audio setting. I'll list the major ones first then show screen shots of all
the settings.
Audio Settings:
Audio: ON
Mute: OFF
Mixer Mute: OFF
Synchronization: ON
Audio Latency (ms): 72
Resample Quality: Normal
Lastly, below are the driver settings used for the Monku Retro 1 - ODROID-C1+. If you are using a different device
these may need adjusting. However, if you are using an Ubuntu based operating system on said device then you
might want to give these a try, they work great on the R2 running Ubuntu and MATE.
Now we'll get into the nitty gritty of some specific emulator configurations, specifically, blueMSX and fMSX.
While it sounds like they only emulate MSX systems blueMSX actually supports quite a few systems and runs
CalecoVision games really well. In order to get blueMSX and fMSX working we'll need to get a copy of some BIOS ROMS.
In order to get blueMSX running you'll need a copy of two folders from their stand alone installation. The
Databases and Machines folders are found in the blueMSX installation folder. You can get a copy of
blueMSX at this URL, http://bluemsx.msxblue.com/download.html.
Once you've installed blueMSX and found the folders in question copy them onto a USB drive and plug that drive into your
Monku R1. Locate the Odroid home directory by clicking the link on the desktop or by opening any file browser and navigating to the
home directory. Locate your ROMS folders. Now you'll need to place a copy of the Databases and Machines folder in the root
directory of any ROMS you want blueMSX to run. I placed a copy in my ColecoVision and my MSX folders. The screen shots below demonstrate
the proper setup for MSX and ColecoVision ROMS.
Because blueMSX seems to only have one setting for the system it is set to emulate I like to use it for ColecoVision games.
It runs them really well. In order to get blueMSX setup to run ColecoVision ROMS you'll need to start the emulator by running an MSX
or ColecoVision game then press L1 + Select + Start + R1 and scroll down to the emulator options entry. You can then set the target
system for the blueMSX emulator. I like to use blueMSX for ColecoVision games and fMSX for MSX-1, 2 games. But I setup both directories to
work with blueMSX just in case. The fMSX emulator doesn't work with ColecoVision games to the best of my knowledge so I don't add those system
ROMS to the ColecoVision directory.
To setup the fMSX emulator you'll need to find a copy of the following BIOS ROMS on the nets.
DISK.ROM
KANJI.ROM
MSX.ROM
MSX2.ROM
MSX2EXT.ROM
MSX2P.ROM
MSX2PEXT.ROM
MSXDOS2.ROM
PAINTER.ROM
Once you've located those BIOS ROMS place a copy of them in the root directory of your MSX games folder.
All your ROMS should be in one folder and these BIOS ROMS should be in there too. Retroarch will look for BIOS ROMS
in a few different places, I think, one of those locations is the root directory of the ROM itself.
Ok, that wraps up our review of advanced retroarch configuration for the Monku Retro 1 - ODROID-C1+.
You should be able to easily run all the systems listed above and have ColecoVision and MSX running side by side with
some nifty emulator configuration.
3: Monku R2 RetroArch Config
Let's take a look at the default emulators I like to use for the systems that run on the Monku Retro 2, ODROID-C2, device.
All emulators were tested at 720p. The boot.ini files we use to set the device to the proper resolution can be found here.
You can copy the files into the /media/boot/ folder. To set the device to the desired output simply copy the target file
and overwrite the current boot.ini file then reboot the device.
