Original subtitles

osera is a great piece of software that

allows you to turn almost any Computing

device into a retro gaming system so we

can install it either as a portable USB

drive or onto the actual hard drive

embedded in your PC so let's have a look

at both of these methods to get you

gaming as quickly as

[Music]

possible

hi and welcome to bites and bits in one

of my previous videos I was having a

look at one of these Thin Client

machines and these are basically just a

a reasonably low powerered PC built into

a nice neat package and we got some good

Linux performance out of it and we're

having to go at some retro gaming and we

saw that that was quite good but that

that time I I I thought that probably

the best use of this would be as a

dedicated little retro gaming machine

and that's what I'm going to have a look

at today now we're going to use a

package called batter Sera which is a

Linux BS um front end but that does

actually give us very good performance

on really any PC um but especially on

these sort of um older um less powerful

machines now bisera itself um does

install itself as a little portable USB

drive and of course that's what we're

going to start off with but um better

than that we can actually then get it to

install itself directly onto the hard

drives of of any PC that we want and

that will then turn it into a dedicated

gaming machine so as soon as you turn

your PC on um that will then be straight

into bisera and we can do some retro

gaming so that's what we're going to

have a look at in today's video so let's

go and have a look at Bater itself and

then get started on installing it

Basera is a completely free retro gaming

system that you can install onto a wide

range of different devices so if you

browse over to bsa.org you'll find the

project website which has lots of

information and docu documentation to

help you set up and fine-tune your

installation so if we go to the

downloads page you'll see the full range

of supported devices from PCS to

raspberry pack

to lots of other single board computers

Android TV boxes and and basically

anything that can run

Linux now bacera is actually a

completely self-contained Linux

distribution and that's been tailored to

run a wide range of console and computer

emulators using retroarch as its core

software now as it's effectively its own

operating system we can create a b

bootable drive and then plug that into a

compatible computer and that will

instantly turn it into a retro gaming

console now one of the great features of

this approach is that if we run it from

a portable USB stick then once we remove

the B seta Drive the computer will

revert back to its normal State as

either a Windows PC or a Mac without

disturbing the computer's original

setup now for Raspberry Pi's and similar

single board computers and devices the

batera boot drive that we're about to

create will actually become the system's

main boot drive so you'll need to make

sure that you use a big enough SD card

to hold this operating system along with

all of your games and media now but as

we'll be using this with a Mini PC I'll

also show you how to transfer the bacera

operating system onto the inter internal

hard drive to give us that extra storage

space so to get started we simply need

to download the boot Drive image for our

Target system

so once that file's downloaded we need

to flash that onto an SD card or USB

drive now if you're not familiar with

that process do please have a look at my

previous tutorial and I'll put a link

for that in the description down below

and that will show you exactly what to

do so once we've got that ready you need

to pop it into your PC or your Raspberry

Pi and then start it up now if you're on

a PC you'll obviously need to make sure

that you select the right boot device so

do go through that process but once

you've done that then B sah should start

itself up now it does go through a

little bit of preparation as it goes

through that and you'll see that

happening but once that's over then it

should go through a number of startup

screens um little animations and then

eventually um that will drop you into

the main batera interface where you'll

be able to see your various systems and

we're now ready to start setting this up

properly so Basera is pretty good at

picking up on game control controllers

so if you've got one plugged in you

should be able to navigate around so we

have our left and right obviously in in

bisera the a key or the what we turn the

South key on your on your controller the

bottom one um that will do select and

then the b key um or the right button on

your controller will do the um back out

again now although it is generally set

up pretty well it is worth going through

the full mapping process so the start

button on your controller will bring up

the menu and from there we can go into

controller and bluetooth settings with

the a key then to select that a to

collect the um controller mapping and

then we can go a again to select that I

just simply hold down a button on my

controller it should then recognize that

and now we just go through each of the

buttons and press them to map them to

the various

functions when you get to the hot key

the best option here is to press the

select button now what the hotkey does

is that when you are in a game it lets

you press the select and start key

together and that will then exit you out

of that game and back into bisera so it

is important that you know what you're

doing here so the default is to press

the select button and that will set that

up for you and then okay for that and

our controller is now fully

mapped so if we come back out of that so

using the BK to come back out of that

one the next thing we need to do is to

really get it connected up to the net

work now um if we go down to network

settings so my um little PC here is

plugged into my ethernet connection so

that's already set up but if you're

working through on Wi-Fi um by by

default Wi-Fi will probably not be

enabled so you first of all need to

