I’ve got an issue trying to load roms off a microSD (16 gb, FAT32) card on my Nvidia Shield Tablet (currently running Lollipop 5.0.1).
I have RetroArch (1.0.0.2) installed and my game roms installed on a separate folder on the new card. The roms files are currently in its zipped format. When the files are currently in its zipped format, when I try to load a rom (for example an snes game), retro just quits and boots to the main android screen. However, when first unzipped on the computer and then placed back on the card, retro is seemingly able to boot the game fine.
After a bit of googling, it looks like previous versions of Android had issues writing to external microSD cards. There is a fix that supposedly allows writing onto sd cards with this fix called SDfix: KitKat Writable MicroSD. But it requires that the device be rooted first. With the current version of lollipop, Google has made it possible for developers to grant permission to the user the ability to write, read and delete content from any directory - http://www.androidcentral.com/lollipop-brings-changes-way-your-sd-card-works-kind-youll
I guess currently the most stable version of Retro isn’t utilizing this feature because it still won’t allow me to boot from zipped games off the card. I checked the app permission for Retro and it says it’s currently allowed permission to write to SD so I’m wondering whether it’s on the software side of things to allow users to write onto the sd card from the app.
In any case, I suppose I could install that previously mentioned SDfix but I’d rather not root my device at the moment since this is a newly bought shield tablet. Or I could unzip all my roms first before placing on the microSD card but that seems a bit of a hassle. Was wondering if the developers at Retro were looking into this issue with android. Thanks and keep up the great work!