WORK IN PROGRESS

1. At Your PC: Preparation

1. Connect the microSD card to your PC.

   • Some laptops and even PCs have "card reader" slots.

   • Otherwise you'll need a special dongle. Here's ($10) a good, fst one that could be generally useful to own.

2. The microSD card needs to be formatted as FAT32 and have no files on it. It's a good idea to reformat it if you're not sure. Especially, note that new microSD cards of 64GB+ often come formatted as exFAT, so you will need to reformat them to FAT32.

   • Windows: here's a simple formatting tool (click the screenshot to download).

   • Mac OS X: Applications ➡ Utilities ➡ Disk Utility. Choose "Erase" and format: "MS-DOS (FAT)".

   • Linux: GParted. (There's a good chance it's already installed, otherwise it will be available in your software center.) Make sure to use an MS-DOS partition table with a single primary FAT32 partition.

3. Download the latest Recalbox release. (Tested with version 4.0.)

4. Extract all files from the Recalbox zip to the microSD card.

5. Eject the microSD card from your PC.

2. At Chalmers: Install

Note: it will really help to have a USB keyboard handy. (Recalbox 4.1 should have an on-screen keyboard that will make this unnecessary.)

1. Gently insert the microSD card into Chalmers.

   • The "top" of the microSD card, with the text, should be visible when Chalmers is upside down.

2. Plug the gamepad into Chalmers.

3. Plug Chalmers into your TV or monitor using the HDMI cable. Chalmers can emit sound over HDMI. However, if you are using external speakers or headphones, make sure to also plug those directly into Chalmers.

4. Plug the power supply into Chalmers. It should turn on. (If you're using the white power supply, it has a little switch on the cable itself to turn it on/off, so make sure it's turned on.)

5. On your TV you should soon see the Recalbox installer (called NOOBS). It will show you progress as it's installing, which should take about 5 minutes. Chalmers will then reboot and you should get the Recalbox menu.

   • In case you're curious: behind the scenes NOOBS repartitions the microSD card. The big partition you started with will be shrunk to its minimal size, and will now be the "recovery" partition, which will handle upgrades and also let you always return Chalmers to this initial ("factory") condition. There will be two more partitions, one for Recalbox (the operating system and applications), and one for the "share" where all the game data and ROMs lives. (This is a simplified explanation: it's actually a bit more complicated than these three partitions.)

6. Press any button on the gamepad and a "Configure Input" screen should pop up. Follow the instructions on the screen. Remember to follow the Super Nintendo layout for ABXY, and not the Xbox layout marked on your gamepad! For the hotkey, use the left joystick click.

   • Recalbox's input configuration is ''terrible:'' making a single mistake can really screw you up! For this reason, you may want to have a USB keyboard handy. Otherwise, you can just unplug Chalmers from power and replug it to start again and make sure it didn't save your bad configuration.

7. You should be hearing music playing. If you don’t, you might need to switch between HDMI mode and internal mode depending on how your speakers are connected:

   • START ➡ Sound Settings ➡ Output Device

8. Plug in the keyboard in order to change the network name from "RECALBOX" to "Chalmers":

   • START ➡ Network Settings ➡ Hostname

9. Plug Chalmers into your router using an Ethernet cable.

   • Recalbox does support WiFi, but we've never managed to get it to work for us. You can try!

10. Restart:

    • START ➡ Quit ➡ Restart System

11. Chalmers should now be on the network. To verify that it's connected:

    • START ➡ Network Settings: You should see an IP address.

3. At Chalmers: Settings

1. Recalbox:

   1. START ➡ System Settings ➡ Updates ➡ Auto Updates: off

   2. START ➡ Games Settings ➡

      1. Shaders Set: "retro"

      2. Rewind: off (this feature causes considerable input lag)

2. Kodi:

   1. Appearance ➡

      1. Skin ➡

         1. Skin: "Conq" (Eminence and Mimic are also not terrible)

         2. Settings ➡

            1. Customize home menu: delete "Play DVD", "Shutdown", and "Live TV" (shutdown is broken on Recalbox)

            2. Enable horizontal home layout

            3. Hide Conq logo

            4. Custom background image: "Red.jpg"

         3. GUI sounds: "Skin built-in"

      2. International ➡

         1. Language: "English (US)" (the default is UK)

         2. Timezone country: "United States"

         3. Timezone: choose the best one

   2. Weather ➡

      1. Service for weather information: "Yahoo! Weather"

      2. Settings ➡

         1. Location: add town

3. Turn off EmulationStation. We need to do this to keep it from overriding the game information files we will be copying in the next step. There are two ways to do this:

   1. If you have a keyboard plugged in, press F4.

   2. You can also do this from your PC terminal if you are familiar with SSH.) Mac OS X, Windows 10, and Linux already have it. For older versions of Windows we recommend MobaXterm. Use Chalmers;s IP address with the user "root" and password "recalboxroot":

ssh root@192.168.1.4

/etc/init.d/S31emulationstation stop

4. At Your PC: Extra Settings and Games

1. Go back to the PC and access Chalmers.

   • Windows: You should see Chalmers in your "Network Neighborhood." You can also access it from explorer by typing "\\chalmers" in the address box.

   • Mac OS X: TODO

   • Linux: You need Samba. (There’s a good chance it's already installed, otherwise it will be available in your software center.) If you're using GNOME, go to "Other Locations" in the file manager, and then "Windows Network." If you're asked for a password to connect, none is necessary, so leave that field blank.

2. Configure timezone:

• 1. Edit "system/recalbox.conf" with a text editor

  2. Find this line: ";system.timezone=Europe/Paris"

  3. Remove the initial ";"

  4. Not in Paris? Then set your timezone (the exact text from the TZ column)

  5. Save it

3. Reduce input lag:

• 1. Delete the file "system/configs/retroarch/retroarchcustom.cfg"

  2. Edit "system/configs/retroarch/retroarchcustom.cfg.origin" with a text editor

  3. Add the following lines at the end and save it:

# Chalmers

video_vsync = true

video_frame_delay = 5

1. Delete the built-in games so that they won’t appear in Chalmers's game menu. Go to "roms" and check the following folders for games. You can delete all of them:

   1. "gba"

   2. "mastersystem"

   3. "nes"

   4. "pcengine"

   5. "prboom"

   6. "snes"

2. Download the Chalmers release. TODO

3. Copy all files to Chalmers. The folder names should match and merge. Files include:

   1. Configuration overrides for gamepads and reducing input lag

   2. Metadata for games (images and descriptions)

   3. Chalmers EmulationStation theme

   4. Sweet background music for the main menu

4. Improve performance (optional for advanced users connected via SSH):

export TERM=xterm

mount -o remount, rw /boot

nano /boot/config.txt

At the end of the file, add the following lines:

# Chalmers

force_turbo=1

Press CTRL+X to save. Note: if you ever auto-upgrade Recalbox, this file may be overwritten.

5. At Chalmers: Grand Finale

1. Restart EmulationStation:

   • If you used F4 at the keyboard, do a hard reset (unplug from power, plug in again)

   • If you're connected via SSH, then type: "/etc/init.d/S31emulationstation start"

2. Set theme:

   • START ➡ UI Settings ➡ Theme Set: "chalmers"

3. Restart to make sure everything is OK:

   • START ➡ Quit ➡ Restart System