Atari 2600: Stella
Atari 7800: ProSystem
Atari Lynx: Handy
ColecoVision: BlueMSX
GameBoy: mGBA
GameBoy Advance: Beetle GBA
GameBoy Color: Gamebatte
MSX-1: BlueMSX, fMSX
MSX-2: BlueMSX, fMSX
NEC: Turbo Grafx: Beetle PCE Fast
NEC: PCE Super Grafx: Beetle SGX
NEO GEO Pocket: Beetle NeoPop
NEO GEO Pocket Color: Beetle NeoPop
NES: FCEUmm
SNES: Snes9x2010
Sega 32X: PicoDrive
Sega GameGear: Genesis Plus GX
Sega Genesis: Genesis Plus GX
Sega Master System: Genesis Plus GX
Sega SG-1000: Genesis Plus GX
Virtual Boy: Beetle VB
Wonder Swan: Beetle Cygne
Wonder Swan Color: Beetle Cygne
When you run a ROM for the first time you will be prompted to choose the default emulator for that ROM only.
Fear not if you make a mistake or find that an emulator doesn't run things correctly you can choose to reset the
emulator association from the menu that comes up when you select a ROM. This will reset things to their default and you
can then choose a different emulator the next time you run the ROM.
If you want to exit a game press L1 + Select + Start + R1 and choose to close the current game. Press
L1 + Select + Start + R1 again to cose the menu and return to the game. To adjust emulator specific options
scroll down after pressing L1 + Select + Start + R1 and choose the Options entry. For the most part
you shouldn't have to adjust these settings for the emulators running on the Monu Retro 2 device, but just so you know where
it is.
Now on to the retroarch settings. We'll cover some general settings followed by screen shots of the configuration
I've been using for video, audio, and drivers. Don't adjust settings that aren't listed below, some settings are driven
and you don't need to worry about them.
Video Settings:
Suspend Screen Saver: ON
Start in Fullscreen Mode: ON
Windowed Fullscreen Mode: OFF
Show Window Decorations: OFF
Remember Window Position and Size: OFF
Integer Scale: OFF
Threaded Video: ON
Vertical Sync: ON
Hard GPU Sync: OFF
Black Frame Insertion: OFF
Crop Overscan: ON
Bilinear Filtering: OFF
A complete listing of the video settings follows in the next few screen shots. Take a look.
Again you can safely ignore the window size settings as these will be driven by the fullscreen mode
option. I had to turn fullscreen mode off to capture the screen shots but you should be fine.
Next up we'll go over the audio setting. I'll list the major ones first then show screen shots of all
the settings.
Audio Settings:
Audio: ON
Mute: OFF
Mixer Mute: OFF
Synchronization: ON
Audio Latency (ms): 72
Resample Quality: Normal
Dynamic Audio Rate Control: 0.018
Maximum Timing Skew: 0.08
Output Rate (Hz): 44000
Lastly, below are the driver settings used for the Monku Retro 2 - ODROID-C2. If you are using a different device
these may need adjusting. However, if you are using an Ubuntu based operating system on said device then you
might want to give these a try, they work great on the R2 running Ubuntu and MATE.
Now we'll get into the nitty gritty of some specific emulator configurations, specifically, blueMSX and fMSX.
While it sounds like they only emulate MSX systems blueMSX actually supports quite a few systems and runs
CalecoVision games really well. In order to get blueMSX and fMSX working we'll need to get a copy of some BIOS ROMS.
In order to get blueMSX running you'll need a copy of two folders from their stand alone installation. The
Databases and Machines folders are found in the blueMSX installation folder. You can get a copy of
blueMSX at this URL, http://bluemsx.msxblue.com/download.html.
Once you've installed blueMSX and found the folders in question copy them onto a USB drive and plug that drive into your
Monku R2. Locate the Odroid home directory by clicking the link on the desktop or by opening any file browser and navigating to the
home directory. Locate your ROMS folders. Now you'll need to place a copy of the Databases and Machines folder in the root
directory of any ROMS you want blueMSX to run. I placed a copy in my ColecoVision and my MSX folders. The screen shots below demonstrate
the proper setup for MSX and ColecoVision ROMS.
Because blueMSX seems to only have one setting for the system it is set to emulate I like to use it for ColecoVision games.
It runs them really well. I also like to use it for MSX2 games on the Monku R2 device, it seems to work better in most cases than the fMSX emulator for MSX2 ROMS.
