Pitrex (Raspberry Pi adapter cartridge for Vectrex) thread

alfonzotan

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Looks like there are at least a couple of us with early version Pitrexes in hand, so let's start a thread.

What's a Pitrex? It's a Vectrex cartridge that can be mated with a Raspberry Pi Zero. The cartridge takes over processing from the 1982 Vectrex board, providing the capability to run original and homebrew Vectrex games as a giant multicard, and even better, run vector arcade games (as well as other independent software projects) in emulation on the Vectrex monitor, and using the Vectrex controller. It's really cool!

Here's the link to the Pitrex project Wiki. Read this first!


... and the page where the cards can be purchased (I have no relationship with the vendor or developers, other than being an early adopter):


Like a lot of hobbyist hardware items, the cards are produced and sold in small batches. Check back often for availability, and take note that they originate in Australia, so shipping costs and times may be higher than you're used to.

The documentation to date is heavily geared towards developers (which is fine; the hardware and software are both still in "Developer Release" phase), and is in development the same as the software itself. For example, the README-ROMS file (under ~/pitrex after you install the software) is currently confusing, as the first section is intended to show the final file structure for the official Pitrex software release that isn't complete yet. As a result getting games to work can be more than a little challenging.

At this stage of the software, you really have to be minimally conversant with *NIX operations, meaning you can handle a basic network setup, edit text files, navigate and move files around from the command line, and understand the dangers of using "sudo." If you aren't comfortable with any of that, I recommend waiting for the official release.

NOTE: I am not a Linux expert by any stretch. The following is simply what worked for me; it's entirely likely that there are easier and/or better ways to do this stuff that I did wrong, missed or didn't understand, so YMMV.

Here's a suggested Linux setup guide from the Wiki, follow it to get the initial installation in place:


The best up-front advice I can give is to get the Pi set up to connect to your Wifi network in the initial installation, which will let you ssh in to the Pi remotely, saving you the trouble of hooking up a separate monitor and keyboard. This is easy to do, so long as you don't do what I did and leave a character out of your network SSID in the wpa_supplicant.conf file. Get that file right in a text editor, drop it in to the /boot directory on your Pi's SD card along with an empty file titled "ssh" before you boot the Pi with that card for the first time, and you should be good to go. I would also recommend setting a static IP address up front in dhcpcd.conf and rebooting, which will save you aggravation in knowing what address to ssh into.

You are expected to bring your own ROMs to Pitrex, which is in general more complicated than a simple file copy. As far as getting ROMs onto the Pi's SD card, file transfer via scp from my computer to a temp directory on the Pi was the easiest path for me. Unzipping MAME ROMs and putting them in the right game subdirectories will get you started, but some of the ROM files will need to be renamed and some ROMs (if my experience is any guide) will be missing for some Atari games. Filling in those blanks can be difficult, and unfortunately I can't give any particular advice on where to find missing pieces.

Read the README-ROMS file carefully for filename and directory name details. In the future, per the README-ROMS file, roms directories will be located under the /opt/ root directory, but AFAICT that has not been implemented yet. For the current version, in general (exception is Asteroids, see below) for Atari games you will need to create subdirectories in this format, using Space Duel as the example:

~/pitrex/spaceduel/roms/SpaceDuel/

The ~/pitrex and /[game] directories are made for you from the Git archive. The two lower directories you'll need to make yourself. The ROMs for the game in question (individual ROM files, not the MAME .zip packages) go in the bottom directory, in the above case /SpaceDuel/.

For the current release, for all arcade games other than Asteroids and Tailgunner, you will have to create roms subdirectories inside the game directories as per the README-ROMs file, and then do a "make -f Makefile.raspbian" (assuming you're using Linux and not Baremetal; I have not fooled around with the latter yet) for each game. That will produce a lower-case executable that you can run from the game's top directory using "sudo ./[filename]" to launch games. Ctrl-C will usually get you out of a game, but in some cases it'll get stuck and you'll need to restart the Vectrex.

For Asteroids, drop the ROM files directly into the ~/pitrex/asteroids_sbt/ directory and then make the game file, no subdirectory creation is needed in that case.

Tailgunner is a little more complicated. Notably, the Tailgunner ROMs in most MAME dumps are named differently from what the Pitrex software expects. You'll need to change the filenames of the four "tgunner" ROM files as follows:

tgunner.p70 > tailg.p7
tgunner.t70 > tailg.t7
tgunner.p71 > tailg.r7
tgunner.t71 > tailg.u7

Put those four files into the ~/tailgunner/translate/ directory, then type "make roms". (May need to use sudo, I can't remember). After that navigate up to the /tailgunner directory and "make -f Makefile.Raspbian" to generate the game executable.

Tailgunner is kind of awesome on the Pitrex. The Vectrex controller is very close to the original arcade joystick. It's by far the best TG experience I've had since playing original cabs in 19-nevermind.

Getting the Atari games (minus Tempest, which per the Pitrex devs is not ready for prime time) and Tailgunner working is as far as I've gotten so far. I have not figured out any of the multigame menuing in the Pitrex software dump (or if those options are working at all), or the rest of the Cinematronics games. If you have, or if you spot errors in this rundown, please post!
 
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Nice write-up.
I hope, one day - far in the future, to get the PiTrex mated to my Vectroidz board and play the games in my Asteroids CKTL.
For now, I don't have time to play with this, so I'll probably just wait for an updated build.
 
Waiting to hear from this guy -> :geek:

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I have the pitrex since a few week, I decide to take care of it last week, linux on pizeroWH, did not manage to lauch tailgunner. wifi is ok, and I install the rom with the right name on the right folder( as the roms txt files).
Ihave garbage on the screen when I launch MAZE
 

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Talk about a product that was ahead of it's time...

I remember feeling sorry for a friend who had one when I was a kid. I thought it was terrible compared to my Master System. Who knew it's value was in that tiny monochrome screen....

Now people are selling the cardboard box it came in for $300 on ebay and asking $500-$2000 for working consoles.
 
I hope it's available again soon, this is awesome! Been putting off buying a multicart for years but this is just incredible.
 
Can you put a Pitrex into a Tempest cab with a custom control panel and skip the Vectrex all together?
 
Can you put a Pitrex into a Tempest cab with a custom control panel and skip the Vectrex all together?
Maybe, but there'd be a lot of complexity to work out between the Pitrex card and getting something on the monitor. There are other options out there for multi-vector arcade cabs.
 
Latest update ->


Too bad I discontinued development in the VECTROIDz. :(
Maybe I'll rethink this decision later in the year.
 
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Subscribed. Dare I say that this will overshadow VecFever once it's completed? Very excited, based upon the list of goals posted on the Pitrex wiki...
 
Would appreciate seeing any other users' experiences, especially right now when the documentation is so light. Reading on the Github it looks like it's been upgraded to put all the ROMs in a central location and activate menuing for MAME, but I haven't updated my build yet.
 
The new software and menuing is really nice. Actual games (the arcade emulation versions, I haven't messed with native Vectrex games yet) still need a good bit of work, but this is a major improvement in UI and general usability from the prior command line-driven version. Unfortunately the original post is too old to edit, or I'd update it with the link. Hopefully people running across this for the first time will scroll down and not go through all the thrash of setting up the Developer version...
 
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