AutoBleem on a Raspberry Pi

AutoBleem turns a Raspberry Pi into a PlayStation Classic-style console: it boots straight into the game carousel, plays PlayStation games with its own emulator, and - with RetroArch - the other systems too. The image is Raspberry Pi OS Lite with AutoBleem's setup added; the first boot finishes the installation by itself. ← Downloads

Which image

Two images, one per flavour of Raspberry Pi OS. The 32-bit image is the one to take unless you have a reason not to: AutoBleem's PlayStation emulator has its fast ARM dynamic recompiler only on 32-bit, and every Pi from the 2 up runs it. The 64-bit image runs the same launcher with a slower (interpreted) PlayStation emulator, but RetroArch has about twice as many cores built for 64-bit ARM - pick it for the other systems on a Pi 4, 400 or 5.

Model	32-bit image	64-bit image	Notes
Raspberry Pi 5	yes	yes
Raspberry Pi 4 Model B	yes	yes
Raspberry Pi 400	yes	yes	the test machine - both images are tried here
Raspberry Pi 3 Model B / B+ / A+	yes	yes	1 GB of RAM (512 MB on the A+): fine for the launcher and PS1
Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W	yes	yes	512 MB of RAM; PS1 runs, the heavier RetroArch cores do not
Raspberry Pi 2 Model B	yes	v1.2 only	v1.1 has a 32-bit-only CPU; slow for anything 3D
Compute Module 3 / 4 / 5	yes	yes	with a carrier board that has HDMI and USB
Raspberry Pi 1, Zero, Zero W	no	no	ARMv6 - neither image runs on these

32-bit image (635.8 MB) 64-bit image (649.9 MB)

You need

A Raspberry Pi from the table, its power supply, and an HDMI screen.
A microSD card of 16 GB or more - 32 GB and up if you want room for games (the system takes 8 GB, the rest becomes the games partition).
A USB or Bluetooth gamepad - a DualShock 4, an Xbox pad, an 8BitDo, any pad the Pi sees as a game controller. The launcher is driven with the pad; a keyboard is only for the first boot.
Internet on the first boot (Ethernet or WiFi): the setup downloads RetroArch, its cores and the BIOS files, about a gigabyte in all.
Raspberry Pi Imager on a PC or Mac.

Flashing the card

In Imager, choose your Raspberry Pi model, then under Operating System pick Use custom and the downloaded .img.xz - or first add this site under App Options → Content Repository (https://autobleem.retromenele.pl/rpi-imager/os_list.json) and pick AutoBleem from the list.
Choose the card under Storage.
Say yes to customisation when Imager offers it: set a user name and password, your WiFi network and country, and enable SSH. With these preset the first boot needs no keyboard at all. (Skipping is fine too - the first boot then asks for the WiFi on the screen.)
Write, then put the card in the Pi and power it on.

The first boot

Raspberry Pi OS starts once to apply your presets, then AutoBleem's setup takes the screen:

It waits for the network. Without one it lists the WiFi networks it can see and asks for the password (or press e after plugging in an Ethernet cable).
It asks whether to install RetroArch. Y (or a minute of silence) gives the full install with about 130 systems; n a lean PlayStation-only AutoBleem. RetroArch can be added later by running the installer again.
It grows the system partition, creates the AUTOBLEEM games partition on the rest of the card, downloads RetroArch (ready-built from this site - or, when the site cannot be reached, builds it, which takes 10-40 minutes), its cores and the BIOS files, and reboots. Everything is shown on the screen; nothing needs pressing.
The Pi comes up in the game carousel. It is empty until you add games.

If something fails (no network, a download that would not finish), the setup says so, gives the login prompt back and simply tries again on the next boot.

Adding games

The AUTOBLEEM partition is exFAT, so any PC or Mac reads it: put the card in a reader, or copy over the network with SFTP (WinSCP, FileZilla, scp) to /media/autobleem/ on the Pi once SSH is enabled.

PlayStation games: drop the game files - .cue + .bin, .chd or .pbp - straight into Games/; the launcher sorts each game into its own folder by itself. A multi-disc game is one folder with every disc in it (make that folder yourself, or name the discs Game (Disc 1), Game (Disc 2) and the launcher merges them). Cover art and the title come on their own (the launcher looks the game up and fetches its cover online); your own <name>.png next to the game wins.
Other systems (with RetroArch): into RetroArch/roms/<system>/ - a folder per system is already there, named as RetroArch names them (Nintendo - Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega - Mega Drive - Genesis, ...).
BIOS files: the setup installs the PlayStation BIOS and RetroArch's system files; your own go to System/Bios/ and RetroArch/system/.

The launcher watches its folders: copy a game in while it runs and it appears in the carousel by itself, sorted into its folder, cover and all.

Options and updates

autobleem.txt on the card's small boot partition (readable on any PC) holds the first-boot options as key=value: the system partition's size, the HDMI mode, the RetroArch answer, whether to mirror the box art. Edit it before the first boot; comments in the file explain each key.

To update an installed Pi, download the Raspberry Pi tarball from the downloads page, unpack it on the Pi and run sudo bash install.sh - it keeps the games partition and everything on it, and skips what is already installed.

Questions and bug reports: github.com/autobleem/AutoBleem2. The Pi's logs are in System/Logs/ on the games partition.