Completely new to retrogaming and I am sooo not interested in hacking. In fact I’d rather just pay for all the games I’m interested in or pay someone 100 bucks to find and configure all this for me to avoid “foffing about” and even asking this question.
I want to play old and simple video games like chess, scrabble, music composition games, monopoly, puzzle and RTS games, with a mini keyboard. I don’t want to use my arcade stick for these games and I don’t want to buy another controller. I have an Android box, the “RetroStation 14k” and an H9 mini-keyboard.
Frustratingly, I can’t use my mini keyboard in-game. I can only use it to navigate the “EmulationStation” menus.
The four buttons on the right side of the mini keyboard ITSELF are printed with symbols that represent “Volume +” (Top), “Volume -” (Down), “Home” (Left), and "Menu "(Right). [Photo]
Both The mini keyboard and my Arcade stick are configured and saved under (settings—>input—>port 1 controls) in RetroArch . For the H9 minikeyboard, However, RetroArch only recognizes the A /(Right) button which it calls ‘Compose’. The other three buttons are unresponsive in RetroArcarch. BXY remain mapped to the letters zsa on the minikeyboard and DO NOTHING (in RetroArch and in-game).
The mini keyboard is configured in “Controllers Settings” in “EmulationStation”.
The mini keyboard is recognized as “Keyboard” in “Controllers Settings”—> Configure Input in “EmulationStation”. (Where it asks you to hold any button to configure your controller)
In EmulationStation, “Controllers Settings” —> Configure Input, it recognizes and assigns names to the 4 buttons on the H9 mini keyboard. However, It recognizes (Left ) as “Key AC Home”, (Right) as “Key Application” and (Top)&(Down) as “Volume up”&“Volume down.” It allows me to navigate the EMULATIONSTATION (not retroArch) menus with all of the buttons as assigned.
The mini keyboard is referred to as “USB USB device” when a game launches or when I boot to RetroArch. (i.e. the little blue Pop-up at bottom left of the screen).
In the “Controllers Settings” menu in EmulationStation, I cannot choose “USB USB device” in any of the INPUT slots (INPUTP1 INPUTP2…etc) I can only choose between my arcade stick and DEFAULT.
The shoulder buttons are not recognized at the “Controllers Settings”—> Configure Input in neither “EmulationsStation” nor in-game but the shoulder buttons are recognized in RetroArch (Settings—>input—>port 1 controls) as “mouse 1” and “mouse 2”.
Is there is reason for these descrepancies? I suspect that There exists three independently developed layers.
1.One (RetroArch) that accepts a Linux"(Unix?") keyboard i.e. the Sun Microsystems Unix workstations ca.'87 or “DEC LK201” ca.'83 , 2.One that accepts a Windows standard keyboard (“EmulationStation”) 3.While I have an ‘Android Type’ keyboard some of whose controls just happen to be recognized by “EmulationStation” only.
Another possibility is that RetroArch is just half-assed. Or there’s not enough brains, money, or passion behind it, which would render us all mere thieves.
The only hardware I’m willing to add is perhaps some sort of usb adapter but I would need confirmation that it works with minikeyboards, specifically the H9.
I’d appreciate any help or ideas for settings to finally use my H9 minikeyboard in-game.
If it can’t be done, I accept it, I just want to know why. Maybe free sh*t from hackers is to be expected as faulty. I’d just be bummed because I paid for it. The Retrostation was presented as a fully functioning package that would spare you the foffing about that hardcore ‘crackers’ did to realize this “emulation movement”, as such, I used the product under the assumption that it’s various components are compatible with each other.
Here’s what I’ve gathered to the best of my knowledge. (I use quotes where I have no idea what I’m talking about.) Retroarch 1.9.0 AndroidBox: X96 max+ “Front end”: EmulationStation Emuelec ver. 3.9 “Frontend” OS: Linux(v4.9) “Lakka Version”: Amlogic-ng.arm-1.2