enable your Wi-Fi by by selecting this

option you will then need to go in and

select your WiFi SSID so that will let

you connect to your particular Network

and then then of course you'll have to

go in and enter your password and after

that then you should be connected to the

internet and what that then lets us do

is if I come back out of here is we can

go down to updates and downloads and

come in here and we can start then

checking for updates um and and starting

those so worthwhile just doing making

sure that you do run an update just to

make sure that um everything is entirely

up to date and then come out of that and

then we can just leave that as it is for

now so coming back out of here again

sometimes you will find that you need to

do a little bit of system setting up so

if we come into system settings and

select

that you may find that your um

especially your sound and video may not

be working quite as they should be uh so

at the moment and you you'll by default

everything will be set to Auto and um B

Ser will try to work out the best um

settings for you but if you find that

certain things aren't working correctly

um so sometimes with this Mini PC it

does not collect select the correct

output on my um on my on my device I've

got two video outputs so I come into

here you can see that I can then force

it to use a particular display output

but I'm just going to leave it at Auto

for now on your audio profile then you

can then if we come in here you can

select very ious audio

outputs depending on how you want to to

have that um come out on on which Port

you want that to come out on and as well

you can select different audio profiles

depending on um how you want the audio

set up inside your system now there

isn't really any right or wrong answer

here um you need to find one that works

for you and the particular way in which

you're connecting up your screen and

your um speakers but just make sure that

you do go through that and get

everything set up just the way you

want so after that um we really are

ready to play some games now there are

some default games loaded into here so

if we come along you'll see that we have

two PC engine games um we have two NES

games and and so on so if if if we

select one of these um systems by

pressing the a button or or or the South

Button as is labeled on these ones then

you'll see here we have a list of our

games if we select the game we should

then find that we can go off and play

this Super NES game so at least that

confirms then that everything is up and

running and we've actually got the

ability to play these

games so next we going to do is we need

to finish off the setup but one of the

things I'm going to do first off here is

of course I I want to get this um put

onto the hard drive on my Mini PC so I'm

going to do that process first and just

take you through that and again that

will be the same then if you're doing it

onto a a an old PC um or or sort of you

want to install it onto an old Mac or

something but what this will do it will

actually install the bacera Linux

operating system as the default boot

device on your hard drive after that

we'll come back in again and we'll do

some more setup and again that setup

that will go through and loading in

games and everything that will be common

then to whether you're running it from

your hard drive or from the little SD

card so let's have a look at getting

this onto hard drive

so from my main menu if I go into my

menu and come down to my system

settings and if I come down to the

bottom of

that you'll find that there is an option

here to install on a new dis so if I

select

that we now need to select a Target

device so if I select that you'll see

here that we have the various drives

that are listed um in in my PC so the

one that I want to use is this SSD drive

this 120 um gigabyte SSD drive so if I

select that the target architecture then

if I come in here is going to be if I

come down here and select that I want to

put this on Toto

a an x86 64 so that my little PC here is

a 64-bit Intel device so I need need to

select the architecture that I'm going

to to run onto but again you can see

that if if you were wanting to install

this onto a a hard drive connected to

your Raspberry Pi or something then you

would need to make sure that you come up

here so the raspberry pies are these BCM

devices so you will need to have a look

at which Raspberry Pi you are running um

so the various versions use different

versions of this BCM uh system on a chip

so do make sure that you select the

right one for the device you're working

with the other ones of course then are

really s listed by their by their type

so we are going to um Target our x86 our

64-bit Intel device and then of course

um we are going to overwrite that hard

drive completely so anything that's on

that hard drive will be lost if you have

Windows or I have actually got Linux

installed on this PC uh from the

previous video um it will be overwritten

so of course it is saying do make sure

that you want to do that and then we

need to go down and actually install

that

so at the moment it is going to um

download some software um it will then

go off and format the drive install the

operating system and that then should

let us boot directly into batera when we

turn on our device rather than having to

go through the BIOS boot screen so let's

just let that run through and then we'll

come back when it's all set

up now for me that installed process did

take a little bit of time and it did

look like it got stuck at part way

through at about 30% but just let it run

and eventually you will get it saying

finished so just click okay for that and

then we just need to restart the system

and at this point we should now be

booting off our hard

drive now this is a fresh install so we

do need to go through the setup process

again if we do have a look um if I go

into my settings screen you will find

that if I come down to my network

settings where previously I had Wi-Fi

