Need a LB expert's expertise...

[ephendi]

Hi all!  

With my family locked up at home for the foreseeable future, what better time to teach my kids about the wonders of retro gaming?!  I could use your help, but story time first... 

I ordered a 5TB drive on through Home Arcade systems for $416 after reading that it included systems through PS2 preconfigured for LB and BB.  After waiting about a month and a half and getting various excuses the drive arrived.  However, both LB and BB were far from "preconfigured" - it was clear LB and BB were an afterthought, and it was primarily built for Hyperspin. 

A few months later when I had the time to dedicate to the project again I reached out to the owner (who had sent me the earlier emails explaining delays) and explained that neither LB or BB were working.  He explained in his latest update both were working and there were a bunch of other features he was really excited about.  He asked that I buy the update package ($116) and he would send me the new drive. 

A month later the updated drive arrived, except it was the original drive I mailed him - no update whatsoever.  After initially denying this, he eventually apologized and said I could mail it back to him and he update the drive and put me in the front of the queue.  After getting many excuses including exhaustion, surgery, vacations, and more I got the updated drive nearly three months after paying for the update.

Here's the rub - LB and BB were STILL not properly configured $530 later.  Many systems won't launch at all, some would launch with weird frames, and others would crash after exiting one game and attempting to start a second.   Hyperspin worked okay (far from perfect), but I bought it strictly for LB and BB.  So, so frustrating.

Since I have all the roms and art is there any chance someone here would be willing to help me by set up a clean, pre-configured LB and BB for an i3 using built in graphics and x360 controllers?  I was thinking I could send screenshots of the "arcade" directory so you would know how to path systems and roms.  Maybe trade files through Dropbox if necessary?

I'm happy to pay for your time and expertise!

Thanks for your time everyone, I truly appreciate it!

 

All the best,

 

Mike

[drewjbx]

1 hour ago, ephendi said:

Hi all!  

With my family locked up at home for the foreseeable future, what better time to teach my kids about the wonders of retro gaming?!  I could use your help, but story time first... 

I ordered a 5TB drive on through Home Arcade systems for $416 after reading that it included systems through PS2 preconfigured for LB and BB.  After waiting about a month and a half and getting various excuses the drive arrived.  However, both LB and BB were far from "preconfigured" - it was clear LB and BB were an afterthought, and it was primarily built for Hyperspin. 

A few months later when I had the time to dedicate to the project again I reached out to the owner (who had sent me the earlier emails explaining delays) and explained that neither LB or BB were working.  He explained in his latest update both were working and there were a bunch of other features he was really excited about.  He asked that I buy the update package ($116) and he would send me the new drive. 

A month later the updated drive arrived, except it was the original drive I mailed him - no update whatsoever.  After initially denying this, he eventually apologized and said I could mail it back to him and he update the drive and put me in the front of the queue.  After getting many excuses including exhaustion, surgery, vacations, and more I got the updated drive nearly three months after paying for the update.

Here's the rub - LB and BB were STILL not properly configured $530 later.  Many systems won't launch at all, some would launch with weird frames, and others would crash after exiting one game and attempting to start a second.   Hyperspin worked okay (far from perfect), but I bought it strictly for LB and BB.  So, so frustrating.

Since I have all the roms and art is there any chance someone here would be willing to help me by set up a clean, pre-configured LB and BB for an i3 using built in graphics and x360 controllers?  I was thinking I could send screenshots of the "arcade" directory so you would know how to path systems and roms.  Maybe trade files through Dropbox if necessary?

I'm happy to pay for your time and expertise!

Thanks for your time everyone, I truly appreciate it!

 

All the best,

 

Mike

well yah that's the risk of pre-configured drives, I would suggest take a look at the many video tutorials for setting up systems on launchbox. I would try doing 1 system to get the hang of it. Explore your drive to see the folder structure of where everything is.. roms, media, etc. Most likely you have a hyperspin folder and a Launchbox folder. Start launchbox and look at the top right corner, is your name displayed as the licensed user?  Anyhow l would start with some tutorial videos on setting up a system, once you get it down then it should be pretty straightforward on how to make it work right. 

[ephendi]

8 hours ago, drewjbx said:

well yah that's the risk of pre-configured drives, I would suggest take a look at the many video tutorials for setting up systems on launchbox. I would try doing 1 system to get the hang of it. Explore your drive to see the folder structure of where everything is.. roms, media, etc. Most likely you have a hyperspin folder and a Launchbox folder. Start launchbox and look at the top right corner, is your name displayed as the licensed user?  Anyhow l would start with some tutorial videos on setting up a system, once you get it down then it should be pretty straightforward on how to make it work right. 

Hopefully you caught the fact this was posted in the noob section, so can't say I knew much about anything before making the purchase, especially any risks associated with a preconfigured drive.

I spent a couple of hours on YouTube and didn't have much luck.  I'm looking to avoid becoming an expert and dedicating tons of hours if there's an expert that can make short work of this - hence the post.  

If anyone has the time or willingness to help out it would be a paid project.   

Thanks!

 

Mike  

[Lordmonkus]

To be 100% honest with you here, these drive sellers sell games they are not legally allowed to sell, they sell emulators they are not allowed to sell, they sell peoples art work which they are not allowed to sell and quite often these drive sellers sell frontends and Launchbox licenses they are not allowed to sell.

Anyone willing to help you out with your problem here is going to be getting themselves into A LOT of work trying to unravel the mess that is one of these drives because they are always setup in a very complicated and convoluted way. For someone to sit and help unravel and fix the problems for each and every system is going to require a lot of time which if you are willing to pay for is going to cost you a lot of money.

We have a great many tutorial videos on the Launchbox YouTube channel to get people up and running, we also have many written guides here on the forums and on top of that we have the discord channel where we help people but we will not help people sort out of a pre loaded drive, I am sorry but we are not tech support for these thieves.

