Author: greg

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Turning my old Raspberry Pi 4 into a dedicated RetroPie system

My friend Ryan built me a Raspberry Pi 5 with 16gb of RAM last year. He sent it to my dad’s home and I acquired it there when I visited in August. I had been using my Pi 4 (4gb of RAM) as a portable desktop. Once I installed Raspberry OS on my Pi 5, it blew me away how quickly it loads! It is very nice to use.

Since I no longer need to use my Pi 4 as a portable desktop, I decided to turn it into a dedicated RetroPie unit. I haven’t had a dedicated RetroPie since I sent my Pi 3 to my friend Gary.

So here it is after it booted up, before any roms were added. I had to install emulators, BIOS files, the config files, and the downloaded images of the games’ covers and such. The Saturn emulator for RetroPie isn’t worth using. The ARM architecture cannot handle it, while the x86 architecture of my desktop can run a Saturn emulator just fine.

At first I figured that a 32mb SD card would be enough space to install everything I wanted, but considering that I have several CD-based games for the Turbo Duo and Mega CD, I was not able to copy over all the games I wanted to. I went to Yamada Denki and bought a 128gb SD card and started over.

It’s not enough to just install the emulators and copy the roms over to their respective folders. The Retroarch controller config files as well as the game lists and game photos from the game data scrapers should also be copied to the RasPi’s new SD card. Here’s a list of what I made sure I copied over to the SD card:

  • home/RetroPie/BIOS -> Where any necessary BIOS files go, of course.
  • home/RetroPie/roms -> The actual games, duh.
  • opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/downloaded_images -> When you scrape the games’ covers and such, this is where those images are stored for each console.
  • opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/gamelists -> The info you’ve scraped with the games’ descriptions. Those downloaded images don’t mean a thing without these files!
  • opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/autoconfig ->This is where your controller configuration files are stored. Of course, you could just configure your controllers from scratch, but since I had to manually edit the config file for my Mayflash Sega Saturn converter, conserving this file is a must! On a Saturn pad, the LB and RB buttons become the Z and C buttons respectively, and since there is no Select button, I had to change how the menu is loaded in-game so as not to exit the game every time I pressed the Start button!

Once all those files were transferred over, it was time to test it out. I didn’t like how there was a black border on this 16:9 monitor, which made the game screens smaller. What the heck?

Here’s what I did. I set it to a resolution of 16:9 60fps and then with this “underscan” option I removed that dumb black border.

The scraped data is all there now.

Tron. I’ll have to edit the game’s input configuration. This game is always awkward to play emulated because the arcade game had both a joystick and knob.

1944: The Loop Master. Once I add a CRT shader for the screen, I’ll be all set.

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My modeling workbench setup at the in-laws’ place

My home away from home, we’ve had our own room at the in-laws’ place in Nagano Prefecture ever since Mayu’s grandfather passed away. Years ago, I commandeered an unused table and set it up as a modeling workbench in front of the TV. The blue zaisu (floor chair) is partially busted. I’ve had it ever since our apartment when we lived in Himeji. I have some tools and supplies I keep there. I’d posted earlier about Japanese modeling setups, so here is my secondary modeling workbench.

This neat holder for glue bottles and paint brushes was 3D printed. SMKR gave it to me as a gift several years ago, and it is perfect for this little modeling setup.

Tamiya’s enamel, acrylic, and lacquer thinners, toothpicks, ceramic paint trays, plus a bottle of Mr. Base White 1000.

I keep a bunch of modeling crap in the drawer. Sandpaper, tweezers, scissors, paint trays, etc. My nippers here are from a Taiwanese company and I got them when I worked for Aoshima 10 years ago.

I keep a Tamiya work apron here too.

I bought a cheap region-free DVD player on YAJ and it’s there for the TV whenever I want to use it. The TV doesn’t have the best hi-def resolution, but I’m not gonna complain. It actually has S-Video inputs in case I ever want to hook up a retro console to it. The last time we stayed here, I had my hacked SFC Mini console hooked up to the TV. Usually I have either my laptop or Raspberry Pi set up on this table.

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Update on my old Bandai/Imai Macross Glaug kit

It was a quiet weekend at home, and on Sunday while I was following the events of yet another attempted presidential assassination by the “tolerant left,” I finally got around to resuming work on my old 1:100 Glaug kit I started working on last summer at the in-laws’ place while on vacation. I sort of lost track of this build for several months. I’m pretty good at starting new kits and losing track of them.

I’m inserting Wave’s ball joints to add better articulation for the shoulders and the hips. While this kit does have plastic-on-plastic swivel joints, Adding ball joints should improve mobility and allow the legs to be splayed for more natural poses. I’ve sanded down the dome-shaped protrusions and intend to replace them with Wave H-Eyes lenses. I’ve also taken a mold of the mono-eye. I plan to cut out that plastic, attach the mold, and backfill it from the inside with clear UV resin. I did this with the old Bandai/Imai Q-Rau kit.

I thought that I’d buy some more of these Wave ball joint sets, but when I looked online I saw that several of them are sold out! I can still get the BJ-05 set, and I ordered a couple from Yodobashi Camera. But I couldn’t find the BJ-04 and some other sets anywhere!

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Nearly finished with my Bubblegum Crisis Priss sofubi figure!

