(PI 3A+) black screen

BeefN'OnionPi

hi i hope you can help me, im new to retropie, ive just put together a pi, i wrote the retropie 4.7.1 image to a brand new psy 32gb sd card. (with etcher)

i plugged the pi into an old lcd tv (no hdmi) via the 3.5mm composite port.

and i thought i could just about see the retropie colours coming through but the picture was badly garbled and wonky.

i gave up that tv and plugged it into the telly in the living room which does have hdmi, but when i turn on the pi all i get is a blank screen. (pi is getting power, using official pi 3 power supply)

i thought the image might have become corrupted so i put the micro sd card back into my pc and used etcher to flash the retropie image again, but it failed, and every time i try it fails, its starting to piss me off now, could anyone please help me with this ?

(win10)

mitu

Put the SDcard back into the PC, then open the config.txt file on the boot partition that shows up with Notepad. Add a line with

hdmi_safe=1

then try starting back the Pi and see if it's outputting any video.

BeefN'OnionPi

@mitu im not sure how to do that, in windows i had clicked on the h drive which is the sd card but windows tells me the card needs to be formatted first, so im stuck

mitu

There should another partition (I: ?) which Windows should be able to read. If there is none, then the image is not correctly written.

BeefN'OnionPi

@mitu no there isnt any other partition except for my usual partitions, should i just keep trying to flash the image with etcher ?

mitu

Write the image again, make sure you run Etcher with the 'Run As Administrator' option.
If that doesn't work, try using the Raspberry Pi Imager - https://www.raspberrypi.org/software/.

BeefN'OnionPi

@mitu ive tried etcher again and selecting run as administrator, however it failed again. then i tried the raspberry pi imager (run as administrator) but that failed 3 times, the sd card is brand new surely its not broken already, also i bought it from argos so its not a fake, im so baffled

mitu

There are a few SD card testing application - try H2testw to check if your card has any issues.

BeefN'OnionPi

@mitu when i try h2testw, it asks me for target, i point it to h drive and then windows says it needs to be formatted

mitu

It's ok, just format it - the RetroPie image can be re-written anyay again.

BeefN'OnionPi

@mitu i tried formatting (to fat) as i went through the test program, but i got "windows was unable to complete the format"

mitu

The card may be damaged - or the SDcard port is wonky. If you just purchased it, then try to exchange it and get a new one.

BeefN'OnionPi

@mitu thanks for your help, i will try and get it exchanged

think ill check its sitting correctly in the sd adapter/pc first

BeefN'OnionPi

@mitu i exhanged the sd card and flash retropie again and it worked, however it was shortlived as now in getting the "end kernel panic - attempted to kill init!" command line, and retropie wont boot

mitu

@beefn-onionpi Don't yank the power from the PI - use the 'Shutdown' option from EmulationStation to safely shut it down.