Hello @7thking and welcome to the forums! I’m surprised you hadn’t come here, being an early adopter!
This really means a lot, saying that my image has been useful! Thank you so much!! Seriously!
Since they have moved on, I’m thinking that this will probably be the most complete version of the official image.
I have considered making another image, based on @Joao_Manoel’s custom image from the ground up. I just encountered some compatibility problems, being based on a newer version of Debian; at least using the official gameshell launcher installation.
I have also been meaning to make an OS using a fork of Retropie, or at the very least, a custom Emulationstation front end. I’ve got it already running on my day to day machine. It’s just a matter of making it the primary “launcher” on boot.
Thanks for the heads up re: Pico-8. Sounds like you found the repository for the image. Mind you; I commented out being able to update the launcher from the menu as a safeguard against people accidentally updating and hosing their system. You can re-enable if, simply by removing the commented line in the settings page python file. Or just manually perform a git push yourself. I figured if you knew how to do this, you weren’t at risk of ruining your OS.
Usually if people have issues, you can either just rename the file to a previous version, or even just
“pico-8.zip”. If the former, just ignore the hash check. Calling it the latter shouldn’t need a MD5 check.
I ended up just releasing entire images every time I did any major updates, opting not to really maintain the fork and/or changes. Ultimately, I made this as an out of box experience, with as little things that could go wrong as possible. I considered just running a diff on my image, but never actually got around to it.
From trying to help people on the forums, I discovered that following instructions can be difficult for some, and at the end of the day, I would have had to have done more trouble shooting in undoing problems people have encountered trying to update something that they themselves have modified beyond recognition.
As for the location of Pico-8 carts, check here:
~/.lexaloffle/pico-8/bbs/and
~/.lexaloffle/pico-8/carts/They’re in “.p8.png” formats (confusing since it’s a similar extension to the image files), and may use a BBS binary as their respective names.
Hello to you too @ajbrensike! Welcome to the forums.
Ahhh the notorious “flickering” problem. If you search up “flickering” on the forums, you’ll find a handful of entries. As for downloading different versions, check the MD5 hash for integrity. I’m pretty sure I provided one in the first post? Although I may have forgotten! Either way, they “should” all be the same.
It’s a weird thing that seems to be a hit and miss scenario where some get the flickers, and some don’t. I’ve got 3 CPI boards, (a R16, a R16-J and a first gen kickstarter 512MB board) and two sets of game shells. I cannot replicate the flickering on either of them! I’ve used a considerable number of configuration permutations between the gear; mainly switching out the mainboard and display. I haven’t done every cord, speaker, arduino, keys and case since they shouldn’t be contributing to the problem.
I have actually experienced some crazy glitching ONCE on my main machine. It was while doing a apt-get full upgrade (or maybe I was updating retroarch, or compiling a kernel? I forget) while overclocking the unit to 1800MHz, using a performance governor, and running -j4 four jobs at once. It over heated like mad, and the screen went crazy! Strangely, the flickering lessened when I applied “pressure” to the machine. Hopefully it’s not an overheating issue, causing the ball grid array to dissociate on on of the pcb. Or haha hopefully I’m not immune to the issue BECAUSE I overheated my unit, forcing a reflow of the solder. Haha. Doubtful.
I initially thought that perhaps it could have been cable integrity, assembly cleanliness, or batches of LCD. But then I remembered that the one thing that I have replaced on all of my units is the battery. It could possibly be related to battery health! On a simply scale. as internal resistance increases, the output current drops. Of course with modern batteries this shouldn’t be a thing, but I’m willing to guess anything at this stage.
The kernel I’m using by default is @Joao_Manoel’s work, with many benefits, including a functional sleep mode, over clocked (or rather not underclocked) cpu, and better governors for power efficiency. This is what causes some people some problems. Of course, the ones with problems are the ones who speak up and check the forums. There may be more people without the problem than have reported here.
First and simplest solution is to turn the Gameshell on, then simply restart it from the launcher. This solves it for some people. Mind you, it does mean you need to double boot it every time, but if you’re using the suspend function, technically you could just let it sleep, and charge it when it gets low; never turning it off.
The second most effective solution is to change the kernel. I have provided scripts to do this in the utility folder. Check the first post of this thread for info on what each option does. You will lose some features, but you will remedy the flickering problem. This is also a way to get around any other “glitches” that may happen. There is a stock kernel included, if you want to see how a “vanilla” os 0.5 would run.
If you can get your hands on a BL-5C battery, try and replace your existing one. I’m curious to see whether or not this is actually the cause of all the problems.
Hopefully that solved your problems with the shaky glitching screen!