Injecting BIOS & ROMS using Ethernet Cable OR SCP / Filezilla methods

Libretro Lakka
#1

Hello people,

While reading the documentation I stumbled upon a dilemma induced by the fact that I perennially suck at networking.

I have little experience using Filezilla and none at all involving Ethernet cables.

Ethernet I am unsure if I have to purchase a normal Ethernet cable or a Crossover Ethernet cable as the documentation does not tip on which is required. Thus, shall I purchase Crossover or Normal?

Filezilla Do I still need to use Ethernet cables?

In general the documentation is somewhat vague in this regard. Can it be expanded more? And/Or proofread? Case in point: http://www.lakka.tv/doc/Accessing-Lakka-filesystem/ --> Using SCP --> This method require network, but is faster than SAMBA. --> Is it referring to network cables or to knowledge of networking or both?

Last Resort http://libretro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2911&p=22897&viewfull=1#post22897

Proofreading I’ll be happy to provide for. I’d be giving something back to such a marvelous distro and team.

Details: Lakka Live USB x64 Installed from Windows 7 Secondary machine can either be Windows 7 or 10 or LinuxMint Mate

Thanks all.

#2

The ‘source’ of that documentation is the wiki page here: https://github.com/libretro/Lakka/wiki/Accessing-Lakka-filesystem

The good news is that you can also get a github account (if you don’t have one) and make changes directly to the wiki that can eventually get added to the official documentation.

Last week I already made a few minor enhancements but it could use more work. I think your todo list for improvements is good. I’d be glad to work on this with you and coordinate efforts here in the thread.

#3

Great! We’ll team this up. I have a github account, how shall we proceed? (PM me, thx.)

In the meantime I am still dumbfounded on whether a Normal or Crossover Ethernet Cable is required. Can you provide an answer for this? Cheers!

#4

[QUOTE=Yrvyne;41121]Great! We’ll team this up. I have a github account, how shall we proceed? (PM me, thx.)

In the meantime I am still dumbfounded on whether a Normal or Crossover Ethernet Cable is required. Can you provide an answer for this? Cheers![/QUOTE]

Generally, modern (within the last ten years) network interfaces and operating systems are able to auto-negotiate a connection without a crossover cable – just any regular cat5 or cat6 patch cable should do. Unless I’m mistaken this should work as long as the host you are connecting to the Lakka system has an operating system ready to broker that connection. So it’s more of a operating system configuration issue than a hardware/cable issue.

On this point, I therefore believe we should be looking around for information on how to make sure that Windows, Linux, and OS X systems are configured to broker a direction connection.

Thus far I have been accessing Lakka from my Windows workstation via Samba through a router that is connected via cat6. It would in fact be a lot simpler for me to plug a network cable directly between my Windows machine and Lakka. I won’t be able to try out this process myself for another week or so but I’ll give it a try at home to make sure that whatever we add to the wiki checks out.

#5

I also think it might be good to keep our discussion here in the thread. That way other folks might jump in to help as well.

#6

Agreed! Discussion here, I’ll add that this particular thread should only deal with https://github.com/libretro/Lakka/wiki/Accessing-Lakka-filesystem. So, back to my quest, first I’ll purchase this cable then update. With regards to the documentation, I was going to start with general proofreading, then update as is most accurate and factual. How about this? Of course, the more content that is added the more fine tuned this will be.

#7

[QUOTE=Yrvyne;41129]Agreed! Discussion here, I’ll add that this particular thread should only deal with https://github.com/libretro/Lakka/wiki/Accessing-Lakka-filesystem. So, back to my quest, first I’ll purchase this cable then update. With regards to the documentation, I was going to start with general proofreading, then update as is most accurate and factual. How about this? Of course, the more content that is added the more fine tuned this will be.[/QUOTE]

Sounds good! I did make one change just now: I reorganized the order of the existing text and added a few more headings to reflect the areas we are trying to develop. Feel free to keep moving things around too! I think this is a more logical order but there are a lot of options to cover so the page could get complicated once we get into adding these new procedures.

#8

I was thinking of also changing a portion of the following section:

On Windows

Windows doesn’t support reading or writing ext4 partitions natively. You need to use a driver or an external program to copy the files. This page talks about 3 ways to accomplish that http://www.howtogeek.com/112888/3-ways-to-access-your-linux-partitions-from-windows/. We have not tested any of these yet.

Reason being that I actually used a particular software mentioned in the link to contribute the linked gaming pad configuration:

The software I used to access my Live USB was: DiskInternals Linux Reader

I also had in mind to make screenshots of the steps taken. Maybe we should section this into another page altogether?