enabled it obviously is no longer

enabled so you need to go through your

controller mapping your network setup

your sound and video and at that point

we should be ready to carry on now and

get our gaming set

up so by default bosera actually has all

of the emulators installed we just

simply need to add some games onto our

hard drive or SD card into the right

folder so to do that there are a number

of ways um we can actually get the files

on there so if we're all connected up to

a network and we have our files our ROM

files sitting on some other computer we

can actually do that across a network

share so if we come into our

menu and come down to our network

settings what we'll find down here is

there is something called a host name

and this is the default share name that

allows us to connect our computers over

the network to the hard drive or SD card

that bataar is stored on now while we're

here it's also worth making a note of

that IP address so that is the IP

address of your bosera machine on your

network and that we will need that if we

can't access batera through the network

share

name so if we note these two um bits of

information down and then head across

onto our main PC so I'm on my Windows PC

in Windows Explorer and if I go up to my

address bar here if I type in our share

name and I need to type it in in a

special way so to get onto the network I

need back SLB slash then it's batt

sah I then need to go into the share

folder so this is where the actual ROM

files are stored so if I click on that I

should then get a list of folders coming

up and this is now talking directly to

the hard drive or the SD card on my

battlea machine so you can see here that

there's a number of folders in which we

can actually put things uh into so the

actual game files need to go into the

ROMs folder so if I open up that you'll

see that there is then a folder for

every system that batt sah can emulate

and we just simply need to drop our

games then into the correct one on here

so I'm going to use some Super NES game

so if I come down here and I should find

a Super NES there's my Super NES folder

there so if I go across to my games

folder into Super NES all I simply need

to do is to grab hold of those copy them

and then just drop them into my Super

NES folder and if I drop them in

here those will then get copied across

on my network and I have now installed

some Super NES games so let's just

confirm that by going across then into

the B Ser machine and seeing if we can

find them so we're back on the B Machine

now um but although we've coped those

files across bosera hasn't yet scanned

it folders to find them yet so we need

to go into our menu and down to our game

settings and then update our games lists

and at that point it will go off and

scan those and we should now if we come

across here to our Super NES if we come

in here we should Now find that we have

those other games all ready for us to

play now now as yet we haven't got any

um sort of uh box art or videos for

those but we should find that if we want

to go into one so let's try try our our

super R type here if we click on that

that should then run up that game so

that we can actually play

it and there we are in our super art

type and and that should then go off and

as you can see we we can go through um

and we can actually play the game itself

so so we know that um everything is up

and running and we now know how to

transfer some of our games across um

over the network now the second method

we're going to have look at is actually

cop them across using an SD card um as a

director of file copy so let's just go

through that just so we have all those

options available to us so to use the

file copy process we're going to need to

have a keyboard and mouse attached to

our battlea machine so if you look down

the bottom of the uh main screen you'll

see that there is an F1 button there

saying for the files and this takes us

into the file manager within

Basera now I've actually plugged my um

USB B drive into my machine and you can

see here that if I come across um it's

sitting in here and I have my games

files ready so in my Nintendo 64 folder

I have a number of game ROMs now one

thing I did find um quite often the game

ROMs come as a zip file with the actual

ROM data itself inside the zip file now

bassar didn't seem to like that so I do

need to use the N64 unzipped

files but just like any file um managing

system I can simply highlight the files

I want to copy so I'm going to press

contrl C to copy those I'm going to go

into my ROMs folder and I'm then going

to find my N64 folder inside my B Sera

system and I'm just simply going to copy

those files or or paste those files into

here so again exactly same as we've done

before with our Network copy just

copying the ROM files into the correct

ROM folder inside our batera share um

file or sh share folder so if I now quit

out of this file

manager if I I I of course need to

rescan that those folders to get those

games

installed so up to my games

lists and there Nintendo 64 has now

popped up if I come in here you can see

that we have our games all listed in

here so if we come across to say Mario

Kart we should be able to select that

and then start playing playing Mario

Kart so we have our game starting

up and we're into Mario Kart so again uh

just just showing you how we can use

either the network or the file copy

process so really all we need to do now

is to actually get some more files

copied across and get those games all

set

up now one of the really good things

about Basera is that all of the

emulators are all set up and ready to go

you you just simply need to drop some

games in or at least most of them are

some of them do need things called bios

files and and for legal reasons the

Basera system cannot Supply those to you

as part of the normal download you're

going to have to go and get a hold of

those yourself now again um again for

legal reasons I'm not able to um tell

you how to get hold of those um but they

are quite easy to find on on the

