Pitrex (Raspberry Pi adapter cartridge for Vectrex) thread

out of curiosity what are all the rPI's selling for?

i have like 10-20 of them and it feels like a gold mine, i should sell some!
It's weird, Digikey has almost 2,000 of them in stock for $35, but they're all over resale sites (ebay, Walmart, etc.) for between $60-$100. (shrug)

 
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!
Hi,
Which MAME ROM set for Star Wars SBT work in Pitrex. I tried two sets, one the latest Mame version. All I got is a 'loading roms' screen.
 
Hi,
Which MAME ROM set for Star Wars SBT work in Pitrex. I tried two sets, one the latest Mame version. All I got is a 'loading roms' screen.
What is SBT? I loaded some really old ass ROMs, like 0.97, and they worked. Plays really funky with some terrible sounds as well, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Anyway just fired up my PiTrex last night. I like the screen rotate function.

20230129_170204.jpg20230129_164321.jpg
 
Found my analog stick, and I want to say Tail Gunner plays really well! Worth the price of admission for me.

I do have to rotate the screen in settings every time I boot it, but I think I can fix that in an .ini file on the microSD. All the other arcade games and menu now stay horizontal for me except that one.

@oolong I tried Star Wars again, its really slow, and the sounds are horrendous, but maybe worth playing if you haven't played the game in decades.

Any other ARCADE games that people enjoy playing on this thing? Not talking about Vectrex games.

I haven't played Asteroids, because I have shot all the rocks I ever care to in this lifetime, ditto with Battlezone. So my votes for playable, enjoyable arcade games at this point are Tail Gunner with an analog stick, and Barrier with a digital stick. Starhawk reacts too slow to the inputs of the analog to play. The Sega spinner games don't spin fast enough with either control as well.


20230130_220655.jpg
 
Found my analog stick, and I want to say Tail Gunner plays really well! Worth the price of admission for me.

I do have to rotate the screen in settings every time I boot it, but I think I can fix that in an .ini file on the microSD. All the other arcade games and menu now stay horizontal for me except that one.

@oolong I tried Star Wars again, its really slow, and the sounds are horrendous, but maybe worth playing if you haven't played the game in decades.

Any other ARCADE games that people enjoy playing on this thing? Not talking about Vectrex games.

I haven't played Asteroids, because I have shot all the rocks I ever care to in this lifetime, ditto with Battlezone. So my votes for playable, enjoyable arcade games at this point are Tail Gunner with an analog stick, and Barrier with a digital stick. Starhawk reacts too slow to the inputs of the analog to play. The Sega spinner games don't spin fast enough with either control as well.


View attachment 641842
Tail Gunner alone is worth the price of admission (but the "Fast Vectrex" games are a close second).
 
I loaded some never versions of MAME roms and it seems as if a few of the games are a bit more playable. The Segas are not as bad as I remember upon first trial, and even the Major Havoc maze screens and space scenes are decent enough to play.
Everything designed for Vectrex plays very nice, I really have no need for any other multi-carts at this point, since you can load any Vectrex ROMS onto the SD card, just rename the extention .bin if it's not already.
 
Manfred has updated his Pitrex SD image; I don't think he's putting the updates on his website (previously linked), but I stumbled across his Facebook page, and there's a brand new version up there. I haven't tried it myself yet, but apparently he's been working on optimizing arcade games:


UPDATE: I checked with Manfred, he says he considers the build he posted to the FB group to be preliminary (and I can vouch for that, Star Wars and Battlezone crashed when I tried to play them). He says when he's satisfied with a build he will be posting him to his site again. Here's the link if you want to be checking in for updates:

 
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Thanks for the update, it gives me motivation to fix my Vectrex, I bought a Pitrex like a year ago and it's still in the box because the screen on my Vectrex went out around the same time and I keep putting off looking into fixing it.
 
Manfred has updated his Pitrex SD image; I don't think he's putting the updates on his website (previously linked), but I stumbled across his Facebook page, and there's a brand new version up there. I haven't tried it myself yet, but apparently he's been working on optimizing arcade games:

For those of us w/out Facebook, is this mirrored/linked somewhere else perhaps?
 
Manfred has updated his Pitrex SD image; I don't think he's putting the updates on his website (previously linked), but I stumbled across his Facebook page, and there's a brand new version up there. I haven't tried it myself yet, but apparently he's been working on optimizing arcade games:


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