#9

I edited the following documentation: https://github.com/libretro/Lakka/wiki/The-bootloader - username: brandleesee The changes are of a structural and grammatical nature. However, said changes were not produced in the respective page on lakka.tv. Thus, can I ask what the procedure is to have the changes done in Github documentation be reflected in Lakka. I am very new at this and knowing these mechanics helps me become a better contributor, cheers.

#10

[QUOTE=Yrvyne;41212]I edited the following documentation: https://github.com/libretro/Lakka/wiki/The-bootloader - username: brandleesee The changes are of a structural and grammatical nature. However, said changes were not produced in the respective page on lakka.tv. Thus, can I ask what the procedure is to have the changes done in Github documentation be reflected in Lakka. I am very new at this and knowing these mechanics helps me become a better contributor, cheers.[/QUOTE]

I believe that documentation automatically moves from the wiki to the website whenever a new nightly build of Lakka is released (typically at least every couple of weeks). I haven’t seen this in writing though, just my observation. Perhaps it is a manual process that is also being triggered at the same time.

#11

Ah, I see!

What about post #8?

Shall we create a dedicated page for the testing of

?

#12

Hi, you can ping me on IRC or by mail when you want me to rebuild the website.

Thanks for your work!

#13

[QUOTE=Yrvyne;41182]I was thinking of also changing a portion of the following section:

On Windows

Windows doesn’t support reading or writing ext4 partitions natively. You need to use a driver or an external program to copy the files. This page talks about 3 ways to accomplish that http://www.howtogeek.com/112888/3-ways-to-access-your-linux-partitions-from-windows/. We have not tested any of these yet.

Reason being that I actually used a particular software mentioned in the link to contribute the linked gaming pad configuration:

The software I used to access my Live USB was: DiskInternals Linux Reader

I also had in mind to make screenshots of the steps taken. Maybe we should section this into another page altogether?[/QUOTE]

I agree that the ‘direct attached’ method probably deserves its own page. I can imagine it getting quite lengthy once there are screenshots and full instructions.

#14

Yeah, it is. I’m already collecting screenshots but will try to produce an animated gif to save from scrolling.

#15

Today I cleaned up the formatting of the existing section on how to mount a CIFS/SMB share. Then I cloned those instructions to create a new one about how to mount an NFS share, based on this thread: http://libretro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6104

#16

I have just added a new section describing one way to directly network a Lakka system to a Windows 10 host via Ethernet patch cable in such a way that the Lakka system has internet access (via the host’s wifi connection) and the Windows host can access the Samba share. This is a very specific use case – the way I am doing things — but it at least does have screenshots as well as step-by-step instructions.

Maybe someone else can provide a more general way of making this work with a Windows host.

#17

Proofread pages:

http://www.lakka.tv/about/ (not implemented at time of writing)

Proofread and added content:

Testing & Documenting

In the meantime, yesterday, I mounted a Live USB on LinuxMate Mint and placed in the assets folder the following folders and files:

[ul] [li]PPSSPP[/li][LIST] [li]flash0 (folder with fonts)[/li][li]ppge_atlas.zim[/li][/ul]

[li]scph5500.bin[/li][li]scph5501.bin (renamed from 7003)[/li][li]scph5502.bin[/li][/LIST] In the roms folder in two separate and distinct folders:

[ul] [li]Sony - Playstation[/li][LIST] [li]crash_team_racing.bin[/li][li]crash_team_racing.cue[/li][/ul]

[li]Sony - Playstation Portable[/li][ul] [li]dissidia.iso[/li][li]dissidia.nfo[/li][/ul] [/LIST] In thumbnails folder, I unpacked in two distinct and separate folders ( http://thumbnailpacks.libretro.com/ ):

[ul] [li]Sony - Playstation[/li][li]Sony - Playstation Portable[/li][/ul]

On booting into the Live USB, and scanning the directories, all games were recognised and most of the artwork but neither game (from each platform) worked/played. Further notes: I did not touch the .retroarch folder, instead kept to the folders found immediately when mounting the USB flash. Before even injecting the USB flash with any file or folder, Dissidia worked (i.e. without the fonts flash0 and ppge_atlas.zim) and by scanning and detecting the game from a partition on my laptop.

Screenshots of the mounting and copy/pasting procedure are saved but since something went awfully wrong, I won’t be updating. Any suggestions on what went wrong or any solutions, please? I’ll keep on testing and updating.

P.S. I saw the screenshots and lolled at the mspaint.exe reference!!!

#18

Thank you for the update on documentation !

You can find other content in the website, for example the about part.

#19

You’re welcome! My changes to about.md await approval. In the meantime, I am still stuck with no playable games! (This is a nudge for some help in #17 !!! )

#20

For PSX, check that your BIOS are correct wit md5sum and that the cue file matches the bin file (you should have something like FILE “crash_team_racing.bin” BINARY).

For PSP, try to get some log to see what is the issue.