internet just look for bosera bios packs

and if you're having any some real

problems finding those do have a look at

my bytes andb bits. co.uk website and

I'll put a link to that down in the

description where I can give you a

little bit more help in finding those

but basically you'll end up with a pack

full of um various ROM files uh and

these will be your bios ROMs files and

these need to be copied across into the

batera share bios folder and once we do

that then any of the systems which do

need need um bios files will have them

all now obviously the copying them all

across just makes makes it much much

easier so that you can just simply add

whatever games you want and they just

simply will work everything is sitting

there ready for them to go but of course

it is quite a big um chunk of files

especially if you're copying them across

onto a sort of smaller SD

card but if you have got the full set of

ROM files then obviously you can just

simply copy across the ones that you

want but I'm just simply going to um

highlight all of these so if if you get

a batera ROM pack then they're all in

the correct folders so I can simply copy

those I can then jump across into my B

sharer sh share drive go into the share

go into BIOS and you'll see a few of the

folders are already there and I can then

just simply paste them in there and that

simply copies everything across so that

once that's done I will have all my

systems all ready to go with their

individual bioses so all I need to do is

to drop my game files

in so that's pretty much all of our

gaming setup so we can play any games

that we want but if you look at our our

B setup it doesn't look very nice at the

moment the um default theme is not very

um impressive if we go into one of our

game systems uh and those new games that

we have loaded in we we haven't got all

of the artwork for those so let's um

spend a bit of time now just making our

game setup just look that little bit

Slicker so so to start with let's have a

think about getting hold of some artwork

for our

games so I have some Super Nintendo

games here and I don't have all the

artwork for them each of these games we

can make some changes to them

individually so if I select press use

the select button but hold it down as it

says in the bottom menu there that will

bring up some options for this

particular game and you can see here

that we can sort of um do save GS and

delete it and and so on and we can also

add it to favorit so if you want to make

a favorites collection then this is how

you do that but we also have an option

here to scrip and script means that we

can actually go off and find some sort

of box images and and and artwork that

sort of way and that will just make it

look better than just a little sort of

um generic ROM image in our games lists

so if I go to scrape it will go off and

it will search to see if it can find any

media out there and you can see that we

have um found a number of bits of box

art and and bosera can connect to um the

screens scraper.com and the games db.com

which both are websites which contain

the the various bits of media that we

will be looking for now screen scraper

um you can get sort of individual files

from there but as you see in a second it

is a subscription based uh system but if

we come down to the gamees database we

can get hold of some of the same files

um for free so if I come across and

select that we'll find that it downloads

that image and there we have it now

sitting nicely in our game selection but

of course doing it one by one will take

a long time so if I come out of there

into my menu I can actually go to the

main scraper settings down the bottom

here and from here we we can specify

which database we want to scrip games

from so you can see there's a range here

um so a couple of these are subscription

based a couple of these are free and and

some of them do have a bit of a rate

limit so if you try and scripts s of

thousands and thousands of games it will

obviously not do that so we're going to

be doing just a few games here so the

games database is is fine for

that um our scripper settings again

there there's a number of different

images that we can download so you can

see here that as the image source we're

looking for a screenshot so that will be

what appears in our list of games if

ever we're having a list a using boxes

we will use a 2d box and the logo for

the game then will be one that fits into

sort of like a selection wheel so you

can see we can we can do different um we

can download different bits of imagery

for our our system I'm just going to

leave that at the default settings the

filters then depend it will tell B which

games to check now obviously once you

have set up lots and lots of games

inside the system and there could be

many thousands of games so we don't want

to keep checking every single one all

the time so here you can then limit it

so we can limit it to games which don't

have any media yet um we'll also limit

it to just ones games that we've um not

not not script um in the last few days

and then we can decide which systems we

want to select so I I want to go into

systems here CU I want to select for all

of the ones I've just installed so I'm

going to come through here and I'm going

to say select all

and once I do that again using the games

database I can come down to script now

and our system will now go off and you

can see in the top corner it is going

through looking at all the games which

need to have some media downloaded for

them and it is now downloading that

media so we can let that run through and

we should then have a full set of nice

artwork so once the games list is um

we've downloaded those we will need to

come back up and refresh our games list

so into our game settings and update our

games

lists and then you can see um okay it

hasn't managed to get all of our games

um for this but if we come across here

we should find that quite a few of them

so it's done all of our our Nintendo 64

ones um our GameCube games so it's got

