Installing the VICE Commodore Emulator for Console Mode on a fresh Raspberry Pi 4

At the time of this writing, there’s no binary package ready to install on the Raspberry Pi 4 ‘Buster’ release. Also, I need to make sure I can run the VICE emulator on the console and not in X-Windows for my diorama project. That install isn’t difficult but isn’t a single line or two either, so we’ll start from scratch on a fresh Raspbian lite install. This article assumes some familiarity with how VICE works. Let’s install VICE on a Raspberry Pi 4!

Raspberry Pi 4 Version Log

This guide has been updated to reference the following versions, and was last updated on 5/7/2020.

• Raspbian Buster Lite 2020-02-13
• SDL 2.0.10 (sourced from retropie’s github – they’ve made Pi specific modifications)
• VICE 3.4 (the latest released version)

To that end, the video below is no longer 100% accurate. It still covers the general setup tasks, but SDL’s compile has changed.

Step 0 – Hardware before the Software

This part is pretty simple – you’ll need:

• Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, or Raspberry Pi 3B+
• Micro SD Card (we’re generally at the days of 16GB or higher)
• Micro HDMI cable (or full HDMI if you’re using a Raspberry Pi 3B+)
• Keyboard / Mouse for initial setup, Wifi connectivity for later SSH connectivity.

Step 1 – Write The Raspberry Pi 4Image

We’ll start with a fresh SD Card and a Raspberry Pi 4. We’re going to burn Buster Lite (I’m not using a window environment) on to the SD Card using Balena Etcher.

Step 2 – Boot the Raspberry Pi and get connected.

We know our default password is raspberry and our default user name is pi. You should change these if you’re going to keep this install around. Regardless, we need to set just a couple of things before we start with VICE – such as my desire for SSH access so I could copy/paste commands more easily. Here are those steps after you give yourself a good old fashioned sudo raspi-config:

1. Set hostname to vice-pi-install (This makes it unique and through bonjour lets me access it from my Windows PC as vice-pi-install.local.)
2. Set WIFI up to my access point (Country Code and SSID)
3. Allow SPI interface access (my diorama is going to be controlling an LCD through SPI)
4. Allow SSH interface access (so we can copy/paste from a Windows SSH client)
5. Setup locale, keyboard, etc.
6. Verify Internet Connectivity (ping google.com)
7. Perform your normal apt update / apt upgrade commands to update your system.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 3 – Compiling SDL2 for console usage with the kmsdrm video driver

I’m not in a window environment, so we need to enable the kmsdrm video driver in SDL 2 for our VICE compile. Why? We want to run VICE from the console. Unfortunately, the SDL2 libraries from package repositories don’t have the kmsdrm driver piece enabled, so we’ll make our own. I’ll use a separate directory called sdl-work in my home directory.

In previous versions of this guide, we compiled SDL2, SDL2-image, and SDL2-ttf. We also used SDL directliy from libsdl.org. It seems that some things have changed with later versions of Raspbian possibly firmware – I am no longer able to follow my previous guide and have things work. I attempted numerous settings and rebuilds, and finally accepted a different solution:

We will build SDL2-2.0.10 from RetroPie’s fork that has Raspberry Pi specific modifications. Part of the compilation below is from RetroPie’s SDL 2.0 install script. To learn more about the excellent RetroPie project, head on over to their site here.

#install dependencies for how we'll compile SDL2 and install the output package
sudo apt install lsb-release git dialog wget gcc g++ build-essential unzip xmlstarlet python3-pyudev ca-certificates libasound2-dev libudev-dev libibus-1.0-dev libdbus-1-dev fcitx-libs-dev libsndio-dev libx11-dev libxcursor-dev libxext-dev libxi-dev libxinerama-dev libxkbcommon-dev libxrandr-dev libxss-dev libxt-dev libxv-dev libxxf86vm-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libegl1-mesa-dev libgles2-mesa-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libdrm-dev libgbm-dev devscripts debhelper dh-autoreconf libraspberrypi-dev libpulse-dev

mkdir ~/sdl-work
cd ~/sdl-work

#Download SDL from RetroPie's SDL fork
git clone --single-branch --branch retropie-2.0.10 https://github.com/RetroPie/SDL-mirror
cd SDL-mirror

