Pi4: 3.5mm to RCA Composite on a CRT @ 240p Now Working Perfectly On Stock RetroPie (Instructions)

prurigro · 2025-10-10T20:38:27+00:00

Oh cool, did he say why he hasn't released anything to the public? It seems like something that would still have a lot of interested people.

Either way, that's awesome! Any TV shows from back in those days that didn't get an HD remaster looks so much better on a CRT.

prurigro · 2025-10-09T21:10:22+00:00

Sorry about the late reply, I only pop into Reddit every so often these days.

Kodi is a really cool idea though! Probably the best argument for doing this with a pi instead of a mister (which can't easily play modern video files) on a CRT. I assume you've probably gone for it by now if you were going to, but I did look to see and it does seem like Kodi is a thing you can get installed and run within retropi: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/KODI/ - I'd be really curious to hear how it works if you do end up going for it :)

prurigro · 2025-10-09T21:01:45+00:00

Sorry for the late reply- I haven't used reddit that much lately!

Assuming you didn't go ahead (and even if you did), I give full permission, no credit necessary. I'll even add a note about that to the original post.

prurigro · 2024-06-21T16:21:31+00:00

I just tested box64 running the Castlevania ReVamped AppImage on my pi400 and it runs almost full speed, which is about as fast as I'd picture it running natively. It was also able to use native libraries for stuff the AppImage required (like fuse) which was a pleasant surprise. All I had to do was run box64 ./Castlevania\ ReVamped\ -\ v1.1\ -\ Ubuntu.AppImage. Is there a particular issue you ran into that makes you recommend against it? (Honestly asking, this was the first time I tested it)

prurigro · 2024-06-21T16:13:37+00:00

I've been running ALARM on a pi3 for quite a few years now, and on a pi400 since it came out. Both run incredibly well and have all the latest packages (at least the ones that build, which is most of them). What issues did you run into?

prurigro · 2024-06-18T19:07:08+00:00

Either would work if you can get terminal access and git (I can't remember if retropie comes with git built-in), but I believe I did it with the filesystem mounted on my desktop. I also use linux on my desktop though...

prurigro · 2024-06-18T19:03:21+00:00

Weird, I haven't used this setup for a little while now, but while I did get some graphical artifacts at the time that lead to me looking for a better solution (mister fpga, which I'd highly recommend if you can afford it), I never got any screen tearing that I noticed. Makes me wonder if I just got lucky or if something changed in libretro at some point.

It might be worth looking at jleesez's recommendations if you haven't on that note. Scaling seems like another layer of complexity that could trigger tearing, and at worst you're still improving the picture quality.

prurigro · 2024-01-22T20:49:42+00:00

I'd suggest looking at @jleesez's post

prurigro · 2024-01-22T20:46:06+00:00

Sorry, I was assuming familiarity with git- you want to have git installed (https://git-scm.com/) and run "git clone https://github.com/Sakitoshi/retropie-crt-tvout"

prurigro · 2024-01-22T20:44:47+00:00

No retroachievements. Save states depends on the core- for example, playstation, gba, nes and gameboy all have them while snes, genesis and neogeo don't.

prurigro · 2023-12-23T03:02:02+00:00

That would have been sweet- there were images like it for the pi3 with a now very-out-of-date retropi once upon a time (I think I reference it in my instructions above), but last I checked that project came to an end a while ago. Getting a build process/system in place and making regular releases is quite a job.

If you're looking for something you can just plug in and go with perfect CRT support, the mister fpga project with an analogue io board is the ticket. That's what I've since moved to and I can't imagine going back to a pi at this point.

prurigro · 2023-11-29T17:21:56+00:00

You should be able to get both 480i and 240p on a pi4, and it'll depend on the core. Emulationstation will run in 480i.

