Blank screen after RetroPie splash screen

[munchiez]

Hi guys, first I’d like to say thanks for such a great bit of software, I’ve had great fun reliving my wasted youth :)

I’m having some real problems getting a signal to my VGA monitor and hoped someone might be able to point me in the right direction. I’ve looked all over and can’t find anything that helps.

It’s an oldish Acer AL1715 connected to the RPi via an HDMI to VGA converter. I’ve edited /boot/config.txt to force HDMI output and changed a couple of other settings and I get a perfectly good signal to the monitor while Raspbian boots up. I also get the RetroPie splash screen but then it’s followed by a blank screen.

I can still Telnet and FTP into the Pi and I get a signal right up until the splash screen so I know it isn’t the monitor or converter cable. I figure that emulationstation/Retroarch is changing some display settings when booting and this is possibly the cause of the problem but I’m a Linux novice and can’t figure it out myself.

Any help would be really appreciated, I’d hate to see a perfectly good monitor go to waste and I’m itching to get started on a retro gaming table!

[munchiez]

I feel a bit stupid now because I thought I’d tried every combination of options in config.txt. Setting the framebuffer width and height seemed to solve the problem, I’m not sure why but I’m just happy it works!

I came across a post somewhere where someone had the same problem with this exact monitor so if in case anyone else finds this post looking for the same thing I’ll post my config below.

# uncomment if you get no picture on HDMI for a default "safe" mode
hdmi_safe=1

# uncomment this if your display has a black border of unused pixels visible
# and your display can output without overscan
#disable_overscan=1

# uncomment the following to adjust overscan. Use positive numbers if console
# goes off screen, and negative if there is too much border
#overscan_left=16
#overscan_right=16
#overscan_top=16
#overscan_bottom=16

# uncomment to force a console size. By default it will be display's size minus
# overscan.
framebuffer_width=640
framebuffer_height=480

# uncomment if hdmi display is not detected and composite is being output
hdmi_force_hotplug=1

# uncomment to force a specific HDMI mode (this will force VGA)
hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode=1

# uncomment to force a HDMI mode rather than DVI. This can make audio work in
# DMT (computer monitor) modes
hdmi_drive=2

# uncomment to increase signal to HDMI, if you have interference, blanking, or
# no display
config_hdmi_boost=4

# uncomment for composite PAL
#sdtv_mode=2

#uncomment to overclock the arm. 700 MHz is the default.
arm_freq=900

# for more options see http://elinux.org/RPi_config.txt
core_freq=250
sdram_freq=450
over_voltage=2
gpu_mem=128
avoid_safe_mode=1

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