Getting weird code when starting up Retropie
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Hello,
I have installed Retropie on a SD card according this url: https://www.instructables.com/id/The-ULTIMATE-RetroPie-41-Raspberry-Pi-Setup-Tutori/
I have a brand new SanDisk microSDHC 16 GB card and when I put in into the Pi 3, I got this on my 9 inch screen:
I am new with Pi3 / Retropie, can anyone tell me what goed wrong ? Maybe the SD card ?
Kind regards,
Arie Kant
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@arie Looks like a sd card reading problem or a broken image, can you re-write the Pi 3 RetroPie image on the card and try again ?
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@arie "unable to mount" might suggest a problem on the SD card's end. I don't know what error you would get if you didn't push in the SD card far enough, but I'm going to assume that that's not the problem here.
I agree with @mitu that clearing the card and rewriting the image would be a good first step.
Also, I don't know how many differences there are between the guide you are using and the one from RetroPie itself, but might be a good idea nontheless to use the installation steps from the RetroPie team:
https://retropie.org.uk/docs/First-Installation/ -
If the card wasn’t seated properly you would get no boot. I have had this error recently due to improper shutdown. The game froze and the user pulled the plug which caused this error.
I have also read that this can be caused by an update gone wrong. But I would say corruption due to either a bad SD card or improper shutdown.
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Hello,
Tnx for the quick help. I have formatted the SD card and give it a retry using the default method which BillyH is refering to.
I used Win32DiskImager but at the end I got the question if I want to format the partition, so I did this as a FAT32 partition.
I saw that I have 2 partiotion on the SD card, F (boot, 21 MB used and 35 MB free) and G (2 GB FAT32 and 12,7 GB unavailable space)
When I put the SD card into the Pi3 I got the same error.
So I think it is indeed a SD card problem, I will order another one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WR4IJBE/?tag=s-tomatic-20
But is it OK to get after using Win32DiskImager an F and G partition?
Kind regards,
Arie
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@arie before you purchase a new card try to format with “SDFormatter”. The card is probably not bad... and that is the reccomended format utility.
Also the RaspberryPi (Linux) file system should be Ext4 not Fat32
Edit: Removed incorrect information.
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You should have two partitions after writing the card, but the boot partition should be FAT (not FAT32) and the main partition should not be readable in Windows because it's EXT4 (Linux).
I would try fully formatting the card using SD Memory Card Formatter and rewriting the image.
What image are you using? Is it the main RetroPie image from here?
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/releases/download/4.3/retropie-4.3-rpi2_rpi3.img.gz
I would try following the official installation instructions here:
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I have just reformat the SD card (again, I did it a few days ago also with SD Card Formatter) and install the image retropie-4.3-rpi2_rpi3.img (I used yesterday the same image).
The only thing I did different is that after installing the image with Win32DiskImager I got a question the the G partition isn't formatted and if I want to do that. I did NO this time.
So at the end I didn't do a lot of different than the other installs but now when I put the SD card into the Pi3 I got the RetroPie logo, so far I hasn't been yet .......... ;-)
By the way, you were right about the boot partition, that is FAT and not FAT32 as I mentioned before. I saw that after formatting it was FAT32 but after writing the image I saw a F partition Boot with FAT.
Tnx alot for all the help, I am getting to the next step ;-)
Kind regards,
Arie
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Haha !
Actually when you image your SD card, you end up creating 2 partitions :- a vfat boot partition that windows can see.
- a linux partition (actually containing the OS) that windows can not read.
So when windows asks you if you want to format the 2nd partition, if you say Yes, you simply erase retropie, only having the bootloader on your SD card.
Pretty logic this won't boot :)
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Indeed, that's what has happened .......... ;-)
But very strange is that no instruction guide tell me to NOT format this partition so I am probably not the first one to get this problem.
Kind regard,
Arie
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@arie Actually, you're the first with this problem in a long time. Formatting is always a distructive operation, so it's understood that once you have something on a disk, formatting will erase everything.
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I understand ..... ;-)
But I don't get this error with the SD Card Formatter but when I when writing the image with Win32DiskImager, when the image was written, I got the message that it found another partition and if it must be formatted. I answered the first two times with yes because I thought this will be the partition where the ROM were placed but it was instead the partion where RetroPie was installed.
You see, there was a little bit of confusing on my side ............ ;-)
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@arie Well, problem found, now you can go play with RetroPie.
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@arie you were not the only one to do this stupid format after flashing Retropie image, I did the same (with RecalBox) thinking that, if Windows can't see my partition(s), how could I copy ROMs... you know what happened after that... :D
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There is actually a note in the official instructions, but maybe it's not 100% clear:
Note RetroPie is built on top of Raspbian (a linux based OS for the Raspberry Pi) and as such the partition on the SD card is EXT4 (a linux filesystem) which is not visible on windows systems, so the card will show up as a smaller size than usual and you wont be able to see everything on the card, but it is all there. You will be able to access the filesystem over the network as described in the transferring roms section below.
It might be useful to add a line that says something like:
If, after writing the image to the SD card, Windows says "You need to format the disk in drive [DRIVE LETTER] before you can use it." you must click Cancel. If you format the partition you will erase RetroPie from your SD card!
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@stoo said in Getting weird code when starting up Retropie:
There is actually a note in the official instructions, but maybe it's not 100% clear:
Note RetroPie is built on top of Raspbian (a linux based OS for the Raspberry Pi) and as such the partition on the SD card is EXT4 (a linux filesystem) which is not visible on windows systems, so the card will show up as a smaller size than usual and you wont be able to see everything on the card, but it is all there. You will be able to access the filesystem over the network as described in the transferring roms section below.
It might be useful to add a line that says something like:
If, after writing the image to the SD card, Windows says "You need to format the disk in drive [DRIVE LETTER] before you can use it." you must click Cancel. If you format the partition you will erase RetroPie from your SD card!
I saw the line and recalled it when I noticed the small size, but then again Windows never gave me an additional warning.
I also noticed that putting ROMs on the Pi was a step afterwards with no option to just put some on the microSD card directly, but then again it couldn't hurt making something like this more explicit. Maybe it would be a good idea to put the steps at the top of the doc, not necessarily very long but a bit more expanded than just the chapter titles?
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