Video and retro gaming

Help and Support Help
1

Volumio Version: 2.882
Hardware: Pi 4
DAC: NAD D1050

Hi

Sorry in advance if this has been covered or is really simple but I’ve tried both Google and searching this forum with no luck. I’m new to Volumio (and RPI and Linux in general). While I first and foremost use my system for playing music I also want to be able to use my Pi as a client for video and retro gaming. I assume this is possible.

I’ve tried installing both VLC and omxplayer but they both only output video to the terminal (in ASCII). I thought I’d found a way to force output to HDMI but this only resulted in a message of having less than 64 (I think) MB available for the GPU. I haven’t even tried installing a emulator (only found Retro Pie so far and when I found the install guide for installing on top of a different distro I stopped when the guide suggested running “sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade” as I understand that messes with Volumios kernel). I would also like to, if possible, be able to stream music while using the emulator but if it’s a big hassle it’s not a requirement. I’d also prefer not to dual boot or change SD-cards to do this.

Like I said I assume both these things are possible (and probably even easy) but I’m turning up blanks as far as to how I should do it. I like to think I’m quite tech savy but this is getting the better of me (probably because I’ve hardly ever used Linux and terminal commands/non-GUI systems). If someone could point me to where I can read more about this (or teach me how to do it…) I would appreciate it a lot!

Thanks
Carl

2

This is because Volumio has not been designed as an OS/ platform for anything else than playing music. Unless you go the multiple SD or dual boot way, you will not find the solution you are looking for.

3

Thanks for the reply. That’s too bad. I guess I’ll create another SD card for now and swap when I feel like playing games or watching a movie and look at maybe buying another Pi down the road.

I’ve got to admit I’m somewhat surprised though, at least when it comes to the video part as Volumio both can show an output via HDMI and VLC/omxplayer both started the movie I tried but only showed it in ASCII.