Retrostone problems

[Nevuor]

Hi there!
Finally got my Retrostone yesterday, was really excited to get it running! Unfortunately, I have a lot of problems with it...

Main problem is basically to get Retrorange running! It only boots like every 30th time I switch my Retrostone on! For the other 29 times, every boot seems to be different! At the start, I always get the 2/3 white, 1/3 blinking blue screen as described in the troubleshoot FAQ, but I guess this is normal?
So now to the problems... Sometimes it just stays like this, sometimes I get the image with the consoles and the "slim" text, then sometimes it gets dark and stays like this, but most of the time I get command lines, I've seem many of them, and they also seem to be different at every boot! Sometimes I get 2 lines, sometimes they keep running like forever with nubers counting the lines and so on... It's really frustrating!
When I get to run Retrorange, I get a blue screen which looks not to healthy on the screen and then the image with the mushroom appears and it loads, but as I said, this does't happen too often...

Since yesterday, I tried a lot to get my Retrostone running! I used different SD cards, redownloaded the image, tried to flash the image with Win32DiskImager as well as with Etcher, nothing worked...

Hope to get help soon, as I'm really impatient to get this thing running!

Thanks in advance!

[dr_bunsen]

I had a similar problem and I found a solution. In my case the image didn't boot properly first time, so I tried to re-write the image on the same SD card. Again it wouldn't boot, so when I reformatted the card to exFAT to start the process over, I checked the partitions using the free section of Minitool Partition Wizard and found a 1.9Gb un-allocated portion of the card that Windows had not identified and subsequently not formatted. The 1.9Gb portion was probably a Linux partition I guess, which messed up future imaging. Anyway I reformatted with one partition for the whole SD and then re-imaged and it worked fine. Be patient when booting up, the screen blanks out and flashes several times and the whole process takes around five minutes.

[lostinfuture]

Wow looks like your unit is really buggy, cause mine starts fine

[KimDEa]

My retrostone are same problem too.
I don’t know why. Try to many turn off..

[XorA]

Mine occasionally fails to boot, but its not often enough to be super annoying (and comparable to other ARM SBC's I have).

Do we know if there is a UART hidden anywhere so people can debug boot issues?

[pbhound]

I had to use the RetrostonePi slim OS to get it to run on the retrostone.

I am having an issue (at least i hope its an issue and not that it does not exist) with WiFi does not work.

[outz]

if 8bcraft would stop filtering forum posts, i would gladly tell you that there isn't a wifi chipset in the retrostone.

[XorA]

Wifi does work if you plug in USB Wifi dongle.

Thats how I am using mine

[JohnnyPi]

Wifi does work if you plug in USB Wifi dongle.

Thats how I am using mine

Anyone have a quick list of cheap WiFi dongles that are compatable?

[Admin]

Hey guys,

@Nevuor I think dr_bunsen is probably correct, it's most likely a partition problem. Try using the diskpart tool to claim full capacity of the memory card.
See here how to do : https://www.howtogeek.com/170794/ask-ht ... n-sd-card/

XorA yes there's an UART available inside, it is indicated on the PCB silkscreen.

pbhound wifi is not included on the board. your should use a wifi dongle. I don't have a list of compatible ones yet, if you have one that works please post the model for the others

outz I don't filter messages, it's just a validation for new users to avoid spam messages on the forum.