Exiting Emulation Station - Blackscreen with cursor

ebekeneezer

Forgive me for being a complete noob here. I'm usually fairly saavy when it comes to Windows based machines, but I am completely new to Linux and have only had the Raspberry Pi 3 for a few weeks, so I feel like I know nothing at all...

Initially everything was working fine, as it should. I got Retropie running, I got roms loaded via logging into the systems IP address on a Windows machine, copied over a few bios files for systems that needed, etc. I haven't made any changes to the system files or anything like that. In fact Retropie for the most part still works and roms still run correctly.

However recently I have noticed Retropie/Emulation Station has been acting weird. These 2 things I've noticed may-well be unrelated but I noticed them happening around the same time.

At first running the built in Scraper worked fine. Now for some reason it seems like it tries to run, looks like its locked up as soon as I run it (I can't back out of it or anything, looks like its frozen), eventually goes to the actual Scraper screen but does nothing and then the system reboots after a few minutes.
After having problems with the Scraper, I looked online and saw that people had recommended sselph scraper instead of the built in one. So I figured I'd install that instead. However when I try to exit emulation station via the normal Retropie menu, all I get is a black screen with a cursor. No text or anything. I tried hitting enter (which I saw on another forum post previously to stop emulation station from restarting) but all it does is eventually restart emulation station after a minute or two. I can type text there but it just seems to display the text and skip to the next line, it doesn't seem like its registering.

I don't know if I put a file in the wrong place and it is causing some kind of conflict or if my SD Card is becoming corrupted or what. I have not tried to manually change any of the systems settings, all I have done is put roms and system bios files onto the SD.

If it helps, I am using a DVI -> HDMI converter on my monitor (the monitor doesn't have an hdmi input), but I am getting video signals, even when it's on the black screen, there's a cursor, so the video input is working. I am also using a SNES style USB controller.

Thanks for the help. If there's any more information you need, let me know.

herb_fargus

@ebekeneezer sometimes it freezes on the console like that for who knows why, try rebooting and pressing f4 to go to the terminal and see if it works.

but yes sselphs scraper is much better: https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/scraper

you can also try sshing in to your pi if you cant get the terminal to work https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/ssh

BuZz

It sounds like it's saving rather than frozen. Many ROMs? Make sure you choose exit and not restart.

herb_fargus

@BuZz that too: see also https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/FAQ#why-does-shut-down-and-reboot-take-ages

Charco

I have done what herb suggested and my Pi 3 shuts down much faster now.

ebekeneezer

You guys are awesome! It seems BuZz was right about my system being bogged down by the massive amount of Roms. And thank you Herb for recommending pressing F4 to get to the terminal, that works like a charm. Now my system shuts-down/reboots fast and I can get into the terminal easily. Herb also thank you for posting that github wiki about the sselph scraper. I had seen youtube videos about how to install it via the terminal using commands, but it was much easier now that it's built right into the retopie setup menu. I'm scraping away now, and I'm not worried that my SD card is about to fail or something!

ebekeneezer

Wow. People weren't kidding about sselphs scraper. To say it was faster is an understatement. It scraped all my roms in about an hour. The other by comparison could take hours to go through a single large console library.