black screen after boot

arnaudvr

Hitting a very similar issue to the one referenced above. Was running Retropie 4.6 (I think) with all default settings on Raspberry Pi 3B. Downloaded and installed Retropie 4.8 via the official RPI Imager and am booting, hitting the retropie splash screen and then when emulation station would normally start goes to a black screen and stays there indefinitely.

I've tried config.txt changes similar to the ones in the referenced post and many others to try and force a screen resolution or solve signal problems, nothing has worked, the previous version I was on needed no changes to work with my TV. I've imaged the latest rpi os onto it as a basic troubleshooting step to verify that there are otherwise no problems with power supply, SD card, cable or TV etc and sure enough it works fine without any tweaking.

I've cycled through previous versions of Retropie to determine exactly when this started happening and can confirm the problem did not occur in 4.6 4.7 or 4.7.1. I've never had a need to connect a network cable and SSH before but am willing to do it for further troubleshooting. I'll also update this once I have a better idea of what version seems to have introduced this problem.

mitu

What kind of display do you have connected - TV/Monitor ? Can you post the bootloader config.txt file you modified ?

arnaudvr

@mitu it's a tv and the config.txt is default, all the changes I made were reverted.

mitu

@arnaudvr Add hdmi_safe=1 to config.txt and see if you get an image.

If that works and you get an image, then try to configure your desired resolution in config.txt by settings hdmi_group=1 and hdmi_mode according to the resolution - see https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/legacy_config_txt.html#hdmi_mode.

arnaudvr

@mitu yep tried all that, searched the internet and tried every option out there, also tried other signal related options that are commented on in config.txt and nothing worked. Looks like emulation station isn't starting. Again default config.txt settings work fine in 4.7.1 4.7 and 4.6 this is something specific to 4.8, not my default config.

mitu

@arnaudvr Everything related to the boot is handled by the RaspiOS Lite installation, RetroPie just adds the splashscreen and auto-logs the pi user. Does a recent RaspiOS image works ? Can you login remotely via SSH to check whether there's any error in the logs (EmulationStation logs in $HOME/.emulationstation/es_log.txt, system logs can be viewed by running dmesg).

arnaudvr

@mitu yep, see my initial post, rpi os works and retropie 4.6 4.7 and 4.71 all work with default settings (ie all I do is flash the sd card and run it) I'm running 4.71 and not too keen on losing the configuration changes I've made so I'll get another sd card and load it with 4.8 and take a look at the es_log.txt. Thanks.

mitu

@arnaudvr said in black screen after boot:

I'll get another sd card and load it with 4.8 and take a look at the es_log.txt.

You don't need a new installation to get the log - just use your current system and try to get it via SSH (or file shares, you can find it by browsing \\retropie\configs\all\emulationstation).

arnaudvr

@mitu 4.7.1 doesn't have this issue, that's why I downgraded

Arrafart

Hope this might help someone, I replaced all my BIOS files with a RetroPie dedicated BIOS pack. No more black screen for PSX

mitu

@Arrafart This topic has nothing to do with your problem - the original poster had an issue with the video output of their Pi system, not with a specific PS1 game. I'd also like to ask you to stop bumping old topics, related or not to your issues/solutions.