In order to get blueMSX setup to run ColecoVision ROMS you'll need to start the emulator by running an MSX
or ColecoVision game then press L1 + Select + Start + R1 and scroll down to the Options entry. You can then set the target
system for the blueMSX emulator. Since I like to use blueMSX for both ColecoVision games and MSX-2 games. This requires that I switch
the target system in the emulator Options menu. I always setup both directories to
work with blueMSX just in case. The fMSX emulator doesn't work with ColecoVision games to the best of my knowledge so I don't add those system
ROMS to the ColecoVision directory.
To setup the fMSX emulator you'll need to find a copy of the following BIOS ROMS on the nets.
DISK.ROM
KANJI.ROM
MSX.ROM
MSX2.ROM
MSX2EXT.ROM
MSX2P.ROM
MSX2PEXT.ROM
MSXDOS2.ROM
PAINTER.ROM
Once you've located those BIOS ROMS place a copy of them in the root directory of your MSX games folder.
All your ROMS should be in one folder and these BIOS ROMS should be in there too. Retroarch will look for BIOS ROMS
in a few different places, I think, one of those locations is the root directory of the ROM itself.
Ok, that wraps up our review of advanced retroarch configuration for the Monku Retro 2 - ODROID-C2.
You should be able to easily run all the systems listed above and have ColecoVision and MSX running side by side with
some nifty emulator configuration.
4: Monku R3 RetroArch Config
Let's take a look at the default emulators I like to use for the systems that run on the Monku Retro 3, ODROID-XU4, device.
All emulators were tested at 720p. The boot.ini files we use to set the device to the proper resolution can be found here.
You can copy the files into the /media/boot/ folder. To set the device to the desired output simply copy the target file
and overwrite the current boot.ini file then reboot the device.
Atari 2600: Stella
Atari 7800: ProSystem
Atari Jaguar: Virtual Jaguar
Atari Lynx: Handy
ColecoVision: BlueMSX
DinoThawr: Dinothawr v1.0924
Doom Demo: PrBoom v2.5.0
GameBoy: Gambatte
GameBoy Advance: Beetle GBA
GameBoy Color: Gamebatte
Magnovox-Odyssey2: O2EM
MAME: CSP 1, 2, 3 - MAME 2016, 2014
MSX-1: BlueMSX
MSX-2: BlueMSX
NEC: Turbo Grafx: Beetle PCE Fast
NEC: PCE Super Grafx: Beetle SGX
NEO GEO Pocket: Beetle NeoPop
NEO GEO Pocket Color: Beetle NeoPop
NES: FCEUmm
SNES: Snes9x2010
PS1: Beetle PSX HW
PSP: PPSSPP
Quake Demo: TyrQuake
Sega 32X: PicoDrive
Sega GameGear: Genesis Plus GX
Sega Genesis: Genesis Plus GX
Sega Master System: Genesis Plus GX
Sega SG-1000: Genesis Plus GX
Sinclair ZX Spectrum: Fuse
Virtual Boy: Beetle VB
Wonder Swan: Beetle Cygne
Wonder Swan Color: Beetle Cygne
When you run a ROM for the first time you will be prompted to choose the default emulator for that ROM only.
Fear not if you make a mistake or find that an emulator doesn't run things correctly you can choose to reset the
emulator association from the menu that comes up when you select a ROM. This will reset things to their default and you
can then choose a different emulator the next time you run the ROM.
If you want to exit a game press L1 + Select + Start + R1 and choose to close the current game. Press
L1 + Select + Start + R1 again to cose the menu and return to the game. To adjust emulator specific options
scroll down after pressing L1 + Select + Start + R1 and choose the Options entry. For the most part
you shouldn't have to adjust these settings for the emulators running on the Monu Retro 3 device, but just so you
know where it is.
