Regular freezes with Raspberry 2&3

[InsecureSpike]

guy’s what happens when playing lower spec machines?

as testing with N64 is a little bias as it don’t run too great on a Pi3, anyway!
forget the N64, PSX & PSP for now they are very taxing for the poor lil Pi’s

game gear?
gameboy?
gameboy color?
gameboy advance?
master system?
nes?
pcengine?
megadrive/genesis?
snes?
neo geo?

[sabrecheeky]

Mine crashed last night three minutes in on a ZXSpectrum game – probably the least taxing (but imho most important ^^) of the emulators in RetroPie.

Though my experience is that the freeze happens much quicker on PSP, PS1 etc; as I said, Crisis Core in PSP is virtually guaranteed to freeze before the opening fmv is complete on my system.

[InsecureSpike]

what speccy game was it? what emu? I’ll give it ago shortly

[InsecureSpike]

ok, well i’ve been playing Mario Kart 64 for 20+mins with no issues!!

have you all upped yer memory split?

[ssimplemind]

Hi. Memory split is 256M for vram. I used to have it at 384M but decided to scale back because I thought that the games might be running out of memory (I checked later and that wasn’t the case)

The freezes happen randomly. I played Ocarina of Time for 4 hours with no problem, but when changing games it happens more rapidly. Try playing a little of more. Usually, the first game I start is stable, but when I change game, the freezes occur faster. Even shutting down an emulator and starting it again makes the freeze occur more rapidly. I hope it helps.

If there’s anything else I can do to help you pinpoint the issue I’m happy to help. Just tell me what files to provide for debugging.

[gamesfan]

@InsecureSpike, are you using a bluetooh controller? I have did a memory split 256 and still have the crashes.. Only when playing with a bluetooth controller.

I left MarioKart running in attactmode for 2 hours without issues. When playing a game it will freeze in 20 minutes or so..

Only seeming to affect bluetooth.

[ssimplemind]

I’ve only used rPi3’s internal bluetooth module with pi-bluetooth installed. I’ll try and get an usb module tomorrow to check again.

[InsecureSpike]

ah, nope i’m using Razer Onza Tournament Edition. yup, maybe thats it then

[nonorius]

Hello,

Just an update about my “situation”.
I have finally bought a NES30 Pro pad.
Linked in bluetooth, I have played around 30 minutes to Street Fighter 2 turbo on snes : no issue.
I have also played 15 minutes to Thunderforce 4 on Megadrive which usually is an issue : no problem.
Of course I need more time to confirm. But I am more and more thinking this is an issue with the PS3 driver and not with the bluetooth.
As e a reminder, I met same issues on both PI2 & PI3.

Thanks!

[sabrecheeky]

[quote=122003]what speccy game was it? what emu? I’ll give it ago shortly

[/quote]

It was Starquake. Oddly, I’d played it to completion a few nights ago… can’t remember how long that was for but it usually takes me 30-45 minutes to complete. I’d not put it on to test, just so I could play something I thought would work ><!

Edit – sorry, forgot to say it was in lr-fuse.

[gizmo98]

Pi3 does not seem to be stable at all:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=139712&hilit=throttle

[ssimplemind]

Throttling is not an issue here. My Pi 3 keeps well below 60°C in any N64 game that I tested. I kept Donkey Kong 64 running for 8 hours straight without any issues and my temperature reading was 56.8°C (135°F) at the most.

The problem is definetly somewhere between the Bluetooth module and the PS3 drivers for Bluetooth.

[pajen]

My RPi3 with Retropie 3.6, and PS3 controllers over Bluetooth, has had random and not random freezing since the start. Could basically occur anytime, for example when transferring files over LAN, using the scraper, playing games. Always pretty random but not far between. Memory split change did not cure it, neither updating various files. Notably, I could reproduce the freeze every time I started Game&Watch – Nintendo Donkey Kong with the controller connected by USB cable, then removing the cable in game.

The solution was this: (I have not had any freezing since, ran a total 2 h on Dreamcast, Ps1, SNES, NES, game&watch and more. Even the Emulator station scraper worked tagged some 200 C64 games in a row)

1. Exit Emulator station

2. At the command prompt:
sudo nano /boot/config.txt
add to the file in the editor:
dtoverlay=pi3-disable-bt

3. Exit editor (ctrl x, Y, return)

4. Then run from the command prompt:
sudo systemctl disable hciuart

Remember: make a backup before not to risk your setup.

(previously tested to only do 1-3 but that did nothing)

Hope this helps, seem many are affected by this issue.

Edit: Forgot to say I now run Bluetooth via dongle, needed to pair the controllers again to get started.

[ssimplemind]

Hi pajen, thanks for the info.

I just got my usb Bluetooth dongle about 2 hours ago. It’s an ASUS USB-BT400. I disabled the internal bluetooth as per your instructions and restarted and then my controllers paired immediately with the new bluetooth adapter.

You can check to see which adapters are active using hciconfig.

I’ve been playing for about 2 hours and am glad to report that I had no freeze until now. It’s great to know that the problem was caused by the PI’s internal bluetooth, because at least with a USB dongle you can get around the problem, and I’m sure that the rPI foundation will eventually find a solution.

[sabrecheeky]

Thanks pajen.

I tried your method, but I can’t get the controller to pair to my dongle. The dongle worked fine on my pi2, but seems to fail. I get the following when I checked (apologies for poor quality picture ><!)

[dankcushions]

i think all discussion here should be moved to the relevant issue against raspian:

https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/issues/1360

essentially, onboard bluetooth is not stable on the raspberry pi3

[pajen]

sabrecheeky:
Perhaps try to run: “rpi-update”? Basically I have no clue. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful, pretty new to this. But when I found out about this method to turn the internal bluetooth off I wanted to share to other retro gamers. I agree with ssimplemind that this problem will be officially solved in due time.

dankcushions:
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

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