Amiga Amiberry gives white screen for every game

AllAround

Hi,

I have Raspberry Pi 3 with a decent power adapter (5V / 2.5A) and a simple aluminum radiator. To the computer I connect a USB dongle for the bluetooth keyboard + touchpad and two joypads Logitech Gamepad F310 and Genesis P44. Pi is connected to the display through HDMI (duh).

I've downloaded the official image today, so the version of the RetroPie is 4.4.

I have some systems running already (NES, SNES, PSX) - they work fine. I would love to add Amiga to the collection.

I've installed Amiberry emu and followed the guide Using Amiberry WHDBooter with RetroPie (https://github.com/midwan/amiberry/wiki/Using-Amiberry-WHDBooter-with-RetroPie). I have Kickstarts (1.2, 1.3, 3.1) in the correct BIOS directory - when I start Amiberry I see they are listed. I have a few games in LHA format (.lha files). The games are seen in the Amiga system part of the Emulationstation.

Whenever I choose any game from the list there appears a white rectangle and... nothing else. I've waited for up to 15 minutes, but after that F12 to quit the emulator :( I've tried changing display mode to PAL, changing the resolution, etc. but to no avail. The guide and everything I've seen on YouTube and read on this forum suggests that this setup (Kickstarts, games in .lha, Amiberry) should basically run out of the box.

How do I debug this issue or get more information about the problem?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

austinio

I'm seeing the same thing too. White screen with every LHA file. I've only just installed Retropie (was using recalbox before) and have all my other emulators working - just the Amiga I am struggling with. I've tried WHDLoad with uae config for non LHA files too, but that didn't work either. I've tried both the binary and the source install of amiberry. Any ideas welcome.

austinio

Here is my runcommand output:

pi@retropie:~/RetroPie/roms/atarist $ tail -f /dev/shm/runcommand.log
Parameters:
Executing: /opt/retropie/emulators/amiberry/amiberry.sh auto "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/amiga/LostVikings_v2.0_2235.lha"

dudleydes

@AllAround @austinio Check that Amiberry has successfully created the symlinks to the Kickstart roms. You can do this by running the command

ls /opt/retropie/configs/amiga/amiberry/whdboot/save-data/Kickstarts/

The output when I run it is foo.txt kick34005.A500 kick40068.A1200.

Amiberry produces debug reports for each game launched. These can be found in /opt/retropie/configs/amiga/amiberry/whdboot/save-data/Debugs.

AllAround

Yes, the symlinks are correct. I can even see the files using less (of course I see only "garbage" because these are binary files, but I'm sure that the links are correct).

I have no debug data in the /opt/retropie/configs/amiga/amiberry/whdboot/save-data/Debugs

My /dev/shm/runcommand.log looks similar to that of @austinio.

I've tried changing video driver to sdl2 or gl, but it has no effect whatsoever. This potential fix was mentioned in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/18462/retropie-4-4-1-linux-mint-19-white-or-blank-screen-freezing-after-starting-roms

dudleydes

@AllAround Which version of Amiberry are using? Can you give the file name of a game that you have tried?

AllAround

Amiberry version 2.21.

Filenames of the games I've tried:
Superfrog.lha
Tetris.lha
1943.lha
Abracadabra.lha
AlienBreed.lha
AlienBreed2.lha

all reside in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/amiga

dudleydes

@AllAround Are those the file names as you downloaded them? Or have they been changed? What are the file sizes?

Games supported by the Amiberry WHDLoad booter need to be 'pre-installed' WHDLoads whose file sizes are generally in the region of 1 to 3MB.

There are installer files available which have the file names you listed and these tend to be 40-60kB. Can you check which you have?

AllAround

You're right, @dudleydes, the files are rather small, so they aren't the real games... I was able to find some bigger files for a few games from various places. They are either lha or zip files. The only one that actually ran was AlienBreed_v1.3_0998.zip. The game works perfectly up to the point of hitting the "Start game" after which there is only a black screen.
All other files produce a black or white screen, sometimes with initial flickering. Some files start AROS Research Operating System (?). Hmmm...

How do you find working files? Are you looking for Retroplay HD loaders, Retroplay WHDLoad games.

It's very confusing just to guess which files could potentially work.

dudleydes

@AllAround I am using .lhafiles so for Alien Breed, the file name is AlienBreed_v1.3_0998.lha. With your .zip version of Alien Breed, what happens when you launch it a second time?

Regarding game data info, please refer to the Amiberry wiki: https://github.com/midwan/amiberry/wiki/Using-Amiberry-WHDBooter-with-RetroPie-(Step-3)

austinio

@dudleydes thanks, I'll check these myself too once I am back home tomorrow.

austinio

@dudleydes I check the Kickstart symlinks - they looked fine, I had 4 or them linked (kick33180.A500 kick34005.A500 kick37175.A500 kick40068.A1200).

pi@retropie:~ $ ls -alt /opt/retropie/configs/amiga/amiberry/whdboot/save-data/Kickstarts/
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 2 pi pi 4096 Nov  2 23:01 .
lrwxrwxrwx 1 pi pi   39 Nov  2 23:01 kick33180.A500 -> /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/Amiga/kick12.rom
lrwxrwxrwx 1 pi pi   39 Nov  2 23:01 kick34005.A500 -> /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/Amiga/kick13.rom
lrwxrwxrwx 1 pi pi   39 Nov  2 23:01 kick37175.A500 -> /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/Amiga/kick20.rom
lrwxrwxrwx 1 pi pi   39 Nov  2 23:01 kick40068.A1200 -> /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/Amiga/kick31.rom
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi    1 Nov  2 22:49 foo.txt
drwxr-xr-x 6 pi pi 4096 Oct 31 18:55 ..
pi@retropie:~ $ ls -alth  /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/Amiga/kick31.rom
-rw-rw-r-- 1 pi pi 256K Oct 31 18:24 /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/Amiga/kick31.rom

I also see nothing in the /opt/retropie/configs/amiga/amiberry/whdboot/save-data/Debugs when I run a game - does that tell us anything?

I checked the file sizes of my lha files and they are generally 500K- 3M - so I think I have the correct roms.

I did run this script as well as the standard amiberry install first time round (although I have since reinstalled amiberry from source) - could that somehow have caused the issue : https://github.com/HoraceAndTheSpider/RetroPieAmigaSetup

dudleydes

@austinio The RetrePie Amiga Setup install script you linked is no longer required. Amiberry can be installed from the setup script.

I'm not familiar with the script so I don't know how the configuration differs from the way Amiberry is set up now. Nor am I aware of a method to undo the effects of the install script.

All I can suggest is to start with a fresh image of RetroPie, install Amiberry from the setup script and then add the kickstart roms and .lha game files to test.

austinio

I managed to get it working. I uninstalled amiberry, cleared the /opt/retropie/configs/amiga/amiberry folder. Reinstalled from sources, recopied various bios roms and ended up with this rom working:

kick40068.A1200 -> /opt/retropie/emulators/amiberry/kickstarts/Kickstart - 391773-01 (USA, Europe) (v3.1 Rev 40.068) (A1200).rom

I also ensured 755 permissions on the kickstart roms - they were 744 before. Not sure which of these steps actually fixed the issue though.