Noobie MiSTer questions after doing some research

[mindatlarge]

Hello and happy new year! I had a few questions after using my MiSTer for the first time this weekend. I've read and learned a lot about it this weekend but I had some questions that I really couldn't find much insight on.

First off, it's a prebuilt and came with a 8gb SD card and I only have 2gb of space left on the SD card. My games are stored on a 4tb HDD. After looking at all the updates and releases that come out regularly, it appears I'll be needing a larger SD card.

The console core releases installed on my MiSTer, that have been getting updated regularly (NES, SNES, MD etc) are core releases from July 2021 and my MiSTer version is V210829 and OS is V210831 so from August 2021.

With all that out of the way, here are my questions:

1. Am I seriously out of date with my core releases being 6 months old and the MiSTer and OS versions being 4 months old? Would 2gb remaining on the SD card even be enough storage to run the update all script?

2. If I did end up getting a new SD card, say 256gb, can I just run Mr. Fusion, flash the MiSTer imagine on the new SD card and then transfer the contents of my 8gb SD card to the new 256gb card, stick it in my MiSTer and I'm good to go?

3. Does the MiSTer run everything off the SD card in terms of the cores, OS and MiSTer versions, etc. or does contents of the SD card actually change something on the MiSTer on a hardware level or I should say, internally somewhere on the MiSTer or is the SD card the heart and soul? ie. If I mess something up with the new 256gb SD card install, pop it in my MiSTer and some thing don't work or it's really messed up, can I just go back to using my 8gb SD card that came with it that is already set up or would popping that newly set up 256gb SD card change something in the actual MiSTer device? Probably a stupid question but I hope that made sense.

I'll probably have more questions as I spend more time learning about this thing, but these were my burning questions. I really appreciate any time that is taken in helping me learn more about this device. This community is so brilliant, it's a tad overwhelming haha. Thanks again!

[alanswx]

3. Does the MiSTer run everything off the SD card in terms of the cores, OS and MiSTer versions, etc. or does contents of the SD card actually change something on the MiSTer on a hardware level or I should say, internally somewhere on the MiSTer or is the SD card the heart and soul? ie. If I mess something up with the new 256gb SD card install, pop it in my MiSTer and some thing don't work or it's really messed up, can I just go back to using my 8gb SD card that came with it that is already set up or would popping that newly set up 256gb SD card change something in the actual MiSTer device? Probably a stupid question but I hope that made sense.

You can point your roms at the NAS if you don't want to buy a bigger card. I am not sure ig 8GB is big enough.

The MiSTer is self contained on the SD card. Pop out the 8GB and make a bigger one (256 , 400 or 512) and use Mr. Fusion. Just pop it in, and let it rebuild, then hit update. The only files you will need to copy off the 8GB would be roms and configuration. But you could probably start from scratch. If you mess up the new card, pop in the old one.

Depending on your case, be careful -- if it boots up to a black screen, it is usually because the SD card isn't seated well. That happens to me all the time.

[jca]

Congratulations and welcome to the club. Nice way to start the new year.
You says that you have the games on a 4TB HD, that's really huge. What do you have on it? Just the games directory and all the subdirectories containing the games for the various cores?
I guess you could update the SD card but I wouldn't do it. Keep it in a safe place and if something goes wrong when making a new one you can always pop it back in and have everything working the same way it is today.
As you have your games on a USB drive a 256GB SD card is way too big, I guess a 64GB is more than enough. I would have to do some calculation to see how much I use since I moved a lot of stuff to my USB HD.
To create the new one you would use Mr. Fusion as you said. Once you boot the new card let Mr. Fusion do its job and after that run the update script to have your SD card up to date. Do not copy the contents of your old SD card to the new one. You will have to copy the MISTer.ini example (I forget its exact name) to MISTer.ini. You may have to edit it by comparing it to the old one. You could also copy the old one but sometimes things are added to it. Using the old one would work but you may missing new features. If something goes wrong you can always use the old one while waiting for help.

[colonelace]

With all that out of the way, here are my questions:

1. Am I seriously out of date with my core releases being 6 months old and the MiSTer and OS versions being 4 months old? Would 2gb remaining on the SD card even be enough storage to run the update all script?

2. If I did end up getting a new SD card, say 256gb, can I just run Mr. Fusion, flash the MiSTer imagine on the new SD card and then transfer the contents of my 8gb SD card to the new 256gb card, stick it in my MiSTer and I'm good to go?

3. Does the MiSTer run everything off the SD card in terms of the cores, OS and MiSTer versions, etc. or does contents of the SD card actually change something on the MiSTer on a hardware level or I should say, internally somewhere on the MiSTer or is the SD card the heart and soul? ie. If I mess something up with the new 256gb SD card install, pop it in my MiSTer and some thing don't work or it's really messed up, can I just go back to using my 8gb SD card that came with it that is already set up or would popping that newly set up 256gb SD card change something in the actual MiSTer device? Probably a stupid question but I hope that made sense.

First of all welcome to the awesomeness that is mister and the community behind it, now for your questions

1. Updates especially stable ones are always nice to keep up to date, at most i wait about a week Incase there were bugs people noticed on release like when they did a Linux update and it messed up wifi dongles compatibility etc. As far as space goes, if your going to have all your roms in a separate hard drive and not your SD card then something like a 32gb is more than enough, majority of what gets filled up is arcade cores and the other cores since arcade cores are all individual games etc so that's all that will fill it up if your keeping SNES roms etc on the external.

2. Yes you can run mr fusion and set it all up then move over stuff like save files etc over from your older card, what you would have to do at that point is after you do all the prep and have everything up to date with update all etc is then copy your mister.ini file if you had settings changed originally in the 8gb and to be safe you can simply save it as mister_alt1.ini i think it is and test it out Incase any errors your default mister ini is untouched. As far as saves go, i personally launch a game i have saved and make a quick save just so it creates the folder for me and then replace the new save you made with the one you had in the older SD card.

3. Lastly the SD card acts kind of like an OS drive of sorts, it has all the files that it feeds into the chip to tell it what to do so that it acts like the core you selected. Simple test is if you don't insert the sd card and turn on the mister it just won't do anything because it doesn't know what to do. That being said if you make a new SD card and something goes wrong like no display because of a bad setting in the ini file, you can always pop in the old sd card and the mister will be non the wiser. I can't count the times i messed with the ini and edited the resolution or another compatible issue with my display and all i had to do was turn it off,put the sd into my PC and just edit the mister ini back to something i knew worked (could avoid this by changing settings in the alt ini first to see if things work and then the main one). So don't be like me and use your alt ini files to avoid freaking out thinking you ruined something

[mindatlarge]

alanswx, colonelace and jca...thank you all for replying to my message with those detailed and informative answers! I feel much better about moving forward with the new SD card now!

Thanks again for all the help and taking the time to respond, I really appreciate it!