Black screen on PiMAME bootup
  • Yekrats
    Hi there, folks...
    I'm trying to install on PiMAME on a RPi which I just received for Christmas. While I'm a bit of a Linux newbie, I love it, and I love playing around with my new toy as a Linux machine/XBMC smart TV, etc. However, I just tried PiMAME, and I seem to be having problems. When I boot up to PiMAME, I get a black screen through my HDMI TV. I see the SD Card light flickering, so I suspect it's reading the card, but is not configured properly to my screen.

    I found that the FAQ suggested a work-around:
    "PROBLEMS WITH HDMI
    ------------------
    If no video using a HDMI->DVI lead, edit /boot/config.txt and uncomment hdmi_force_hotplug=1"

    This sounds great, except that since the screen is black, I cannot see to the config.txt file to change it. (I twiddled some of the settings in a Raspbian installation which I tried first, so I'm familiar with what settings work with my television.) My only other machine is a Windows (8.1) desktop. Is it possible to log in remotely to PiMAME to edit this file?

    Thanks and best wishes,
    -- Scott S.
  • JimD
    Hi Scott,

    You should be able to use a program like Putty to log into the Pi, as long as you can identify what IP address the Pi is using.

    However, there's even better news... The boot partion on your SD card is formatted as a FAT partition. If you have a card reader, you can see that partition, and edit files within it under Windows.

    2 things, you might be concerned that the SD card only shows up as 50megs or so. That's fine, Windows will only see the boot partion, and not the rest of the card. (Windows don't know Linux!)

    As well, if you do edit the files this way, download and use a program like Notepad+. Windows and Linux handle end of lines differently, and Notepad+ will understand, and format the file properly.

    When you look into the config.txt file, you'll find many options, all helpfully commented. Check out http://elinux.org/R-Pi_ConfigurationFile for all the information you could ever want!

    Good luck!

    Jim
  • Yekrats
    Sweet, thanks! Thank you very much!

    I assumed that since we were dealing with Linux here, that there would be no way I could see the partition. I'm happy to see the files can be manipulated in Windows.

    I fiddled around with the settings. I'm happy to say that can see the initial menu, and can get into AdvanceMAME, and successfully launched Griddly! It even accepted input of my ancient joystick. We're in action, now!

    Thanks for your amazing help! You've earned a heap of good Karma already!
  • JimD
    Glad it worked for you!

    Jim
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