@netcat Just spent the past 8 hours documenting this process step by step form beginning to end including hardware and software installation, based on my experience in the process and the very helpful guidance I have received from @supernature2k and others here which was absolutely critical in getting this to work.
if anyone is interested I have published it off my website.
http://www.780tech.com/recalbox/
p.s. it has pretty photos so you cant go wrong.
ï„‘
zmeta Solution worked flawlessly for me. interestingly enough. once this process was completed and while copying/extracting Recallbox files to SD card the process took like 10 times longer than before to copy but.... Raspberry no longer complained about not being able to resize partition
Found a copy of my original artice for BetaBrite signs here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20141105153358/http://www.780tech.com/betabrite/index.htm
@Substring if you are interested in taking on this poroject drop me an email at 780tech@gmail.com and I can arrange to ship you a BetaBrite sign and we can choose out and purchase the usb to serial adapter of your choice
Tony
@Substring I am certainly ok with this option
@Substring quite a bit of articles talking about adding a standard serial port to your Pi
Only concern is it looks like it yses some if not all of the same pins as the power/reset buttons and LED
http://www.davidhunt.ie/add-a-9-pin-serial-port-to-your-raspberry-pi-in-10-minutes/
@supernature2k HAte to continue sounding dumb but in this site I have no idea how to make a new post, I believe originally I replied to a previously made post ?
@Substring This is the Diagram I put together back then on how to interface through the serial port
@Substring although nowadays there are Betabrites that attach directly to the USB port, they are exceedingly difficult to come by, your classic Betabrite sign will attach to a serial (COM port), which I believe can be emulated through the GPIO ? Many years ago a spent considerable time catching data form serial ports and figuring out how to send messages to Betabrite signs, even wrote a couple programs in Qbasic as I recall to accomplish this task, once correct strings were determined on how to send messages I forwarded this info to a number of people in the arcade community (much better programmers than myself) whom implemented it in various ways.
I will dig out the information, but the first question is does the raspberry Pi have means to communicate through standard Serial interface (Not USB) ?
HERE is my original program from 2005 designed to generate Individual ASCII files for each mame game (which were all placed in an LCD Directory and called upon before running each game)
CLS
PRINT ""
PRINT "* BETABRITE/MAME LCD FILE GENERATOR *"
PRINT ""
PRINT "* "
PRINT " Version: 1.0 "
PRINT " Author : Tony Jimenez "
PRINT " E-mail : Tony@780tech.com "
PRINT " *"
PRINT "*****************************************************************************"
PRINT
PRINT " Application MUST be run from INSIDE the MAME folder"
PRINT
PRINT " Would you like <D>ynamic sign or <S>tatic sign"
1 a$ = INKEY$
IF a$ = "" THEN GOTO 1
IF UCASE$(a$) = "S" THEN GOSUB 4000 ELSE GOSUB 5000
PRINT
PRINT " Making LCD Directory"
PRINT
PRINT " AN Extended Error 183 indicates the folder ALREADY exists"
PRINT
SHELL " MD LCD"
PRINT
PRINT ""
PRINT
PRINT " GENERATING GAMELIST.TXT"
PRINT
PRINT " A BAD COMMAND OR FILE NAME Error indicates you are NOT in MAME folder"
PRINT
SHELL "mame -listfull > gamelist.txt"
PRINT
PRINT ""
item = 0
OPEN "GAMELIST.TXT" FOR INPUT AS #2: INPUT #2, text$
REM PRINT TEXT$
10
REM *****************
REM CYCLE BEGINS HERE
REM *****************
LINE INPUT #2, text$
name$ = ""
FOR a = 1 TO LEN(text$)
IF MID$(text$, a, 1) <> " " THEN name$ = name$ + MID$(text$, a, 1) ELSE GOTO 1000
NEXT
1000
desc$ = ""
a = a + 1
IF MID$(text$, a, 1) = " " THEN GOTO 1000
FOR b = (a + 1) TO (LEN(text$) - 1)
desc$ = desc$ + MID$(text$, b, 1)
NEXT
REM PRINT "Description : "; desc$
name$ = "lcd" + name$ + ".lcd"
REM PRINT name$
OPEN name$ FOR OUTPUT AS #3
desc$ = PF$ + desc$ + SF$
PRINT #3, desc$
CLOSE #3
item = item + 1
LOCATE 35, 3: PRINT "Processing Item #"; item
IF EOF(2) <> -1 THEN PRINT : GOTO 10
END
4000 REM STATIC SIGN
PF$ = CHR$(112)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(81)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(232)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(192)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(143)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(156)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(197)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(1)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(88)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(120)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(181)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(1)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(1)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(90)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(48)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(48)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(2)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(65)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(65)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(27)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(32)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(98)
SF$ = CHR$(4)
RETURN
5000 REM DYNAMIC SIGN
PF$ = CHR$(112)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(81)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(232)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(192)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(143)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(156)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(197)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(1)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(88)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(120)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(181)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(1)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(1)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(90)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(48)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(48)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(2)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(65)
PF$ = PF$ + CHR$(65)
SF$ = CHR$(4)
SF$ = SF$ + CHR$(114)
SF$ = SF$ + CHR$(14)
SF$ = SF$ + CHR$(64)
SF$ = SF$ + CHR$(27)
SF$ = SF$ + CHR$(8)
RETURN
@Substring Can you please check out revised version of Diagram, I am prone to doing stupid mistakes this week, I believe it is all good now.
Thank you
@Substring Adding your preferred web page links to the article. Sadly last time I did any programming at all was a good 30 years ago... I will however offer to purchase (AND SHIP) A BetaBrite sign to the first participant willing to write the code in to Recalbox and Beta test it.
@supernature2k Thank you, Correction made