Luigi's Mansion it missed out karuga um

so again some of these we will have to

go through and perhaps go in manually

onto them hold for that then come down

to scrape see if our scraper here can

actually find some imagery and you can

see there that um we have an image for

that the games database had one but it

didn't seem to want to get that down but

let's take the one from screens

scraper.com

let's pull that

down and there we now have an image for

our karuga um and again we we we can

simply go through and have a look and

see which ones got missed out and from

there and and just fill them in but

manually okay so that will get our

artwork downloaded but we now want to

make the whole system just look a little

bit better so again if we come into our

menu Basera uses something called themes

so if we come down to our updates and

downloads you can see in here that we

have a number of things that we can have

a look at and one of those is our themes

so if I come into here

really all we all we need to do now is

we we can have a we have a long list

here of different themes that we can do

and what these themes do is that they

put a a different look to the whole

batter Sera in um interface and really

it's a matter of just going through and

seeing if you can find one that that

really appeals to you really that there

are a wide range of different sort of

themes so if if we come down um let

let's see what this es theme reload um

looks like so if I select that

one I can install that so of course it

will now go off and download that so it

can take a bit of time for these themes

to be downloaded if you have a look at

the theme display here you can see that

it does tell you how big the download is

so this es theme reload is actually a 2

gab download but once that's downloaded

and installed it's not available for us

to use so it doesn't automatically

enable that theme so I can from this all

list if I just go across to the right

you can see there that I have a look at

um what themes I have actually

installed now if I want to apply that I

then need to come back out of here to my

main menu and then go up to my user

interface

settings in my theme set I can then

select that and then I can then select

the one that I've just downloaded so es

theme carbon is the default theme and Es

theme reload is the one I've just

downloaded so if I select that and then

come back

out we should Now find that our battle

sah looks a lot different um so here we

are now we've got a different SE um

system selection screen and you can see

here that as we go through it gives us

different um little um animated screens

if I go into one of mine so I know that

the Nintendo 64 I know that the artwork

has been downloaded for that so if I go

into that you can now see that we have a

a selection list down the side and as I

come down here you can see some of the

artwork coming up um The Big Box in the

middle which is missing that would

probably be for a video um so we can

actually download little videos of our

games and again that would be through

our scraper system as well and a lot of

the video stuff though you do need to

have a subscription for that but if you

do want to have a go at downloading some

videos um the way we do that again is to

go back into our our scraper function

and here we can actually change the um

website that we're going to scrape from

so let's say we go to the arcade

database here and if we go into if we

select that one and then go to scraper

settings you can see that we now have

video as an option on this and again a

lot of these will let you download a few

um videos at a time for free but if if

we come back out we can again go back

down here and we can go into our um

settings so again we want we don't want

to ignore anything at the moment so I'm

going to do a complete refresh of

everything and see what we get so again

we got all of our systems selected we're

now going to have a look at a different

database see if we can get hold of some

videos and we're going to scrape those

now so you can see there it's going off

and having a look so let's go back out

of

here we now need to go to our game

settings again we want to update our

games

lists and let's have a look and see if

we've now got any videos coming in so it

doesn't look like we've got anything for

our Nintendo 64 if we come into our

Super Nintendo so again that was the

default one in the

system um we've now got one now for our

super R type so you can see there we now

have a little game preview video in the

system and Star Fox as well we we have a

little video for that too and if I come

back out of that um I suspect when our

Super Nintendo comes on you can see

there in our main selection screen we

now have a little video preview of that

particular system so so very much um the

the scrapping system you will have to

sort of play around with that to try and

get um some of the artwork and videos

all down again if you do decide to go

and subscribe to one of these websites

then you will get access to more of

their content um but very much then it's

it's up to you to sort of work out and

and see what you want to do on that side

of things

so that pretty much wraps up our

installation of batera so as you can see

we can either use it as a portable USB

drive or on an SD card we can now

install it onto a hard drive to turn

this system into a dedicated retro

gaming system and we we can really then

start playing around with a lot more

settings there's a lot more things you

can do inside there as regards the

various um bezels to make the screens

look better your themes and so on but

hopefully you've seen that it's a pretty

easy system to get up and running with

um everything is pretty much set up to

go um so you really just need to add

your ROMs and as I say just play around

with the look of it so hope you find

that useful do please have a go at

setting this up on one of your machines

it is really worth it if you've enjoyed

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