13 minutes ago, ephendi said:

I'm looking to avoid becoming an expert and dedicating tons of hours

This is a tinkerers hobby, we can help simplify it but you will need to get your hands dirty.

14 minutes ago, ephendi said:

short work of this

There is no short cut to fixing a pre loaded drive from one of these shady dealers. Sadly you are just another person to fall for their promise of an "easy turn key solution", they lied.

[sundogak]

Echo above and will add some comments based on experience I had dealing with this with a relatives "mess". They had good intentions (sick family member, surprise, believed the "all setup" advert, not a lot of time) but similar to your situation, it was far from plug in and fire up.  A couple observations:

1. Most of these folks are using older images and/or Frankenstein setups merged from a bunch of different drives. In most cases I would wonder if they even bothered to fire up the emulators at all because like you found, most were broken. In many cases, simple issues were the problem, but only if you dug down in to the guts and knew enough where to check (i.e., path problem, out of date rom, corrupt files since they are duping dupes of dupes).  Basically, takes longer to trouble shoot that nuke and start over.
2. Most sell on "maximum number of games" so they throw a ton of stuff on there and it is overwhelming for the types of users buying these drives.  I would argue most people just want the top 20 or so consoles and some MAME "top 200" type deals and that is it. 
3. Launchbox was "new" to many of these type systems where they had been using HyperSpin in most cases.  So again, they just bolted on LB (non-license free version) and cobbled it together but the links to game files and media were all whacked out because they had used mixture of Hyperspin setup and hadn't bothered to import into LB (or at least copy a working setup that had done it).  LaunchBox (LB) was basically non-usable since it wasn't ever setup correctly. 
4. A bunch of other things I can go on and on. 

So how to "Fix" it?  Well, sadly not so easy. But I have the following suggestions with the main one being don't try to mess with the original drive and figure out what is "wrong":

1. Get a new blank drive (similar size to what you got) and install these three items:
   • Install LB (recommend buy license, worth the money in end but free is fine to start off). 
   • Install Retroarch (RA is free) intimidating at first if you are not used to it but the advantage is that MOST consoles will work with it and once you get used to working with it new consoles/emulators are the same basic steps (with some exceptions of course).  Download "core" (emulator for RA), copy over ROMs to "new" drive, point LB to ROM directory and import/scrape.  LB also has made working with RA relatively easy. 
   • Install MAME  (free) It can be even MORE intimidating simply because it is an insane amount of systems that MAME emulates so it has tens of thousands of files. 
2.  In some cases, you likely do have ROMs that are "okay" but just the emulator setups are all messed up.  So you can use the purchased drive as rom source and/or media source for things like videos if you have slow internet connection. Otherwise, usually easier to have LB just scrape everything again automatically.
   • Go in stepped approach, don't copy all the stuff on the purchase drive over or will make confusing. Pick a system, set it up in LB.  Copy ROMs over. Import. 
   • Start with Atari 2600 (even if don't want it long term) because it is easy to setup and the ROMs are small in size so easy to move whole directory from Drive A to B and import into LB. It is also relatively easy to get working in Retroarch.  If start off with the complex systems, will get discouraged. 
   • Stick with the older consoles and move forward in age, particularly Nintendo NES, Super Nintendo, and Sega Genesis. If you are my age group, those get the biggest "nostalgia" factor anyway and are mature emulation systems with lots of information on how to get setup.  Lastly, with consoles like SNES, NES the file formats have been around awhile and even your drive, they are likely not messed up (probably a bunch of zips). 
   • Most things you can use Retroarch and MAME for relatively quick and easy setup. 
   • Tackle MAME once you are comfortable with RA and LB. 
     • MAME: MAME is relatively easy if have LB and just do things the way MAME wants you to (i.e., don't mess with the rom files!).  If you know what "mame set" you have that will be helpful (i.e., 218, 219, etc).  If you are lucky and have a relatively recent ROM set (in the 200s) on the drive, you can simply copy the whole "ROM" directory into the new drive.  Point LB to MAME emulator. Import games into LB.  LB allows you to prune on import things you don't want such as  "no casino games" and the like so even if you have the 5,000 ROM set LB can simplify and doesn't import them (but you can if want later).  LB does the heavy lift of knowing how to do that and don't have to worry about MAME complexity (or at least less so).  Main thing with MAME, don't try to cheat the set up to find "pac-man" and just copy that over or you will get frustrated in that it will likely not work.  You can pretty much get the "golden" age arcade items running pretty quickly without a lot of understanding of how MAME works.  Although RA allows you to run MAME inside it (via a core), I think it is easier initially to get running outside RA for MAME.  My preference anyway. 
   • After that, moving towards more modern consoles such as PS1 to setup.  These can be big files, plus depending on who set the drive up, you could have mishmash of file formats which may or may not work.  For these bigger files, I recommend sticking with setting up a few ones you have interest in and get them working first.  Basically, anything that had a CD as a game, you can run into more complexity to figure out why not working. 
   • Recommend don't tackle PC/Computer (Apple II, Commodore 64) emulation until you feel comfortable with the consoles and arcade setup above even if they threw that all in.  Again, they tend to throw a ton of stuff in to make it look cool.
   • Rinse, repeat. 
   • I found the first 6 or so consoles all went pretty quick (again up until you hit CD images).  Your i3 may start to struggle on more complex systems anyway.
3. With all that, in the end, likely the purchased drive will be placed in a drawer and you won't use it again after you do step wise copying of the ROMs over since you will have replaced with newer/better data.  Like Lordmonkus said above, "they lied", and buyer beware. 
4. On positive side, the folks here at this site are very helpful, so as you dive in, ask questions and you will get pointed in right direction.