RetroStone not booting/crashing/freezing - Hardware issue - Please post here.

[Admin]

Hey guys,
Before posting check out the following points and please reply answering them :

1- Have you installed the OS as described in the tutorial?
2- Have you cleaned the memory card with diskpart or similar to make sure no partition is left? (in particular if you tried to flash several times)
3- Have you formated in FAT32 ? Formating in ExFAT for example will cause crashes/boot problems.
4- Are you waiting for ~10 seconds for LCD to get signal? First 10s it's expected to have blue/white LCD before signal switch to LCD.
5 - Do you have something connected to USB when that happens? Some power hungry devices might crash the system.
6- With what software have your flashed the OS on the memory card? (not just dropping the .img file on the memory card)
7 - Have you tried to clean microSD with diskpart, format in Fat32, flash again?
8- Is your battery low/empty (LED2 turns ON when low battery)? LCD starts flipping when battery is low.
9- Are you using a 5V 2A charger? Using a 5V 1A will result in battery not charging. Low battery results in screen fliping.
10- What version of Retrorangepi are you using? RetroStone version? SLIM or FULL version? Latest version?
11- Are you turning OFF from software before switching OFF the switch? RetroStone is a computer, if you hard-shutdown directly with the switch you might corrupt your OS. If you did switch off with switch rather than software and have problem since, please try clean SD card, format and reflash.
12- Have you tried to re-download the Retrorangepi image, just to make sure it wasn't corrupted while downloading?
Check the image size, if you download had a problem it will probably be different than the following :

RetrOrangePi_4.2_FULL_Armbian_5.59_Retrostone_Debian_jessie_default_3.4.113_desktop.7z
1.18GB zipped (1,183,605,850bytes)
4.27GB unzipped (4,269,801,472 bytes)

13- By chance do you have another microSD card to test if it's the SD the problem?
13b - Have you tried with another computer? Some people report that it was the issue (probably the SD card reader that was making errors while writing or something like this)
14- Can you test the following procedure : (not necessary if you tried surpemeretrostone v1.1

Step 1 : From emulationstation, quit to terminal (F4),
Step 2 : type in the command : sudo h3consumption -d 528
Step 3 : Type : sudo reboot

Does it help?
15- You have a hardware problem? Game crashing and returning to emulation station are software problem. Retrostone crashing, turning OFF or showing blue lines are hardware problem. Please describe your problem.
16- What is your backer number/order number ?

Please note that RetroStone not booting occasionaly is not a hardware problem. There's a specific boot problem that occurs about 1 time every 5 times (LCD will stays white/blue for longer than 15-20 seconds). When that happens you can just switch off and on again. We'r working on a software fix for that one.
Hardware problems are when you can't boot at all, or that when you boot you don't have a stable system (crashing after 5 minutes shuting down and so on...).

I'll get in touch with you to organize replacement of it.

[Admin]

Example of reply :
1- Yes
2- Yes
3- Yes
4- yes
5- nothing connected
6- Etcher and win32diskimager both.
7- Yes multiple times
8- Battery is full
9- Yes 5V 2A
10- Retrorangepi RetroStone Full version and Slim version both don't work.
11- Always use software shutdown.
12- Yes, it did not help
13- Tested another SD and no luck either. Same behaviour with both.
14- This beta image does not help there this bug or that bug ...
15- I tried to flash multiple times, cleaning each time with Diskpart, tried different images, different SD, always the same behaviour : booting only 1 time every 10 times, often endless lines of text, boot loop, crashing. Ultimately when I get to emulation station it crashes after few seconds.
16- Kickstarter backer XXX or Website order YYYY
17 - me@contact.com (optional)

[Peppuccio]

yes i have the same problems lol

[Nevuor]

1- Yes
2- Yes, every time I tried to reflash the image, about 20 times now only with the new full version - not ONE correct boot
3- Yes
4- yes
5- nothing connected
6- Etcher and win32diskimager
7- Yes every try
8- Battery is full
9- Yes 5V 2A
10- Retrorangepi RetroStone Full version and Slim version both don't work.
11- I dont get to that point
12- Yes, it did not help
13- Tested another SD and no luck either. Same behaviour with both.
14- This beta image does not help there, still don't get any propper boot
15- I tried to flash multiple times, cleaning each time with Diskpart, tried different images, different SD, always the same behaviour : no booting at all for the new full version, often endless lines of text, boot loop, crashing.
16- Order 2971
17 - Don't want to post my e-mail here, you already have it!

