I am trying to install a pre-made SD card into the Picade. I also have a second different Retropi image SD and it works fine in the Picade so there is nothing wrong with the hardware. On the new SD I had to remap the keyboard on the card using localization from UK to English US and US region. It seems to have worked shows en_US.UTF8 and layout ‘us’ and PC 105 generic KB and the keyboard keys and the pipe symbol work fine. Then I try to run the PicadeHAT install script and afterwards it locks out the keyboard. Keys no longer work afterwards. I imagine the install script is doing some remapping? Also the SD image itself is Stretch… Does the script work under stretch? Is there an approach I can take to get drivers installed without screwing up the keyboard?
This may not be completely related, but I saw this post: Keyboard configuration. I believe it’s for the older Picade USB PCB (I have this also). But it mentions how multiple Picades can’t be put into keyboard mode and work effectively. I know this is not exactly your situation, but I’m extrapolating into thinking that perhaps the Picade in keyboard mode may be screwing up your USB keyboard.
One thing you could try instead is log into your Pi remotely via SSH and do your configuration that way. Then you won’t have to worry about another device taking over the keyboard. I’ve been doing that as well so that I can keep an eye on my logs while I’m running things on the Pi (e.g. I can run MAME in verbose mode via SSH and see all the debugging lines, while the Pi’s display shows MAME in full screen).
In my other post, you mentioned that you’re able to edit retrogame.cfg and get things working, but after installing drivers, the gamepad doesn’t work anymore. Perhaps what is happening is that the driver installation process is resetting the Picade configuration. Could you post your configuration and the commands you’re using?
I don’t really understand the use of dtoverlay yet but I see the examples (in picade.txt). I am guessing I can invoke it locally through install.sh and it adds lines to contfig.txt. It looks like you add the following to install.sh and run it instead of invoking curl to run the original driver install?
“dtoverlay=picade”
“dtparm=audio=off”
“dtparm=LEFT=20”
“dtparm=RIGHT=16”
“dtparm=UP=12”
“dtparm=DOWN=6”
“dtparm=LEFTCTRL=9”
“dtparm=LEFTALT=25”
“dtparm=Z=11”
“dtparm=X=5”
“dtparm=SPACE=23”
“dtparm=ENTER=24”
“dtparm=A=22”
“dtparm=S=27”
“dtparm=C=8”
“dtparm=V=10”
“hdmi_force_hotplug=1”
That’s just a guess
I’ve been looking at the installation script and your configuration and so far don’t have much of an idea.
But I did have a separate thought. Did you mention that the SD card that is not working is a fresh install of RetroPie? If so, it might be worth trying to copy the contents of the BOOT folder from the working SD card onto the non-working SD card’s BOOT folder. You can do this on your PC/Mac using your SD card reader. Steps:
- Put the working SD card into the reader, and put the reader into your PC/Mac
- You should see a BOOT drive now available on your computer
- Create a new folder on your computer (on your desktop or documents) called BOOT-Working
- Copy all the files and folders from the BOOT drive to your BOOT-Working folder in your computer
- Eject the BOOT drive safely
- Put the non-working SD card into the reader, and put the reader into your PC/Mac
- You should see a BOOT drive now available on your computer
- Create a new folder on your computer (on your desktop or documents) called BOOT-Nonworking
- Copy all the files and folders from the BOOT drive to your BOOT-Nonworking folder in your computer
- Erase all the files and folders from the BOOT drive
- Copy all the files and folders from the BOOT-Working folder in your computer to the BOOT drive (IMPORTANT: Do not just copy the BOOT-Working folder because then you’ll just have a folder in the BOOT drive that the Pi doesn’t know the files are in)
- Eject the non-working SD card safely
- Put the non-working SD card into the Raspberry Pi and test. You probably won’t need to run the installation script again.
They key thing is that there may be a difference between the files on the SD cards in the BOOT folders. Particularly, there may be a difference in the config.txt, or even the overlay/blob files. If this works, then you can tweak files as needed.
Fingers crossed that it works.
That worked. Up and running. Thank you so much.
Wow awesome. Congrats! Were you able to see which file was missing or different between the two directories?
Well I thought it was. Back to the beginning. keyboard works up until I run the Pimoroni driver install shell . Then the keyboard is dysfunfunctional, if you tap enough keys it seems to flashing logging out and it restarts EM. The keyboard is unrecognizable and because it is messed up you can’t map the gamepad to it as that would be pointless. It is something about that install script.