Now on to the retroarch settings. We'll cover some general settings followed by screen shots of the configuration
I've been using for video, audio, and drivers. Don't adjust settings that aren't listed below, some settings are driven
and you don't need to worry about them.
Video Settings:
Suspend Screen Saver: ON
Start in Fullscreen Mode: ON
Windowed Fullscreen Mode: OFF
Show Window Decorations: OFF
Remember Window Position and Size: OFF
Integer Scale: OFF
Threaded Video: ON
Vertical Sync: ON
Hard GPU Sync: OFF
Black Frame Insertion: OFF
Crop Overscan: ON
Bilinear Filtering: OFF
A complete listing of the video settings follows in the next few screen shots. Take a look.
Again you can safely ignore the window size settings as these will be driven by the fullscreen mode
option. I had to turn fullscreen mode off to capture the screen shots but you should be fine.
Next up we'll go over the audio setting. I'll list the major ones first then show screen shots of all
the settings.
Audio Settings:
Audio: ON
Mute: OFF
Mixer Mute: OFF
Synchronization: ON
Audio Latency (ms): 62
Resample Quality: Normal
Dynamic Audio Rate Control: 0.016
Maximum Timing Skew: 0.06
Output Rate (Hz): 44000
Lastly, below are the driver settings used for the Monku Retro 3 - ODROID-XU4. If you are using a different device
these may need adjusting. However, if you are using an Ubuntu based operating system on said device then you
might want to give these a try, they work great on the R3 running Ubuntu and MATE.
In order to get blueMSX running you'll need a copy of two folders from their stand alone installation. The
Databases and Machines folders are found in the blueMSX installation folder. You can get a copy of
blueMSX at this URL, http://bluemsx.msxblue.com/download.html.
Once you've installed blueMSX and found the folders in question copy them onto a USB drive and plug that drive into your
Monku R3. Locate the Odroid home directory by clicking the link on the desktop or by opening any file browser and navigating to the
home directory. Locate your ROMS folders. Now you'll need to place a copy of the Databases and Machines folder in the root
directory of any ROMS you want blueMSX to run. I placed a copy in my ColecoVision and my MSX folders. The screen shots below demonstrate
the proper setup for MSX and ColecoVision ROMS.
Because blueMSX works really well, and will automatically detect the target system, it can be used for ColecoVision, MSX-1, and MSX-2
ROMS.
To setup the fMSX emulator you'll need to find a copy of the following BIOS ROMS on the nets.
DISK.ROM
KANJI.ROM
MSX.ROM
MSX2.ROM
MSX2EXT.ROM
MSX2P.ROM
MSX2PEXT.ROM
MSXDOS2.ROM
PAINTER.ROM
Once you've located those BIOS ROMS place a copy of them in the root directory of your MSX games folder.
All your ROMS should be in one folder and these BIOS ROMS should be in there too. Retroarch will look for BIOS ROMS
in a few different places, I think, one of those locations is the root directory of the ROM itself.
To get PSP and PS1 emulators working you'll need to locate the following bios files on the nest. Listed below are the
bios files you'll need.
scph5500.bin
scph5501.bin
scph5502.bin
scph5552.bin
With your PS1 games you'll need to unzip the contents of the compressed version of the game and place the .cue and .bin files
into the PS1 target folder. This way you'll only need one copy of the bios files in the root directory of the PS1 roms. The PSP game format
does not have this issue, you can easily copy the bios files into the root directory of the PSP roms.
For the Maganvox-Odyssey2 emulator you'll need to get a copy of two bios files from the internet and place them in the root directory
of your Odyssey2 ROMS. Listed below are the bios files you'll need.
o2rom.bin
c52.bin
Lastly if you plan on using the Commodore64 emulator you'll need to place the following bios files in the root directory of your Commodore64 ROMS.
1542.ROM
Basic.ROM
Char.ROM
Kernal.ROM
This wraps up the special configuration steps needed regarding bios files for the emulators that need them. Enjoy!!