Emulation Station- system selection screen- sporadic missing system pic and info

mitu

@europadecas said in Emulation Station- system selection screen- sporadic missing system pic and info:

I'm also getting a small golden electricity symbol that pops up briefly in the upper left corner upon boot, not sure if that has anything to do with my issue

It means your power source is not up to par - it's the under voltage sign from your PI telling your that the source is not providing enough power.

Hopefully that is the requested information needed for this post , if not let me know

Please see the page I mentioned, there's a lot more info that you should be providing, including the RetroPie version and the installation source.

As far as switching to Carbon, I'm not sure what that is or how to do that

What is the current theme you're using ? Open the Emulationstation menu (by pressing Start on the controller) and you'll find this information under the "UI Settings" menu

alt text

Your problem looks like a Video RAM problem - maybe the theme you're using requires more vidoe memory than the RPI can handle. A screenshot with the problem could help out.

europadecas

europadecas

europadecas

Ok here are the screenshots. Hopefully this helps. Scrolling through sometimes the info appears sometimes blank. This has not always been an issue, just recently started doing this after I downloaded a game. I tried increasing the VRAM , no change. The gold bolt did not appear again. Also my Pi is a Pi3b, not sure what version , power supply I assume is 125 V AC . Using a USB wireless keyboard and a USB PS controller. As far as the theme, still unsure.

mitu

@europadecas You need a better power source, rated 5V / 2.5 A - see the official specifications.
For the VRAM settings, you need to lower the amount of VRAM used by Emulationstation - 80 Mb would be a good start. If you haven't figured out how to change the theme...
As per the https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first page, we don't support 3rd party images, so how did you install your system ?

europadecas

I'm assuming it was downloaded normally off the website however I'm not entirely sure since this was a gift from my son who is currently overseas in the Army. Looking closer at the adapter it shows that I'm running 5V / 2.0 . I did lower the VRAM and it did make minor difference. The image in some cases is still not there but if you scroll past it and back to it , re appears. And if it was a power issue or theme issue I would assume that I would have had this issue the whole time as I have been operating it for a good month with no issues. Would this have changed if I added ROMS to the system?

europadecas

It appears that changing the VRAM to 90 may have fixed the issue. Many thanks. Please see my prior response. I guess I'm confused why it never was an issue before I started adding new ROMS. I always had it set to 130 and it operated normally. Is there any change to the visual graphics or game play of the actual ROMS by increasing or decreasing the VRAM.

mitu

@europadecas The more images are used by ES, the more memory it uses, taking away from the system VRAM. So if you add more ROMs, new system appear, scraping adds new images, etc.
I advise you to get a 2.5 A rated power bank if you get the under voltage sign again.

europadecas

Ok Yes . looks like it fixed the issue definitely. Thanks a bunch. Two last questions. What is the default VRAM Limit and by changing the VRAM does it have any impact on the graphics of the gameplay or any effect on the gameplay itself?

mitu

@europadecas said in Emulation Station- system selection screen- sporadic missing system pic and info:

Two last questions. What is the default VRAM Limit and by changing the VRAM does it have any impact on the graphics of the gameplay or any effect on the gameplay itself?

I think the default is 80. The MaxVRAM setting affects only Emulationstation, not the games.