APU-based Lakka system compatibility?

Libretro Lakka
#1

Hello folks,

My current living room entertainment PC is an AMD APU-based system. It’s also a bit of a proverbial fifth wheel since my office PC fulfils most of my entertainment needs. I figured it’d be best to breathe new life into it by turning it into a bedroom console.

Before I go through with this I’d like to ask a few questions, if I may.

  1. How well does Lakka fare with APU’s? 1bis) The APU I’m using is an A10-7870K, perhaps a bit overkill for a Lakka system?
  2. I’ve got a spare 256GB mSATA SSD, I assume installing the Lakka OS onto such an SSD should pose no problem?
  3. This would be my first project of this kind so the n00b is strong with this one. Is there anything else in particular I need to take into account before starting?
  4. No Dreamcast emulation under Lakka according to the Hardware Support page I see… Will it support Dreamcast emulation in the future?

Kind regards,

-cerberus-

#2

Hi,

You can try to run Lakka on usbstick to make a test to see how it reacts but it should be fine.

SSD shouldn’t be an issue but we don’t actually support dual boot.

Dreamcast support has been integrated in nightly for x86_64 architecture.

#3

Thanks for your swift reply, gouchi.

Aye, I’ll give the live version a go to see how it performs.

I don’t plan on dual booting; that SSD will be entirely dedicated to Lakka and rom storage.

So there is DC support after all, that’s great news! Thanks again, mate!

#4

Gave the live version of Lakka a go on my APU-system and tried out a wide variety of games (NES, SNES, N64, GB/C/A, MS, GG, MD) running from a secondary USB-stick. Things didn’t go too well.

First of all: there was no sound whatsoever for any of the games; not from the speakers, not from the telly (HDMI). I found no way to fix this. Secondly, all games were nearly unplayable. The performance issues I encountered could best be described as lag one would see in modern online multiplayer games. No way to fix this either.

Now, I have a spare low-end discrete GPU (R7 250) on my shelf so I decided to pop that one in and retry the whole process. Miraculously, all games featured sound and all ran beautifully – although I couldn’t play some MD games as they gave me a black screen at startup, which didn’t happen with the APU.

Could anyone shed some light on why audio was absent and performance was severely lacking when Lakka ran on the A10-7870K APU? Also, has anybody else tried running Lakka on an AMD APU?

–

As an addendum: is there a way to add custom audio filters next to the ones that are pre-installed? I use Realtek HD Audio Manager on my W7 desktop to give my Logitech speakers a boost with a ‘City’-environment and ‘Powerful’-EQ combo.

#5

You can try to switch audio device from the gui.

Is is possible to get some log from RetroArch ?

And if you can get the output of the command (you need to access Lakka command line interface)

dmesg

and

lspci -nn | grep VGA

It will be helpful, thank you for your tests.

#6

Aye, I went straight to ‘Switch Audio Device’ but there was nothing to select.

Sure, I’ll look into obtaining a log within a couple of days and report back as soon as possible. Bear with me as I’m not well versed in the aspect of command lines etc.

#7

You used left and right and nothing appears ? Can you try with the latest nightly available ?

#8

EDIT: I’m a right plonker, there are indeed multiple devices to select when using my R7 250 dGPU. My apologies.

Regardless, I’ll install the latest nightly right away and report back after a few tests with it running on the APU.

#9

Gouchi, I can confirm that there is absolutely nothing to select under ‘Switch Audio Devices’ when running the latest nightly using my APU, pressing left or right shows nothing at all. I’ve double & triple checked. All games tested still show severe lag issues – I’ll get back to you with a log some time this week.

Everything is back to normal using the R7 250: no lag, full selection of audio devices.

#10

I won’t be completing the APU Lakka project after all as I think I’ll be better off selling the parts now that they’re still worth a damn. Thanks for the support though, gouchi!

However, I managed to grab an ASRock Q1900DC-ITX motherboard on sale with, as the name suggests, an onboard Intel Celeron J1900 CPU. Originally I had a server project planned but I just might look into getting Lakka running on it. The J1900 is clocked at 2GHz which, I assume, should be able to handle everything up to and including PS1 emulation (correct me if I’m wrong, though).

–

Couple of questions in the meantime – I’ve still got Lakka set up and running on the R7 250 gpu: I haven’t been able to get Saturn & Dreamcast working.

  1. BIOS files were put in the system folder: saturn_bios.bin & dc_flash.bin (region free).
  2. Roms transferred succesfully, although they don’t show up after scanning.
  3. Dreamcast roms are mostly .cdi, not compatible with Lakka perhaps? Am I doing something wrong, did I miss something?

