Before you start, you will need a USB thumb drive for most of these things. It also helps if you have a USB keyboard, and a wired internet connection.
Installing new roms into the Nerdox is simple. Finding them is up to you, but they're around. If you find roms that are not on the Nerdbox however, please let us know, so we can decide if we want to include them on the base system or not. This process allows you to add roms for systems that are not included on the standard Nerdbox setup. More about this at the end of this page.
Find an empty usb thumb drive, it just needs to be big enough to hold your roms.
Create a folder on it, and name it "retropie".
Insert the usb thumb drive into one of the usb ports on the Nerdbox.
After about 30 seconds, remove the usb thumb drive, and put it back into the computer with the roms.
There should now be a few folders created inside the retropie folder.
Browse to the the "/retropie/roms/" folder, inside this folder you will see folders for all the systems that you can attempt to install roms for. Some of these systems work better than others, if you are adding roms to a system that is not currently on Nerdbox, it may not work, but it probably will.
Add your roms to the folder for the system they were destined for.
Pop the usb thumb drive back into the Nerdbox.
An auto copy program will copy the roms to the correct part of your Nerdbox. This can take anywhere from a few seconds to a couple hours, depending on the total size of all the files you're copying. The light on your Nerdbox will be blinking while the files are copying, and will stop when this process is done.
After the roms are copied (the light is done flickering), go to the start menu, configuration settings, and turn off "parse games list".
Use the start menu to restart the Nerdbox.
The roms should now be listed in the game list for the system, however there will be no cover art or description, unless you use the Scrape Metadata instructions below. Your new game will be populated with its data, and it will look cool. Once this is done, you can easily go back into the start menu, configuration settings, and turn "parse games list" back on. This will greatly improve your startup time, but will hide any games that do not have metadata. It is recommended that you do this.
Use the network (RJ45) connector on the front of the Nerdbox to connect the Nerdbox to the internet, then restart the Nerdbox. If you have a Nerdbox that supports it, you can use the Nerdbox Configuration tool to connect to WiFi.
Use the start menu, configuration settings to ensure that "parse games list" is turned off. If if it is on, turn it off, then use the start menu to restart the Nerdbox.
Find the game you wish to update, highlight it, then press the select button on the controller.
Choose "Edit Metadata", then scroll to the bottom of the menu and choose "Scrape".
With any luck, you will find the game you are searching for. If so, select it, and it will populate the game date. You can then save this entry.
If your game is not found, you can select "Input", and then type the entry differently to search. Sometimes adding a space helps. You will need to have a USB keyboard connected for this.
Use the start menu, configuration settings to re-enable "parse games list".
Simply find the rom you wish to delete, highlight it, then press the select button. Choose "Edit this game's metadata", there will be a "Delete" button.
As mentioned earlier, there are other systems that the Nerdbox runs that are not currently running on your Nerdbox. If you add roms to those folders, they will show up on your system screen. If you have a Nerdbox built before late October 2017, your interface may look terrible with these new systems. Get your system back to me, and I can update the theme for you for free. All of these systems may work to a varying degree, we just didn't set them up for various reasons. If the games you wish to play work, then awesome! If not, sorry. Multi-disc roms (which are common for Sega CD, and PS1) do not work. I have included some notes regarding my own experiments with these systems, which may encourage, or discourage you.
Here is a list of the folders created on your thumb drive, which systems they are, and if they are currently on the Nerdbox.
amstradcpc Amstrad CPC, a home computer system from the early 80s. I chose to not include the home PCs, as the controllers are overly complicated (usually a combination of joystick, keyboard, and mouse), but can be setup using USB components.
arcade One of the MAME folders for arcade emulation. The folder you choose will be based on the roms you have. If it doesn't work in this folder, try another, or ask me for help. A lot of the MAME roms work great.
atari2600 Atari 2600, included. I did however only pick the top rated titles, so this is a system that you can add many games to if you're knowledgeable of them. Let me know what you add though, I may want to put them into the base install!
atari7800 Atari 7800, included.
atarilynx Atari Lynx, included.
fba FinalBurn Alpha, an Neo-Geo/MAME emulator. Use this if your rom isn't working so well in any of the MAME or Neo-Geo folders.
fds Famicom Disk System, a floppy disk add-on for the Japan only Famicom system.
gamegear Sega Game Gear, included.
gb Nintendo GameBoy, included.
gba Nintendo GameBoy Advance, included.
gbc Nintendo GameBoy Color, included.
mame-libretro One of the MAME folders for arcade emulation. The folder you choose will be based on the roms you have. If it doesn't work in this folder, try another, or ask me for help. A lot of the MAME roms work great.
mame-mame4all One of the MAME folders for arcade emulation. The folder you choose will be based on the roms you have. If it doesn't work in this folder, try another, or ask me for help. A lot of the MAME roms work great.
mastersystem Sega Master System, included.
megadrive Sega Mega Drive, aka Sega Genesis, included.
n64 Nintendo 64. I did a lot of testing with this system, to attempt to include at least some of the games. N64 games are notoriously bad on emulators, and this is no exception. From my tests, I estimate that only about 25-30 games will actually run, and a lot of those will not be perfect. I did notice however that the system is a little random with how it maps the controllers for each game. Test it out, but your mileage may vary. Don't get your hopes up.
neogeo Neo-Geo, included.
nes Nintendo Entertainment System, included.
ngp Neo-Geo Pocket, included.
ngpc Neo-Geo Pocket Color, included.
pcengine TurboGrafx 16, included.
psx Sony PlayStation, works well. Multi-disk games will not work beyond the content on the first disk. PS3 controllers can be mapped well, and work great. PSX games are very large in file size, consider getting in touch for a PS upgrade, or delete some Sega CD games if you start to run into space issues.
sega32x Sega 32x, included.
segacd Sega CD, included.
sg-1000 Sega SG-1000, early Japan only Sega system. Most of the games are in Japanese, but they work great!
snes Super Nintendo, included.
vectrex Vectrex, included.
zxspectrum ZX Spectrum, a home computer system from the early 80s. I chose to not include the home PCs, as the controllers are overly complicated (usually a combination of joystick, keyboard, and mouse), but can be setup using USB components.
There are other systems that folders can be made for. Get in touch if you want to try adding a system that isn't on this, and we can figure it out!