Will I need to reinstall everything?

vasquez109

Hi Everyone.

First of all i'd just like to say that I am new to Raspberry Pi's and retro gaming in general. Although I can use a computer, i'm not completely knowledgeable about the computing terms and find quite a lot of things confusing. Still, nonetheless I can get by day to day with basics!

At 40 years of age, my golden years started in the late 80's when my parents bought me a ZX Spectrum +, followed by the 128k version a couple of years later. I also had a Game Boy and then in 1993, I had my first PC (386SX33). To start with, I used to use the Sinclair BASIC (to VERY limited levels) but never thought of learning what the commands did, just happy enough to type the code in to get the desired effect from my Spectrum magazines.

With the PC, I knew how to use simple DOS commands to install and run my games, but anything technical was beyond me. I remember having to wait a week for my friend to come back from holiday so he could free up more conventional memory so I could run DOOM! So as you've probably guessed, this Raspberry Pi is pushing my boundaries day by day. So I do apologize if some of you get frustrated with my lack of knowledge.

Christmas time, my partner bought me a Raspberry Pi 3 off Amazon, as I always talk about the good old days of my youth and the games I used to play. I just could not believe it, when I saw some videos on YouTube that I could play all my old favourites exactly as I remembered them! I managed to watch a video and create an SD card with RetroPie so the Pi would self load Emulation Station (I still dont know the difference between RetroPie and ES).

Slowly I learned, and started adding and playing games on different platforms! It went really well until I came across Arcade games that I used to play as a kid where I used to spend all my pocket money! I watched another video on YouTube and it said to put the ROMS into the 'fba' folder. This was amazing as my partner and I played Galaxian and Galaga '88 for most of the evening. Once my partner went to bed, I played Nascar on the Nintendo 64 which started out slow then froze. Completely locked up and had to pull the power lead. It happened again so decided not to load that again, and went back to play on Galaxian.

Now, Galaxian and other Arcade ROMS are freezing the Pi. Have I broken it? or has the Nintendo 64 running badly overheated it somehow? Do I need to completely wipe the SD card and start again?

Really miss playing the games so any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
David.

mitu

Do any games - not just the Arcade games - freeze your Pi system when starting up ? Do you have a case for the Pi and/or a heatsink installed ?

vasquez109

Thanks for your reply!

Yes, my Pi is in a black case, and no, I haven't got a heatsink on the Pi as was advised by a family member that "The Pi doesnt have a very strong PSU which equals low heat generation."

Not sure whether this is right or wrong, so took his advice as he's a pretty switched on kinda guy regarding computers. Ive got copper heatsinks here which I suppose I could put on. Havent tried other games as we've been mostly playing Galaxian, Galaga and Pac Land. Mostly early stuff so didnt think this would cause overheating. Will be putting the Pi on after the Mrs has finished watching the TV.

Any way of finding out the temperature the processor is running at or will I need to use Linux commands and such like (which I have no idea about).

Will post if other systems cause crashes in due course!

Many thanks for your reply,
David.

quicksilver

@vasquez109 said in Will I need to reinstall everything?:

Christmas time, my partner bought me a Raspberry Pi 3 off Amazon,

Was RetroPie already preconfigured on it or did you setup RetroPie yourself?

vasquez109

RetroPie was not on it, I downloaded it and used a program to flash it to an SD card.

Ive just done a little test, the Pi has been off over 24hrs so I loaded Galaxian first. It crashed after the "cabinet booted". Pulled the plug and played other games on different systems. Played Mario Kart and Resident Evil 2 on the N64 to warm the Pi up a bit and it played well. Back to MAME and Galaga '88 and Golden Axe were flawless...and so was Phoenix.

A lot of games didnt work in the 'fba' folder but curiously did when placed in the 'mame-libretro' folder?!? Im no expert so not sure why that would be. Just following YouTube videos. Im going to recopy Galaxian onto the Pi in case the file got corrupted somehow when in use.

Hope this works!

David.

Thorr69

Starting to sound more like you simply haven't done your due diligence in choosing your arcade roms.

vasquez109

I just dont understand it! It worked perfectly the other night as the Mrs played that more than I did!

I've just deleted it off the Pi and put it back on and it locks up a few seconds in. I also tried putting it in the 'fba' folder again. Didnt even attempt to load and went straight back to the Final Burn Alpha screen. I shall attempt to source it from somewhere different and see what that holds, but i'm not holding out much hope!

vasquez109

Just sourced another copy of it, and this time the file size is 10.01KB instead of 10.00KB. This version doesnt even get as far as booting up and while it froze came up with a message "Coin lock 1 disabled". Just hangs on a black screen with tiny yellow writing in the bottom left hand corner "100% Microntek USB Joystick configured in port #0."

I dont understand it...any ideas?

mitu

Hm, try to look in the fba folders and check if you have a galaxian.nv or galaxian.fs next to your ROM file. If it is, delete it and try again to boot the game.

vasquez109

Sorry for the delay in replying. The only other thing in my 'fba' folder is another folder called 'fbneo' which has a file called galaxian.hi (high score I presume) along with other games with .hi extensions. Some files in there have an .fs extension, Galaxian doesn't have an .fs file here though.

Nothing at all now in the 'fba' folder as my games are now in 'mame-libretro'. No other files in 'mame-libretro' other than the rom zips.

Hmm....