Also, next to the usual .cue and .bin file(s), some PS1 roms have .ape files. I’ve decompressed them to .wav with Monkey’s Audio. But then what am I to do? I’m unable to mount such images on my desktop to test with ePSXe, and they too fail to show up after a Lakka scan. A quick look at the .cue file reveals that the now converted .wav files are supposed to be .bin files. So I edited the .cue file and changed each .bin to .wav inside it. I then am able to mount the image but only as a redbook audio disc. Starting the mounted image with ePSXe shows error notification ‘ePSXe (error) Recompile block too large (28573) (28572)’. I realise this has got nothing to do with Lakka but I do have to test out these roms before moving them over to Lakka.

Finally, every USA (Rev A & B) Ocarina of Time rom I’ve tested results in Lakka restarting instantly after defeating Gohma, the first boss of the game. The Eur (En Fr De) rom just freezes, I can close the game normally using Lakka. [SIZE=2]All of this happens exactly after Gohma disintegrates. Has anybody else encountered this issue?[/SIZE]

#11

About Dreamcast, bios (dc_boot.bin and dc_flash.bin) should be in dc directory inside system folder and valid extensions are chd, cdi, iso, elf, bin, cue, gdi.

#12

Ah, I see. Thanks! Bios is now in the proper folder. Next up is adding the Dreamcast roms; tried multiple .cdi files, scanning of the folder completed instantly, none were discovered. No luck adding them manually either.

#13

I am not sure Dreamcast files are supported by the scanning process. It doesn’t work also with Load Content > Select File And Detect Core ?

If you want to add it in playlist you can try to create it one.

#14

Negative. It says ‘No items’ eventhough there are exactly four roms of different regions present. As for the DC Bios files: yes, I am able to navigate the system/dc folder and both dc_boot.bin & dc_flash.bin are present. However, selecting them brings up a short list of other cores: Atari2600 (Stella), Atari7800 (ProSystem), und so weiter. None seem to allude to being compatible with Dreamcast though.

EDIT: Oh, I’m now able to get to the MegaCD und Saturn dashboard by selecting the MegaCD and Saturn Bios files respectively.

–

Also, splendid news.

  1. The lag I mentioned on the previous page was caused by a dying USB stick on which the roms were installed. 2 ) I now am getting audio when using the APU after all. As it turns out, all I had to do was a full Lakka install on a hard drive (I’ve got an ancient 40GB Fujitsu I sometimes use as a backup target drive). Hence, I would assume the Live version of Lakka has some issues with detecting audio devices when using the APU? Might be worth looking into this.
  2. Everything seems to be running just fine: MS, GG, MD, 32X, NES, GB/C, SNES, VB, N64, DS(*), PS1(**) & PSP. So I guess I have completed my APU Lakka project after all… And there was much rejoicing \o/

(*) Some DS roms I’ve transferred aren’t recognised and the ones that are show up ‘decrypted’ (and are, of course, perfectly playable). So I take it the others – Okamiden, Zelda Spirit Tracks-- are still encrypted… Any word of advice on how to get these detected and running would be helpful. (**) Still puzzled about the .ape/.wav thing I mentioned on the previous page, any advice would be welcome.

#15

For Dreamcast , try first Load Core > Dreamcast (Reicast) then Load Content > Select file

#16

Odd, there is no Dreamcast core in the list. Going to upgrade Lakka to the latest (20160602) as I’m still using the May build and report back. EDIT: Not my lucky day, I’m getting the following error after rebooting “Checking Size: FAILED size check failed. normal startup in 30s…”

#17

Yes you need latest nightly and it has been only provided for x86_64 platform.

For PSX, I only used bin + cue files.

#18

Back from a failed update again. Firstly, like I said in the edit of my previous post, updating Lakka via the updater gave an error on reboot. So I grabbed the latest nightly manually and created a bootable USB with it. Installed it on the harddrive after which it returned me to the main setup menu of the installer. Figured I had to reboot manually and got the following notification:

*** Error in prepare_sysroot: mount_common: Could not mount /dev/SYSTEM ***

Starting debugging shell… type exit to quit

sh: can’t access tty: job control turned off

#19

Back to May’s build (20160511215003) since I keep encountering the above mentioned issues. Thought I was out of the woods, having downgraded to a build that actually worked for me, but nothing could be further from the truth: not being able to select audio devices rears its ugly head once again.

#20

I tried lastest build x86_64 (20160602230629) and it works. Can you try with another usb port and/or usb stick ?