#update debian package rules and control files, which update dependencies specific
#to the raspberry pi and enables kmsdrm

conf_depends="libasound2-dev, libudev-dev, libibus-1.0-dev, libdbus-1-dev, fcitx-libs-dev, libsndio-dev, libx11-dev, libxcursor-dev, libxext-dev, libxi-dev, libxinerama-dev, libxkbcommon-dev, libxrandr-dev, libxss-dev, libxt-dev, libxv-dev, libxxf86vm-dev, libgl1-mesa-dev, libegl1-mesa-dev, libgles2-mesa-dev, libgl1-mesa-dev, libglu1-mesa-dev, libdrm-dev, libgbm-dev,"

sed -i 's/libgl1-mesa-dev,/libgl1-mesa-dev, '"${conf_depends[*]}"'/' ./debian/control

conf_flags="--disable-video-vulkan --enable-video-rpi --enable-video-kmsdrm"

sed -i 's/confflags =/confflags = '"${conf_flags[*]}"' \\n/' ./debian/rules

# move proprietary videocore headers
sed -i -e 's/\"EGL/\"brcmEGL/g' -e 's/\"GLES/\"brcmGLES/g' ./src/video/raspberry/SDL_rpivideo.h
sudo mv /opt/vc/include/EGL /opt/vc/include/brcmEGL
sudo mv /opt/vc/include/GLES /opt/vc/include/brcmGLES
sudo mv /opt/vc/include/GLES2 /opt/vc/include/brcmGLES2

#perform the build via dpkg-buildpackage
PKG_CONFIG_PATH= dpkg-buildpackage -b

At this point, you should have the debian packages in the directory above SDL-mirror:

Continuing on, we’ll install the package and clean up.

# restore proprietary headers
sudo mv /opt/vc/include/brcmEGL /opt/vc/include/EGL
sudo mv /opt/vc/include/brcmGLES /opt/vc/include/GLES
sudo mv /opt/vc/include/brcmGLES2 /opt/vc/include/GLES2

#remove any old installed library
sudo dpkg --remove libsdl2 libsdl2-dev

#Now we sudo login to do some of the install
sudo su -l

#as sudo in a shell... and move to where those .deb packages are
cd /home/pi/sdl-work

if ! dpkg -i libsdl2-2.0-0_2.0.10_armhf.deb libsdl2-dev_2.0.10_armhf.deb ; then
    apt-get -y -f --no-install-recommends install
fi
echo "libsdl2-dev hold" | dpkg --set-selections

#exit sudo shell
exit

You should now have your SDL2 custom library installed on your system. The last output of the package installation gave me no errors.

Step 4 – VICE Prerequisite Libraries and Build

We won’t be installing libsdl2-dev, as we just made our own of this, so the VICE libraries are everything normally required except libsdl2:

sudo apt install libmpg123-dev libpng-dev zlib1g-dev libasound2-dev libvorbis-dev libflac-dev \
 libpcap-dev automake bison flex subversion libjpeg-dev portaudio19-dev texinfo xa65

We’re going to take the latest trunk of the VICE source code (3.4 as the time of this writing, so we’ll make a vice-src directory just to keep things separated. After we download the source (this is pure VICE, not my dioramma patching, that comes later) we’ll run the required build commands.

mkdir ~/vice-src
cd ~/vice-src

#if you want trunk, do this: 
#svn checkout svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/vice-emu/code/trunk/vice/

#3.4 is the latest VICE release
svn checkout svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/vice-emu/code/tags/v3.4/

cd ./v3.4/vice
./autogen.sh 
./configure --prefix=/home/pi/viceinstall --enable-sdlui2 --without-oss --enable-ethernet \
 --disable-catweasel --without-pulse
make -j $(nproc)
make install

Note the ‘prefix’ setting above – that’s where the make install command will put the binaries.

Step 5 – Setting the Video Driver in Raspi-Config

This step seems to no longer be necessary. We used to have to go into raspi-config and enable the ‘Fake KMSDRM’ driver, but with the changes in utilizing SDL from RetroPie’s fork, there doesn’t seem to be that need to change the driver configuration anymore.

