black screen issues
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Are you flashing a card with the pre-built image? Are you installing on top of Raspbian? There are many specifics we are lacking here.
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@edmaul69 said in black screen issues:
Seems odd to me that i have had 50+ installs do this and i cant find a single post online about this.
This is the kind of revelation that is most valuable in troubleshooting a problem. You know that it happens to you every time, but other people are unaffected. You just need to look closely at the initial modifications your making as possibilities and examine them in the order of viability. Any kind of alterations made to display behavior are of course to be considered first.
Also, when you say this has happened to you on 50+ installs, are all of those installs on the same combination of hardware, or have you been able to replicate the problem on multiple cards & Pis? If it is that this has been happening on the same combination of hardware from day one, you really shouldn't rule out a bad SD card or even a bad Pi. However, the latter is the most unlikely given this specific behavior. At the very least, testing an installation on another card could be worth your time if you happen to rule out a configuration issue.
Edit: My internet connection went out when I was composing this and the original post had yet to be responded to. @caver01 brings up very good points. More information can't help but speed things along here.
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@edmaul69 I assumed by 50 installs you meant 50 different systems which would point to a configuration issue or some common component at fault, but if this is reinstalling on the same exact pi, I think @mediamogul made a good point about hardware. It could be a common config you are adding each time, but if the hardware isn't changing, you might need to start swapping components to rule them out, including the pi.
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The display doesnt matter. It has happened on 3 lcd tv's, a plasma tv and a projector tv. The only things hooked up are a hard drive and whatever controllers i am setting up. Happened on a pi b+, a pi 2 and a pi 3 setup. (And i mean multiple different pi's and multiple sd cards) Even fresh installs of 3.7 and 3.8 i was doing the setup new because it was the first 3.xx retropie setups i had done. The 3.7 was done 2 days before 3.8 came out so i set up another one on 3.8. The roms have been on the hard drives so i didnt even add those to the cards. I couldnt use much from the old setups. I added advmess and a version of jzintv that can play the ms pacman homebrew because those arent even available from retropie. Then i added my stellarc config. Then i rearranged the systems in the es_systems.cfg to be arranged in the order i want them to boot in. I dont mess with much other than the configs folder to get those set the way i want them. I back up everything i change so i dont have to redo those everytime and i recently started making an image file so i can save time. My first retropie update was going from 3.7 to 4.0. I am waiting for the 4.0 image to come out so i can try a fresh install and see if i still have any issues. I dont mess with most linux command stuff and i dont have anything installed from the command line. Other than the 4.0 beta 2 update i only have updated some emulators. I do have a theme that takes up most of the ram and in the config.txt i have these turned on. I have to force edid audio to use on my tv. No overclocking because i cant get it to actually work on the pi 3.
hdmi_force_edid_audio=1 config_hdmi_boost=4 hdmi_mode=1 overscan_scale=1I do have the the scrolling text being hidden with the command in my commandline.txt (i forget which part that is in it)
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@edmaul69 you say you are using your own image to save time. So, by fresh install, does that mean you are using your own image and running the RetroPie script? If so, what happens if you just flash a card with the prebuilt image?
If it's software, at some point you are going to have to assume that a step along the way is causing this, and to find it, you will need to start with a known good setup, run that for a while even if it doesn't have your hard drive etc.
Hard drives? How are they powered? What power supply do you have for the pi?
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@edmaul69 said in black screen issues:
I do have the the scrolling text being hidden with the command in my commandline.txt (i forget which part that is in it)
I wonder if this might be an issue. You said it goes black during config screens (text) right? Not during games or during emulation station? I am hiding my command stuff at boot with a change to /boot/cmdline.txt. Depending on how you are doing it, you could try undoing this step.
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@caver01 i just started using an image file i created. I have done many many installs without my own image file. When i say fresh install i mean taking the img file from retropie and installing it. I do however immedietly use my commandline.txt to get rid of the srolling boot text. Can you post your commandline.txt info? I dont have a copy as i always use the same one i already had made to hide the text.
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So i did a fresh install on another card and stole the cmdline.txt. Hopefully this works. I will let it sit idle for about a half hour then try. Then try again before i go to bed.
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This appears to have fixed my issue. I should have thought of this earlier. Thanks for your help.
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@edmaul69 Awesome! I went to sleep after my replies above, but so glad this worked. I am away from my pi at the moment, but I can post my working cmdline.txt when I get home. I have the boot text going to TTY3 if I recall, and hiding the boot logo. I also have a poll rate set higher for better analog input (trackball and spinners).
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@caver01 said in black screen issues:
@edmaul69 Awesome! I went to sleep after my replies above, but so glad this worked. I am away from my pi at the moment, but I can post my working cmdline.txt when I get home. I have the boot text going to TTY3 if I recall, and hiding the boot logo. I also have a poll rate set higher for better analog input (trackball and spinners).
Sounds cool. Definitely want that.
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@edmaul69 Ok, for what it's worth, here's my cmdline.txt:
dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=ttyAMA0,115200 console=tty3 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline fsck.repair=yes rootwait quiet loglevel=3 consoleblank=0 usbhid.mousepoll=2 logo.nologo -
@caver01 your cmdline.txt worked great. Thank you
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