I’ve heard of Rasberry Pi for a while, but I have not had the chance to read more about it or to find out what incredible things it can really do.
One of the things that i was impressed is being able to build your retro gaming machine where you can play all kinds of old school gaming systems like Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis / Megadrive, Gameboy, MAME and even the MS-DOS games using emulators
Next thing is being able to install Kodi that I’m using a lot on my Amazon Firetv. And having it on the Rasberry has some extra benefits that are portable because of the small size of the module, plus it’s powerful enough to be able to play movies in 1080p over the wired Internet. So I went ahead and bought myself a Rasberry Pi 2 and I embarked on my little project.
In this post, I’ll show you how you can install and dual-boot in RetroPie and Kodi.
Hardware Needed
- Raspberry Pi
- HDMI cable
- MicroSD Card
- USB or Bluetooth Keyboard& Mouse/Combo
- USB Game Controllers, Gamepads
- SD Card Reader
- USB Thumb drive
- Formatting SD card
It is a good idea to format the SD card first to make sure there is nothing and free from any partitions you may need to prepare for installation.For Windows: If you are using a MicroSD card that is larger than 32 GB, you must use SD Formatter to format it on Fat32 because Windows has an annoying limitation that only allows partitions up to 32 GB to be formatted as FAT32. Otherwise, you can format it normally in Windows if you have 32 GB or less.For Mac OS: You can use the SD Association formatting tool to do the job, or you can simply use the Mac OSX Disk Utility to format the entire disk. - BootBerry installationTo install, just extract the zip file directly into the root of the MicroSD card that we just formatted previously and then insert it directly into your Raspberry Pi.
Turn on the power and you’ll see some crazy things before you introduce yourself to the BootBerry welcome screen
BootBerry will automatically recognize if you are on wired Internet if you have your Pi connected to Lan, otherwise you can choose WiFi and configure your configuration. I advise you to have it on Wired as it will be faster when downloading operating system files later. Press OK when you’re done.
You will be asked to select the drive you want to use with BootBerry to install the files on your operating system. Normally you should choose the SD card displayed in the list and press Format.
Once formatting is complete, you will be presented with a list of operating systems to be installed on your SD card. Choose “Openelec” for your first operating system, Openelee is basically a KODI operating system. Click OK and the system will start to download the files to be installed, which will take some time depending on the speed of the Internet.
While waiting for the download and installation of the files, copy the Retropie-Bootberry img file downloaded from RetroPie to a USB drive or hard drive and connect it to the Raspberry Pi.
Once Openelec has downloaded and installed correctly, you will see this screen. Click and hold the “Add operating system” button and choose “Copy OS from USB stick”. Browse and select the Retropie-Bootberry img from your USB media and start the installation.
Click on Exit and you’re done! Now you can choose which operating system you would like to boot from the start menu.
Here is a small video that I recorded showing me booted in Retropie from Bootberry and testing the ROMs I downloaded.
Retropie Kodi Dual Boot
RetroPie and Kodi may seem like a very difficult task. However, users of Raspberry PI with a good understanding of how to install and configure the problems below are the simplified steps to get RetroPie and Kodi on Dual Boot:
- Install PINN Lite on RetroPie
- Turn on the operating system and wait for the PINN to load
- You will receive a list of operating systems to be installed
- Select any combination of systems you like
- For Kodi, we recommend using OSMC or LibreELEC
- Now select RetroPie and click the Install button
- PINN will download and install the chosen systems
- Manually install the NOOBS Companion add-on in Kodi
- Go to Kodi’s main menu and select Kodi Add-ons
- Choose “NOOBS Companion”
- Switch to RetroPie and open the shortcut menu
- Select “Install Boot-Back”
- Have fun using Retro Kodi Dual Boot!