I had to pay about 30€ additional taxes when I got my Retrostone, wouldn't want to pay that again if I get a replacement, how can you avoid that? :-/

[txcforever]

After a bit of experimenting with the device, I got it working just fine. Added tons of games, most of them played great. The problem is that something gets corrupted out of nowhere. Not sure what, but the music stops playing, and emulators don't load the games. An entire page of errors appear for a fraction of a second but I can't read what's the issue is exactly. It seems the configuration files are either corrupted or deleted but I'm not sure.

I didn't do anything weird at the time of this starting to happen. I was checking various Mame games when it simply crashed and after rebooting the system almost nothing would load up. I will check it once more after it charges up, but in the same day similar issues happened to me 3 times. Even though it was pretty sweet capabilities, the OS seems pretty unstable and easily getting messed up.

[Admin]

1- Yes
2- Yes, every time I tried to reflash the image, about 20 times now only with the new full version - not ONE correct boot
3- Yes
4- yes
5- nothing connected
6- Etcher and win32diskimager
7- Yes every try
8- Battery is full
9- Yes 5V 2A
10- Retrorangepi RetroStone Full version and Slim version both don't work.
11- I dont get to that point
12- Yes, it did not help
13- Tested another SD and no luck either. Same behaviour with both.
14- This beta image does not help there, still don't get any propper boot
15- I tried to flash multiple times, cleaning each time with Diskpart, tried different images, different SD, always the same behaviour : no booting at all for the new full version, often endless lines of text, boot loop, crashing.
16- Order 2971
17 - Don't want to post my e-mail here, you already have it!

I had to pay about 30€ additional taxes when I got my Retrostone, wouldn't want to pay that again if I get a replacement, how can you avoid that? :-/

Contacted you at your @hotmail.com address. We'll find a way so you don't have to pay twice the VAT of course.

[Admin]

After a bit of experimenting with the device, I got it working just fine. Added tons of games, most of them played great. The problem is that something gets corrupted out of nowhere. Not sure what, but the music stops playing, and emulators don't load the games. An entire page of errors appear for a fraction of a second but I can't read what's the issue is exactly. It seems the configuration files are either corrupted or deleted but I'm not sure.

I didn't do anything weird at the time of this starting to happen. I was checking various Mame games when it simply crashed and after rebooting the system almost nothing would load up. I will check it once more after it charges up, but in the same day similar issues happened to me 3 times. Even though it was pretty sweet capabilities, the OS seems pretty unstable and easily getting messed up.

Can you described what solved your initial problem? Also about this new problem, how long were you using it when it happenned? Is it like after 5 minutes or after 1 hours ? Did you noticed that it happenned at specific times? Or using specific emulators (mame?) If so can you try playing on another emulator such as gb or snes and see if you get similar problem?
Any USb devices connected?

[txcforever]

First part of my problem (with the multiple flashes) I am not sure what was the problem. I suspect the SD card reader on my laptop because even though every step was completed without any issues it only worked when I used an external USB card reader. So maybe it was a problem on my end.

The instability of the OS though after experimenting for a bit, seems to be coming from how the device handles low battery levels. When the battery starts to run out, I get various issues before the device finally shuts down. The screens flickers, the SD card reader starts not working properly and many times even before these issues appear, the console crashes, rebooting with errors.

After charging it overnight, these issues didn't occur for hours upon hours of usage until of course the battery was near depletion. Not sure if you can do anything software-wise to maybe turn off the device automatically before these issues start occuring. It would probably be healthier and safer than the device basically "dying" part by part.

[Mayday10]

I installed the newest os as of september 5th.

Still have the issue of playing a game and randomly getting dumped into the retropie menu.

Hopefully they keep refining the os

[Peppuccio]

I installed the newest os as of september 5th.

Still have the issue of playing a game and randomly getting dumped into the retropie menu.

Hopefully they keep refining the os

Ok you start the game and the system get back on the menu? Maybe you have wrong roms, your roms not works,or you needs to change the emulator