Retropie as VM

[Ralstlin]

Good afternoon everyone!

Recently I build a retropie machine on a Raspberry Pi3 for my nephews and I loved it. A year ago, I bought a dual Intel S2600CP2J with Dual E5-2670 SR0KX for my HomeLab and this week I thought that will be amazing to run retropie on it as the machine is close to the TV.

I read a bit (I am a totally newby with all this) and read that SR0KX support VT-d so PCI passthrough should work fine? I connected my old Radeon HD 7870, setup the PCI and then assigned them to the VM. It didnt work, or at least I could not see the VM on the TV through the HDMI on the Radeon card. The TV is not the newest one, but I was thinking if I cannot use a graphic card, maybe to try use a DLNA server like Serviio to stream to the TV.

I am not sure even which OS should i use, I tried ubuntu server 16.04 and the Radeon was listed on the VGA devices, but then I tried on a Windows server and the PCI was not listed on he devices detected. If I choose to try to stream DLNA, I suppose I should try Ubuntu Desktop or Windows. I think my priority is to be able to use the VM on my TV someway, then later I will try to install and setup retropie so the VM becomes a retro console..

Any idea or suggestion to start with?

[bluefirestorm]

Retropie runs on ARM-based CPU Raspberry Pi. Unless there is a version of Retropie that runs on Intel CPUs, I don't think you would be able to have Retropie as a VM in ESXi.

As for the GPU passthrough, as you most likely know if you consult the Compatibility Guide, only certain graphic card models are supported. Having said that, you could search the internet and probably some have varying degrees of success in GPU passthrough with Radeon cards. So YMMV on this front.

[Ralstlin]

Hi bluefirestorm!

I build up the retropie for a raspberry pi3, but it can be run on a different OS:

Debian · RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup Wiki · GitHub
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/5202/step-by-step-how-to-build-emulationstation-on-windows

For the pass-through compatibility, I read that mostly all AMD cards should work, is this incorrect? If I need to buy a new card, cannot I just use DLNA to stream the VM to my TV? it support DLNA as player. I am not sure about how to setup a DLNA server that transmit the VM screen to a DLNA player, I read a bit about minidlna but seems the support for it ended years ago. I found this guide: DLNA compatible Desktop streams from VLC | doli capax so I assume its possible installing VLC and Serviio on linux, and then connecting the TV to the serviio server on the online section.

I assume the performance should be better if I manage to do pass-through correctly compared with DLNA?

[Ralstlin]

Does anyone set before a VM display?

[bluefirestorm]

I am not exactly sure where you are going with GPU passthrough, Retropie, DLNA and a connecting a TV to a VM in ESXi. Seems too complicated when the Retropie on Raspberry Pi was already working.

But anyway, you can refer to this thread. But as I said before, YMMV with GPU passthrough with cards (especially consumer cards) that are not officially qualified.

Re: Help with Windows 10 Guest Crash with Multiple GPU Passthrough

[Ralstlin]

retropie work fantastic on a raspberry up to N64 (not all games), but you can add more emulators like PS2 to work on the emulestation with a more powerfull cpu. I was just trying to figure out a way to run it on a VM with stuff I already have at home. If the Radeon HD 7870 cannot be used with pass-through, then my option was to run a DLNA server (depending if the latency is not too bad) just wondering if someone tried something similar before and could give me an advice.