Step 6 – Download a demo and test

I downloaded a simple demo from csdb.dk by Booze Design known as ‘The Elder Scrollers‘. Downloaded the .D64 file and uploaded that to the VICE Pi. Moving into the /home/pi/viceinstall/bin directory, I typed ./x64sc and was greeted with an old blue friend:

Now, depending on how this all comes together, you might have a really tiny C64 screen in the corner of your big monitor. Simply hit F12, scroll down to Video Settings -> Screen Settings -> Fullscreen.

After autostarting the demo image I donwloaded, I was able to sit back and enjoy classic SID sound from the Elder Scrollers demo:

With that, we finish the install of VICE on a Raspberry Pi 4 in console mode as the foundation of my Diorama 64 project. Any thoughts or concerns, things that didn’t work well for you with your install? Leave a comment down below or join the discord at https://discord.gg/wbngTy8 and we can chat. Next up: the Raspberry Pi 4 and the LCD display turned monitor.

Raspberry Pi 3B+ Instructions

Generally, the build is very similar. I’m going to skip all the discussion points and run down what I think seems to work on a Raspberry Pi 3B. The key differences are how we build SDL. I didn’t seem to need to change any graphic related driver setting to get this to work.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

#SDL for Raspi-3B dependencies
sudo apt-get install libfontconfig-dev qt5-default automake mercurial \
 libtool libfreeimage-dev libopenal-dev libpango1.0-dev libsndfile-dev \
 libudev-dev libtiff5-dev libwebp-dev libasound2-dev libaudio-dev \
 libxrandr-dev libxcursor-dev libxi-dev libxinerama-dev libxss-dev \
 libesd0-dev freeglut3-dev libmodplug-dev libsmpeg-dev libjpeg-dev

mkdir ~/sdlwork
cd ~/sdlwork

hg clone http://hg.libsdl.org/SDL
cd SDL

./autogen.sh
./configure --disable-pulseaudio --disable-esd --disable-video-mir --disable-video-wayland \
 --disable-video-opengl --host=arm-raspberry-linux-gnueabihf
make
sudo make install

cd ~/sdlwork

wget http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_image/release/SDL2_image-2.0.5.tar.gz
wget http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_mixer/release/SDL2_mixer-2.0.4.tar.gz
wget http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_net/release/SDL2_net-2.0.1.tar.gz
wget http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_ttf/release/SDL2_ttf-2.0.15.tar.gz

tar zxvf SDL2_image-2.0.5.tar.gz
tar zxvf SDL2_mixer-2.0.4.tar.gz
tar zxvf SDL2_net-2.0.1.tar.gz
tar zxvf SDL2_ttf-2.0.15.tar.gz

cd SDL2_image-2.0.5 
./autogen.sh 
./configure 
make 
sudo make install
cd ..

cd SDL2_mixer-2.0.4
./autogen.sh 
./configure 
make 
sudo make install
cd ..

cd SDL2_net-2.0.1 
./autogen.sh 
./configure 
make 
sudo make install
cd ..

#Interestingly enough TTF builds just fine on the 3B.

cd SDL2_ttf-2.0.15
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install
cd ..

#Now, on to VICE for the Raspi 3B

sudo apt install libmpg123-dev libpng-dev zlib1g-dev libasound2-dev libvorbis-dev libflac-dev \
 libpcap-dev automake bison flex subversion libjpeg-dev portaudio19-dev texinfo xa65

mkdir ~/vicework
cd ~/vicework

#3.4 is the latest VICE release
svn checkout svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/vice-emu/code/tags/v3.4/

cd ./v3.4/vice
./autogen.sh 
./configure --prefix=/home/pi/viceinstall --enable-sdlui2 --without-oss --enable-ethernet \
 --disable-catweasel --without-pulse
make -j $(nproc)

# I got an error here for the running of make install - you may or may not need to do the sudo.
sudo make install

#after this point, I went directly to the vice install directory and ran it
cd ~/viceinstall/bin
./x64sc

References:

• Balena Etcher
• Enabling Bonjour for your Raspberry Pi
• VICE Homepage
• Lemon 64 Thread on Custom SDL Build
• SDL on Raspi (for 3B compile)
• Compiling SDL2 from source
• x64 vs x64sc VICE binaries
• The Elder Scrollers Demo