Last week I found out that my existing RetroPie image I setup on my Raspberry Pi model B wouldn’t work on my new model B+. Initially I thought I would just move forward with the hardware part of the project and wait to set up the software later on. I had assumed that since I couldn’t use my old image I would have to compile and install all the components manually. I did some research to see if I could find some instructions on setting thing up manually but discovered that the RetroPie project has a setup script that handles all this for you. I decided to give it a try before giving up and doing things manually.
I already had a base Raspbian image ready for my B+ so I slapped it on an SD card and ran the script. Unfortunately it didn’t work correctly for me. It failed about three or four times throwing errors about missing dependencies. Each time I installed the missing programs/library files and restarted. Finally it finished but when I booted up the system Emulation Station didn’t start. I’m sure the problem is with my image not the script itself. My B+ base image is a very stripped down installation of Raspbian designed to fit onto small SD cards. I’m assuming that it was lacking some of the dependencies that the script needed but might not have been programed to check for.
I decided to give a pre-created image one last try. I downloaded the card image offered by RetroPie and booted it up on my B+. Fortunately it worked. I guess it’s not always true that B images won’t work on B+ models. Either that of the RetroPie project has prepped this one so it would. Either way I’m happy. Especially since they had just updated their image so it included the latest version of Emulation Station. It is much more slick that the earlier version and it has more options.
The next step will be testing the individual parts of my setup and prototyping them.
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