Where are you putting the roms?
In the relevant sd card folder such as GBA, ATARI 7800, SPECTRUM etc. Erased the sd now to try a new Trixie build as could not sort my Trixie locale errors. Will reinstall retropie on another card though asap…
I have fixed the volume issue with the CM5 with this most recent build.
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Hi all,
I’m getting the “illegal instruction” error at boot (after setting up login name and configuring uconsole as device). No clues on how to fix the error.
This is the setup:
CM4-8GB
Tried 64GB Lexar and 128GB SanDisk TFs
Flashed the latest image (.67) from Google Drive with rpi-imager, no custom settings (disabled by default).
Any suggestion? I have read almost every post here and on retropie forum without success..
Try flashing again and make sure you type the command to setup retropie for the device correctly.
I have tried different solutions:
repeated the download, flash compressed image, flash uncompressed image, flash with rpi-imager and balenaEtcher, nothing changed.
When running emulationstation –debug, I see messages about parsing some mame-related XMLs and get the “Illegal instruction“ message after an attempt to “Creating window…“.
I give up for now 
Thanks for your help anyway!
UPDATE
Installing the optional packages via retropie_setup script solved the issue. Now I’m stuck with keyboard/gamepad configuration, but that’s another story 
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So i ran into “Illegal Instructions” trying to run it on a CM4.
After many back and forths with Claude I finally got retropie to boot.
here’s the summary of the changes. Hope it helps others
How to fix “Illegal Instruction” crash on CM4 — step by step
If you have a CM4 and EmulationStation crashes immediately with “Illegal instruction” after rebooting, here’s how to fix it. This happened to me and took a while to track down so hopefully this saves someone time.
What’s happening: The EmulationStation program included in the image was compiled on a newer Raspberry Pi and uses CPU instructions that the CM4 doesn’t support. The fix is to recompile it directly on your uConsole so it builds for your specific CPU.
What you’ll need:
-
Your uConsole connected to WiFi
-
A computer on the same network to SSH in from
Step 1 — Enable SSH
On the uConsole keyboard type:
sudo systemctl enable ssh
sudo systemctl start ssh
Then find your IP address:
ip addr show wlan0
Look for a number like 192.168.1.x — that’s your IP.
Step 2 — SSH in from your main computer
On Mac or Linux open Terminal. On Windows open PowerShell. Type:
ssh pi@192.168.1.x
Replace the x’s with your actual IP. If you named your user something other than pi, change that as well
Password is what you set during setup
Step 3 — Recompile EmulationStation
This is the main fix. Run:
sudo /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/retropie_setup.sh
A menu will appear. Navigate with arrow keys and Enter:
-
Select P - Manage packages
-
Select Manage core packages
-
Select emulationstation
-
Select Re-install (from source)
This will take 30-60 minutes. Just let it run. When it finishes, back out of all the menus and test EmulationStation — it should launch without crashing now.
Step 4 — Fix the screen rotation
If the screen is sideways (bottom of the UI is on the right side), run:
sudo nano /boot/firmware/cmdline.txt
This opens a text editor. Use the End key to jump to the end of the line and add a space followed by:
video=DSI-1:rotate=90
Press Ctrl+O to save, Enter to confirm, then Ctrl+X to exit. Reboot and the rotation will be correct.
Step 5 — Prevent it from breaking again
Run this to lock the SDL2 library to a version that works on CM4, so a future system update doesn’t break things:
sudo apt-mark hold libsdl2-2.0-0
That’s it — you should be good to go!
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Hi
First time playing with a raspberry pi of any description, I’ve worked out raspi-config, and finally been able to ssh into my uconsole, here’s the but…
Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
Edit, I’m a dummy, i needed to replace pi in the command. reinstalling now thankyou…
Edited, edit.. I’ve tried several times but I keep getting the (Illegal instruction), I’ve used multiple sd cards, and tried reinstalling emulationstation straight after setting the device as a uconsole and after rebooting to get the illegal instruction prompt.
grump
thanks
Did you do the rebuild from source step?
I’m not an expert in any of this, I just went back and forth with Claude AI, following its instructions and kept trying things until it worked.
step 1 and 2 add nothing, you can just open a terminal on the uconsole and run the commands there
and using relative instead of absolute paths is a lot more versatile
Yes, that’s true, but I did find it very difficult to deal with debugging through Claude while trying to do everything on the uconsole. I can’t edit my original post to add more commentary.
hmmm. looking through my claude log, the only other thing i did before the rebuild was
sudo apt remove libsdl2-dev
sudo apt install libsdl2-2.0-0=2.26.5+dfsg-1
I’m installing claude atm, I’ll give that a go once its finished.
cheers.
oh, one last thought, did you connect the uconsole to wifi before building from source?
nice work, thanks for being so prompt.
All I can add is that reinstalling took about twice the time as my previous attempts.
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Nice! Was it the connect to the internet first issue or the libsdl2-dev issue?
sudo apt remove libsdl2-dev
sudo apt install libsdl2-2.0-0=2.26.5+dfsg-1
Absolute gold mate, cheers.
I’m loading up the roms now, using WinSCP, another first for me, thanks again.
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Hi. I’ve done a lot of reading, sent Rex some coffee, and answered a lot of my own questions, so thanks to everyone for that. But this one has me stumped… I have an external mouse connected to USB on the uconsole. Trixie, etc see it just fine but games running under lr-dosbox-core do not. I think my first question is, how do I tell which of the layers (uconsole hardware, Emulationstation, Retropie, Retroarch, or the core itself) is likely causing the problem?
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