Raspberry Pi

[Wools]

Has anyone had any luck ordering a Pi 4 Model B?

I’ve been on the notify me list for yonks and after selling my PC and re-considering a Pi, logging onto the Pi Hut and… Still sold out!

[MartyG]

You need https://rpilocator.com/

If you live near Cambs, the Pi Store normally has them in stock.

Still very much in short supply tho :/ - Pi Foundation did say back in December 2022 that stocks should be improving in Q2 and "unlimited" in Q3 onwards: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/sup...its-good-news/

[Wools]

You need https://rpilocator.com/

If you live near Cambs, the Pi Store normally has them in stock.

Still very much in short supply tho :/ - Pi Foundation did say back in December 2022 that stocks should be improving in Q2 and "unlimited" in Q3 onwards: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/sup...its-good-news/

Thanks for that info!

I’m about a good 2 hours away from Cambridgeshire so drivable but not close. However, we’re approaching Q2 so I’ll keep my fingers crossed the refill will be soon!

[MartyG]

Pi4 is back in stock at PiHut, only 2GB model but they'll probs sell out pretty quick

https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b - £45

The Pi 400 is also in stock at £80: https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-400

[Wools]

I was gobsmacked when I got the restock email last night, it’s been out for so long!

Just picked up the Pi4 Model B (4GB) along with a Flirc case, HDMI cable, power cable and a SD card. Looking forward to building and installing an emulation station under the TV.

[MartyG]

Stock appears to be pretty much back to normal now, doesn't seem to be any problem picking one up at the moment.

However, what the Pi doesn't come with is a PCIe slot, the ZimaBoard does though, and is x86 based: https://www.zimaboard.com/

It's designed as a mini server - potentially you could probably stick an RTX 4090 on it and run it as a Stable Diffusion server (it's only PCle 2.0 4x mind so it's not going to max the data bandwidth on it).

[speedlolita]

I was gobsmacked when I got the restock email last night, it’s been out for so long!

Just picked up the Pi4 Model B (4GB) along with a Flirc case, HDMI cable, power cable and a SD card. Looking forward to building and installing an emulation station under the TV.

I'm using one as a torrent box / nas currently and picked that case up the other day, rather nice. Did you get the emulation setup sorted?

[Wools]

I'm using one as a torrent box / nas currently and picked that case up the other day, rather nice. Did you get the emulation setup sorted?

Nice, how you been enjoying yours?

Mine's great thanks! Had to pick up 2 extra bits since that post; An On / Off Switch on the UBS-C Cable and a 8Bitdo Pro 2 Controller with USB Dongle and they completed the set nicely. Got RetroPi installed and it's been running well. I notice that on default settings, some games don't run quite right but I wonder if it's me being spoiled by my old PC, Anbernic and now MacBook Air emulation being a step up from the humble little Pi which is being tasked with 4K output!

However, I've adored the 20 or so hours I've played while hooked up under the TV and I've not done any setup at all as I just wanted it to run straight out the box and it's done that 95% perfectly. I have considered trying a game like Sonic on MD and trying 1080p output to compere it to 4K and see if that was causing the slightly laggy feel to the visuals. However, it could be my aging eyes, expecting the Pi4 to work miracles when it really shouldn't or if it's being used to higher end spec emulation.

Eitherway, the idea for just under £100, you can have this lovely little device running everything up to 32-bit era of games and just over is exceptional. Can't remember if I've said here but N64 emulation is expectedly mixed; Wave Race 64 plays beautifully on mine, great visuals and audio with no controller lag either. But try something like Perfect Dark or a late era game and it really struggles.

[dataDave]

You should probably set it to 720p with integer scaling, especially if you want to run scanlines that don’t look crap.

I run my MiSTer at 720p for perfect upscaling on a 4K set. There’s literally no reason to output retro games at any bigger size unless you purposely want to tank performance while compromising the scaling.

The lag is very real with software emulation, unfortunately. Wireless controllers and flatpanel displays only compound results.

[speedlolita]

Nice, how you been enjoying yours?

It is great. I set up Jellyfin yesterday (open source plex alternative) so I can scrape all the metadata and effectively have my own local Crunchyroll alternative. It will even update my MyAnimeList account automatically now with what I've watched.

I've never tried a pi for emulation but I would imagine next to Apple silicon it cannot compare.

[Wools]

Glad to hear [MENTION=13863]speedlolita[/MENTION] !

Thanks for the recommendation [MENTION=1482]dataDave[/MENTION] I purposely didn't want to tweet the emulators and setup to the finest degree but when you're playing Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and really notice odd graphical effects, some action has to be taken!

Sadly, it's not as simple as change something on Settings. I went from RetroPi to Raspberry Pi settings and when I select Display > Resolution Settings, it kicks me back to the main menu. On a google search, it seems others are having issues and it's related to be bug introduced late last year. Workaround is plug in my keyboard and mouse and then edit a file to force a resolution, but I checked out after that! Will take a look during the week.

In the meantime, SNES Bomber Man is still beautiful! Also, I'm very impressed with the 8BitDo Pro 2 Controller. Always has connected using the USB-A Dongle and the D Pad is very sharp. Recommend so far.

[Wools]

Okay, I've made some headway with getting the games to run smooth as butter but would love some advice if anyone has any?

1. In RetroArch (Settings > Video > Fullscreen Mode) I've manually set Width and Height to be 1920 x 1080. That keeps the screen set to those dimensions, and doesn't allow the system to auto set to 4K like before. Result! But I was hoping I would set the resolution to 720p or 1080p to then be able to scale to 4k to fully fit the screen. Is scaling an option or do you run into the same performance issues as native resolution?
2. In Retro Arch (Settings > Input > Port 1 Controls) it lists my 8BitDo Pro 2 Controller as a Microsoft X-Box 360 Pad in Device Index. I think this was because when I setup my Raspberry Pi4B, I plugged in my Xbox 1 controller and it still thinks it's that. It still works a charm with the 8BitDo controller, but I would love to get it setup native, rather than piggybacking my 360 controller. Anyone know how to wipe it in this UI and begin afresh?

[MartyG]

The Raspberry Pi 5 has just dropped - available to pre-order now

https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-5/

I haven't looked at the details yet, but have grabbed a pre-order before they disappear (as demand is likely to be high), so will look at the details shortly.

So it looks like the CPU/GPU is a reasonable upgrade, and should be running 2-3 times faster than the Pi4 depending on operation. It has PCIe 2.0 onboard (although it'll require a breakout board to use it as it's a ZIF connector). It's got higher power requirements (5V 5A via USB-C) and now has an onboard fan header along with an official fan (optional extra - it might be worth waiting for new cases though).

With an increase in clocks to 2.4GHz for the CPU and 800 MHz for the GPU, along with a choice of 4GB or 8GB LPDDR4 it should make a nice emu box (RetroPi probably needs an update),

One negative, the 3.5mm audio jack is gone, although it's likely there will be hat compatibility for the existing audio solutions.

Overall, looks like a good update if not the most exciting in terms of new features.

[MartyG]

The Raspberry Pi5 is shipping out ...





Need to have a properly play, but they seem to boot up pretty fast.

[hudson]

I'm a bit out of the loop, but was thinking of picking a Pi up for an emulation box. Can it emulation Saturn and other tricky systems well? Maybe to early to tell?