RCA Video – Blank screen after launching any ROM (NES or SNES is all i have)

[Anonymous]

Hey guys/gals,

I’m currently in the process of re-writing the SDCard as i’m running into filesystem corruption and likely need a different SD Card (problems after about 10 reboots or so)

It does work amazingly well though, when i’m using HDMI for video. I thought I was all set to go install it in my car but I tried using the RCA video out instead and although it all looked good, as soon as i launched the NES or SNES emulators by selecting a rom, the screen goes blank and i can hear the audio. If I press my couple buttons on the controller it’ll quit the emulator and I can blindly use the options to reboot it, and it comes back up for another try.

I’ve got RasPi model B (512mb), Targus Stowaway USB keyboard (portable, can fit in glovebox) and a USB adapter for my original SNES controller. Again, everything works beautifully if i use HDMI. I just can’t seem to use RCA video due to the blackout issue once launching ROMs.

I’ve done some searching but might be using the wrong terminology or phrasing. Has anyone ran into this before? I really only plan on using NES and SNES, but I did use the pre-build SD Card image just to make it easy on myself so it appears to have ‘everything’ on it.

SD Card is a 16gb class 10 card from SanDisk. Can provide details if required. I’m using the 5v 2A power supply my Galaxy S4 came with to power it. Due to the file system corruption i’ve tried setting the overvolt option to 2 and it seems to help the file system issues, but i don’t notice any difference with regards to the RCA video.

Thanks in advance :) I’m a windows guy (server admin, tech junkie), but I understand linux… though nothing too in depth.

Brian

[Anonymous]

Oh, and its not my car that’s the problem. It does the same thing hooked to my TV via RCA Video also. HDMI works on everything i’ve tried, RCA only works until launching a game.

I’ve not done any command line testing, this is all just using the GUI via the controller once configured.

Brian

[Anonymous]

Hopefully it’s ok to post a link to another forum here. Petrockblock is the one that posted the answer, but its post #2 here. Changed the 1 to a 2 on both the ‘Nintendo Entertainment System’ and the ‘Super Nintendo’ areas of the es_systems.cfg file and RCA video is working now.

Audio seems a bit quiet, not sure if thats a result or not. I have my surround sound turned up as loud as i ever do for movies and its pretty quiet. I can crank it up and it sounds fine though.

https://github.com/retropie/RetroPie-Setup/issues/155

Brian

[petrockblog]

Everyone is invited to do some systematic tests for the RetroPie installation under various conditions and to find a fix for the composite problems: https://github.com/retropie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Compatibility-Sheet.

[karloss]

this has been discussed loads mate…

“Also, PetRockBlog recently added a feature for changing the HDMI resolution when starting Retro-Arch based systems. This seems to interfere with video working properly on composite screens. To disable it, you need to edit the ~/.emulationstation/es_systems.cfg file. Change the line:

COMMAND=$rootdir/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 1 “retroarch -…

to:

COMMAND=$rootdir/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 2 “retroarch -…”

so for every emulator, cange the 1 to a 2.. and it will work.

[petrockblog]

I know that this is a much discussed issue. My final goal is to have someone propose a fix for the shell script “runcommand.sh” (https://github.com/retropie/RetroPie-Setup/blob/master/supplementary/runcommand.sh). The script is supposed to automatically detect whether HDMI or composite video out is used so that the manual switching from argument “1” to “2” is not necessary anymore! I do not have a composite screen – that is the only reason why I did not do that on my own yet.
The line https://github.com/petrockblog/RetroPie-I am quite sure that the line Setup/blob/master/supplementary/runcommand.sh#L10 is the critical one.

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