Installation

Requirements

The Raspberry Pi PES image has the following requirements:

  • A Raspberry Pi (Model B/B+) or Raspberry Pi 2/3/4 with power supply and HDMI cable
  • At least a 8GB SD card
  • Keyboard and/or USB control pad
  • A display device, e.g. a TV
  • Network access (e.g. wired Ethernet or USB wireless Ethernet dongle for downloading game info and installing games)
  • A computer with a SD card reader (required to write the image)

Note

For PlayStation, PSP and N64 emulation the Raspberry Pi 3/4 offer far better performance.

Optional Requirements

  • Bluetooth dongle (used for PS3/PS4 control pad wireless connectivity - see Tested Bluetooth adapters with QtSixA)
  • USB hub (if you do not have enough free USB ports on your Raspberry Pi)

Note

Bluetooth and WiFi dongles are not required if you have a Raspberry Pi 3/4 as these models have both built in.

BerryBoot

If you would prefer to use PES with BerryBoot, please see the PES BerryBoot guide.

Downloading

PES images are available for Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi 2/3/4 models.

Torrents

Note

If you are able to seed the torrents above then you can help reduce the bandwidth on my web site.

Direct download

Note

You must use the correct image with your Raspberry Pi model otherwise it will not boot.

Write image to SD card

Warning

Before proceeding make sure you have saved any files you wish to keep that are on your SD card!

Windows

  1. Unzip the PES image
  2. Download and install Etcher
  3. Plug your SD card into your computer
  4. Unzip the archive
  5. Load Etcher from the Windows application menu
  6. Click the image button and browse to the unzipped PES image that you downloaded earlier
  7. Now click “Flash” and wait until the image has been written
  8. When the image has been written to your SD card you may find that Windows prompts you to format the card - do not do this, just click cancel on any prompts
  9. Unplug the SD card from your computer

Linux

The following commands should be run as the root user or via the sudo command.

  1. Unzip the PES image:

    gunzip pes.img.gz

  2. Insert the SD card into your computer and take a note of the device ID assigned to your SD card (e.g. /dev/sdb).

    Hint

    You can find the device ID from dmesg or in /var/log/messages

  3. If your computer automatically mounts your SD card, unmount any partitions that have been mounted from the card e.g.:

    umount /dev/sdb1

  4. Now write the PES image you downloaded earlier:

    dd bs=1M if=pes.img of=/dev/sdb

    Warning

    Make sure you use the device ID that has been assigned to your SD card!

  5. Unplug the SD card from your computer

Powering Up

  1. Now that you have written the PES image to your SD card, plug it into your Raspberry Pi’s SD card slot.
  2. Plug in the HDMI cable into your Raspberry Pi and your TV. For the Raspberry Pi 4 make sure you connect the HDMI cable to the HDMI port closest to the power connector.
  3. Plug in your Bluetooth dongle (if you have one) into your Raspberry Pi (not required for Raspberry Pi 3)
  4. Plug in your Ethernet cable or Wirelss USB dongle (not required for Raspberry Pi 3/4)
  5. Plug in a USB keyboard (if desired)
  6. Plug in your power supply and turn on
  7. Your TV should now switch to the HDMI input that you have plugged your Raspberry Pi into. If not, set your TV to use the HDMI input for your Raspberry Pi.
  8. You should now see Arch Linux booting.
  9. The first time you boot PES it will create a new /data partition to use the available space on your SD card. This process will take a few minutes depending on the size of your SD card.
  10. The PES GUI will then load.

Note

The very first time PES loads it will create its database. This process will take approximately a minute or two before the GUI loads depending on the model of Raspberry Pi that you are using.

User Accounts

There are two user accounts in the PES image:

Username Password Home Directory
root root /root
pi raspberry /home/pi

Either account can be accessed via SSH or at the command line.

Note

the pi user can run commands as the root user by using the sudo command, e.g. sudo reboot