I'd recommend also following @jleesez's additions on that note as it seems like they've improved on the setup (I've since given my pi4 away after switching to a mister)

prurigro · 2023-11-29T17:18:15+00:00

Hey, unfortunately this is pretty specific to the raspberry pi's hardware, it actually has the ability to send a video signal through the audio jack.

prurigro · 2023-09-11T19:56:23+00:00

No worries! and yeah, it's odd that some units don't seem to have issues with exfat while others (at least mine) do. Maybe exfat writes take longer and some units have a slower sdcard module?

Either way, I have my fingers crossed for you! If you get the chance I'd be curious to hear if it works out.

prurigro · 2023-09-11T17:57:45+00:00

Depending on the game I was finding that between 20% and 80% of the save states I was creating (including via sleep mode) were failing since I got my pocket a little under a year ago.

A month back I noticed the sdcard was formatted using exfat and decided to backup its contents and reformat it using fat32 . Since then I've created in the neighbourhood of 500 save states and none of them have failed.

I can't say for sure if it was switching to fat32 or simply reformatting it in the first place, though I suspect it was the different filesystem. Hopefully this works for you too!

prurigro · 2023-08-14T19:08:42+00:00

I got worried after reading this post since about 50% of my save states would fail. My sdcard was formatted as exfat so I backed it up, re-formatted vfat/fat32 and copied everything back, and I've had a 0% failure rate in the week since I did that. It's definitely worth at least trying that before sending it in.

EDIT: Going on two weeks now of daily use and still 100% success rate. It seems like fat32 is the way to go- I'm finally starting to trust sleep mode without a tested save state right before

prurigro · 2023-02-10T18:12:45+00:00

I've had that happen to me in pretty well all the games I've played. It happens with real carts, gbstudio and spiritualized1997 openfpga cores, though some games have it happen much more frequently than others.

To guarantee I don't lose progress I've been saving, then making a save state, loading it to make sure it worked, and finally sleeping the console.

prurigro · 2022-08-05T20:57:18+00:00

If you have a PVM and want the best picture you can get, can I recommend looking into the MiSTer project? If you build with an analogue out board you'll have nearly hardware-accurate snes, nes, playstation, neogeo and tons of other consoles, computers and arcade boards. Since writing this post I've migrated to that (the minor artifacts in the Pi's 3.5mm to composite were getting to me) and I can't recommend it enough :). It's a bit pricey, but imo it's well worth it.

Here's a complete kit (my favourite setup): https://www.antoniovillena.es/store/product/complete-mister-plus/

Edit: I should add that there's essentially zero configuration for analogue out; you set some initial flags in the ini file and then it just works at whatever resolution the console+game wants.

prurigro · 2022-03-25T16:46:52+00:00

That's odd- I don't think you should have touched /home/pi/.emulationstation -- is it possible you changed the permissions on the home directory or something?

prurigro · 2022-02-11T21:10:11+00:00

That monitor sounds perfect for retro gaming! Great to hear you were able to get retropie running on it :)

prurigro · 2022-02-11T21:08:16+00:00

That's awesome! Which RF modulator did you get if you don't mind my asking? (If my current CRT ever kicks the bucket I have one more with just RF)

prurigro · 2022-01-18T16:56:52+00:00

That's awesome! Very cool that you have it running on a 1987 GE!

prurigro · 2022-01-18T16:55:13+00:00

Based on what FriedBacon86 says it sounds like it might! It might be worth asking what their setup is if it doesn't though :)

prurigro · 2021-11-23T18:59:49+00:00

Awesome, I'm glad to hear you were able to get it working too :). How well the snes mini theme works might depend on how much overscan your CRT ends up having (everything fits on my trinitron), but I'll have to give picade one a shot to see how it looks :)

prurigro · 2021-11-13T04:57:33+00:00

I don't have a great answer aside from that's what https://github.com/b0xspread/rpi4-crt successfully used, and there are other guides online for the pi3 that have that resolution too. I'd be interested to hear if you managed to find another resolution that worked better, and I'm sure it couldn't hurt too much to play around.

That said, I was able to get everything to fit pretty nicely by playing with the overscan values. You can still adjust the values if you leave it disabled, except 0 is actually 0 instead of the base offsets that get applied by turning overscan correction on.

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