RetroPie Doesn't boot on Pi model 3b

matabayashi

Hi Everyone,
First post alert!
I have recently gained an interest into Raspberry Pi and got myself a Picade(arcade machine) and it looks so good ! However unfortunately I can not seem to boot retropie in my Model 3b.

The issue:
I have tried the exact set up with a NOOBs image and everything works fine and I can use Raspbian. When I reformat the sd card (with gparted) and burn retropie from (etcher on my linux) and plug it in to boot I initially get a few green flashes (which represents SD card activity to my understanding) then no green light at all. The power red light is constantly on. Nothing happens visually apart from the red power light.
My sd card is a sandisk ultra 32GB.

Things that I have tried:
2 different power supplies(an official raspberry usb-c as well as a phone charger from PC both appropriate V, being powered from a HAT)
Plugging different screens(via HDMI)
Changing the config.txt (uncommenting hdmi_force_hotplug=1)
Formatting the sd card in ext4 and FAT32 (before burning img)

I have tried every possible suggestion I can find on the web with no luck and I am hoping someone here would be able to help me out.
Is there a compatibility problem with Retropie-4.5.1-rpi2_rpi3.img and Pi model 3b ?
Am I doing something fundamentally wrong?

Is there a possible work around? I have seen that I can boot retropie from raspbian as an emulator but I would prefer not to do that since I feel like it will be a hassle to move over to retropie everytime I want to play a game.

Looking forward to hearing your opinions, I have done my best to abide the rules of the forum I hope it works.

mitu

AFAIK the 3B model doesn't have an USB-C power plug - are you sure you're using a 3b model ?

Is there a compatibility problem with Retropie-4.5.1-rpi2_rpi3.img and Pi model 3b ?

No, it should work fine, there have been no similar reports since the image was released. There's a guide to identify various boot problems, diagnosing based on the LED patterns - https://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting - try to see which case fits your problem.

Try removing the PI from its case completely and boot with the official Raspberry Pi power supply. Also check the RetroPie image checksum, maybe it hasn't been downloaded correctly, and maybe re-write the image.

matabayashi

@mitu
Thank you for your response, you are correct in fact I should have added the detail that the PI is connected to a HAT which has the usb-c power supply, I will edit the original post rightaway.

There is no case around the pi, when I plug the sd card back into my laptop I can see that in the retropie partition there are many documents created(eg: bin, boot, dev, etc, var) but they all look empty(on linux mint).

I will redownload the img and try again and hope for the best. Thank you

matabayashi

I have now tried a freshly downloaded retorpie which had the same results, I can't seem to find the checksum do you know where that would be?

I am trying to avoid removing the Pi from the HAT hence I cant use the original power supply for the pi, however since raspbian is working absolutely fine I am thinking this is not a power supply issue, do they use different kind of power??

From the wiki page I have looked and the issue is clear, retropie is simply not booting in my pi. Not sure what to do really, I think I will go down the emulator route :(

May be I should also add that the only booting that works is NOOBs, I have tried raspbian direct images too with no luck of booting. Could it be that my etcher is not writing images to discs properly??

mitu

@matabayashi said in RetroPie Doesn't boot on Pi model 3b:

I have now tried a freshly downloaded retorpie which had the same results, I can't seem to find the checksum do you know where that would be?

The checksum is shown on the download page, under the download link:

I am trying to avoid removing the Pi from the HAT hence I cant use the original power supply for the pi, however since raspbian is working absolutely fine I am thinking this is not a power supply issue, do they use different kind of power??

Seems the power is ok.

May be I should also add that the only booting that works is NOOBs, I have tried raspbian direct images too with no luck of booting. Could it be that my etcher is not writing images to discs properly??

Could be, or the sd card slot is faulty ? The RetroPie image is based on the Raspbian Lite image, so if one does work, the other one should work also.
If the checksum on the downloaded image is correct, then try writing the image with a different program - use dd from the command line or maybe write the image on another system/PC.

matabayashi

@mitu

Hey thanks for your help, I actually have solved the problem via first installing raspbian then retropie following the video below after installing with NOObs and now I everything works as intended.

Still have no idea why the boot didn't work for me but at this point I am more interested in relaxing and playing some lovely 8bit games on my Picade. May be I can bump this later on when my curiosity kicks back in.

Have a great day.