wolfhound89

I have been a long time Launch Box supporter. Unfortunately, not a consistent user. I have updated on a regular basis so the few systems I do have continue to work. My question is this. I have given so some thought to running LB off of a USB drive with all my Emulators and Roms on it. For portability mostly. I do have an older 8TB USB drive that was running HS on it. I just did not like HS as much as LB so it just kind of sat on a shelf. Would like to remove HS completely from said USB drive without issue if possible. I tried to do some research on how to install LB on a USB drive and while most of the videos I found were older they all talked about doing an install on a PC and then copying it over to the USB. Is that still the case? Are there OS dependency concerns such as .net? This is the crawling stage just to get it installed and configured. I know setting up the various emulators will require some work. Thanks.

Thank you @neil9000 that is the way I was leaning. I wanted to make sure and get a voice of reason.

I have been a LB supporter for a few years. Unfortunately, I never stuck with it long enough to complete a setup that I liked. So, after a recent computer upgrade I thought this was the perfect time to stop dragging my feet. So, here is my question. I have an 8TB USB that utilizes a different front end. After moving to my new PC it just does not appear to like Win10. Which is fine. Time to go ahead and use LB for all my front end needs. But, which is the smartest and most efficient way of doing this? Option 1 Try and remove front end from USB drive and install LB on the drive. Then I would be able to move to other machines. Option 2 Keep all the ROMs on the USB drive. Run LB from my PC and just map the ROM location to the USB drive. I am aware that there will be a certain level of effort to getting all this up and running again. I am under no illusion that it will be plug and play and that getting certain cores may take some work (i.e. NEO GEO). Thank you for any guidance or suggestions you may have.

Thanks lordmonkus. I appreciate your explanation. It helps me understand how things are working as I progress from one simple emulator (NES) to others eventually after three being set-up in RA I think that is when I will take the plunge and add the next layer of complexity and install launchbox.

I would like to thank everyone who posted guidance and comments to my thread. My apologies for not posting an update on my progress. So, I wanted to let you know that I have installed Retroarch and things a moving along quite well. I scanned in some NES Roms and have been having some fun. Controller is working great. The only new question I have is in regards to scanning in new Roms. I had a folder of NES Roms that worked under HS and stand alone emulators. However, when I scan with Retroarch only 5 of the 150 show up. Is this because of their age? Could they need to be updated? Thank you again.

Thank you to all for the comments and suggestions. I am happy to see that the community is so active and willing to help. So, here is what my near term plan is. Install and work with NES emulator Install and work with RetroArch I have tried both the USB X360 wired controller and USB SNES controller. Hopefully these baby steps will help me decide which one to go with. I was given a small HyperSpin build and it drove me crazy trying to get my controllers set-up for the various emulators. So, I will proceed with my plan in hopes of making progress this weekend. I hope that this will be a stepping stone to my larger plan. Thanks again.

It has been about five years since I last played on my MAME machine (a rather large desktop PC). I started to play around with some other EMUS. Then after a couple of years off and numerous moves I dusted off some of the HDDs and was surprised as to what I found. Tons of outdated emulators and ROMs. It peaked my interest of getting back into the hobby. So, after some testing and research i settled on LB. Hopefully it will help me clean up my ROM collection. While I am just getting started with installation of LB I think that I jumped into the deep end too soon. I tired to get MAME working last night. A bit frustrating however, I think I know what I was doing wrong. I would like to ask a simple question. What would be the first and easiest emulator to start with? Thanks and time to get back into the tutorials and research.