I’m excited about this! I bought this Priss sofubi kit soon after I moved to Japan. I posted unboxing photos of this kit on my Tumblr account 11 years ago. I didn’t pay much for it at the time, but since then the price for sofubi kits have increased considerably. I began working on this kit a year ago and I like how it is turning out.

 I’ve painted her entirely with sofubi paints. mostly V-Color but also I’ve used the new, water-based Mr. Hobby Sofubi Color for the metallic black parts. The metallic blue color of her hardsuit is a mixture of silver, clear blue, and a bit of regular blue V-Color paints. It looks so beautiful.

I finished painting her eyes last week, using acrylic paints. (She has red eyes in the anime, so this isn’t a case of my color-blindness causing me to make a mistake). I added a bit of white to the red paint to one side of her irises to give them two tones, then painted the black pupils, and finally the light spots.

Unlike other sofubi kits I’ve made, this one is made to be semi-poseable. Her arms pop into sockets and her legs can swivel at the thighs. Her heads can pop in and out, and I’ve employed magnets to make this easier. Her regular face is sculpted with her neck together, but her helmet has the head and neck as separate pieces. I have magnets in there to make her head movable.

I’ve since done a panel line wash using Turner Acryl Gouache black paint with Mr. Hobby Weathering Paint Gouache Solvent. All that’s left is the final assembly at this point.

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Update on my 30 Minutes Sisters customized Luluce build

Over a year ago, I posted about how I bought Luluce with Option Body Parts A03 (color C) and some optional hair styles. I had some leftover skin color from a Shantae garage kit I built a few years ago to give her a darker, sexier skintone (in my opinion), so I used this and did some shading with burnt umber Faber Castell and artist’s chalk for her breasts and butt. I was lucky to find a set of the official 30MS eye waterslide decals, which I don’t see often. Her hair color is Mr. Color Lascivus Aura CL103 Black Hair with Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color Black for shading. I sealed these with a flat coat. The rest of the parts are the original plastic. Her “assault rifle” is made by a company called Yamada, which I bought at a Seria 100 yen shop.

I want to work on her underboobs a bit more, because the shading I did is a bit too dark. I’ll pop that piece off and see what I can do.

I bought this bikini-like body parts set when I was nerd shopping with my friend Lou in March. I haven’t been able to find the bare legs and arms sets at any hobby stores, so I will probably buy a set on Yahoo Auctions Japan.

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An observation on the movie “The Car”

My wife and I rented “The Car” and watched it today. I hadn’t seen that movie in a very long time. Our daughter asked what the movie’s about. I said, “It’s like ‘Jaws,’ but there’s no ocean, and it’s a car instead of a shark.”
“Then it’s nothing like ‘Jaws.'”
Pshuh! Shows how much you know, kid.

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Configuring Japanese text input in Bazzite Linux

I’ve had a difficult time setting up Japanese language input in Bazzite. I’ve done this with Ubuntu, Mint, Raspberry OS, and Zorin. Bazzite is slightly different. With Raspberry OS, you go into the Package Manager and add Fcitx5 and Mozc. In Mint and Zorin, these are separate Flatpaks you’d install through the Software Library.

Bazzite is a bit different, and it stumped me. I’m new to Bazzite, and it’s Fedora-based, not Debian-based as I am used to. For one thing, you don’t type sudo apt install” but instead it’s rpm-ostree install. 20 years ago when I first started using Linux, I was using the yum command to install programs in Fedora. Also, Bazzite’s software installer is called “Bazaar.” I installed Fcitx5’s flatpak that way, but I did not see a separate flatpak for Mozc like I’m used to. So that was my problem. It’s just different.

I figured that I’d have better luck using the terminal. After trying to find info on DuckDuckGo and Google, I figured I could accomplish this through rpm-ostree install fcitx5 fcitx5-mozc and it would maybe just install over what I’d already installed.

Well, that didn’t work. It told me that Mozc was already provided. I was also getting a popup for Fcitx saying Wayland Diagnose: “Fcitx should be launched by KWin under KDE Wayland in order to use Wayland input method frontend….” etc. So it was telling me to switch the virtual keyboard to Wayland. I dunno what that’s about, but I always do what I’m told to do. Computers, coworkers, neighborhood children, fortune cookies, random strangers, what have you. I always comply when I’m bossed around. So I did it.

…And the situation didn’t improve. I still couldn’t find Mozc.

I turned to the Bazzite Reddit forum on r/Bazzite for help. I got some good responses, but not a solution. However while I was tinkering around, I went back to the Fcitx 5 page in the Bazaar library.

Then I noticed the little jigsaw puzzle piece icon where it says “Manage Add-Ons.”

Oh gosh, here is where the various add-ons are located. I overlooked this when I first installed Fcitx5. Here is “Mozc for Fcitx5” selectable. All I had to do was click the download button to add it. Nuts. THAT is what I needed to do.

After a reboot, I went back to System/System Settings/Language & Time/Input Method. Mozc was now selectable. All I had to do was click on the right arrow to add it.

Now it’s there!

At last, Japanese text input is available. So TL;DR: I’m just used to installing Fcitx5 and Mozc as separate packages in Debian platforms, but apparently with Fedora you just install Fcitx5 and from there choose Mozc via an add-on. It makes sense, but it’s just not what I’m used to doing.

So now under System/System Settings/Language & Time/Input Method, this is what it shows. Problem solved!