@Zing said in PI4 stuck on loading screen after changing theme:

@Pol

Will test with another sd card but this one has been working for me the last 3 or four years, its class 10 and im pretty sure its not damaged, i use recalbox 7.1.1 on it and simply if i dont touch that particular setting everything works fine, but i will try a fresh install on another and report back.

I understand, but some users said exactly the same thing: the SD card didn't seem to be a problem, but testing with another SD Card the problem didn't happen again.
It may not be the case, but I believe that testing is the best way to find out.

As for the input /output i dont understand what i have to do.. do you mean replacing the hdmi cable?

I was referring to the output (I already edited the post, I said "input" wrongly...), the Rpi4 has 2 MicroHDMI ports:

But ... Testing with another microHDMI to HDMI adapter or with another HDMI cable is also useful, so it would rule out all possibilities.

Sorry im not native english speaker..

Me neither, don't worry about it.

Thank you very much for your answer. I'll try using the other microhdmi port as buying another cable is out of my possibilities right now.
I can test another sd card also.
Best regards

@Zing said in Rpi 4 Can't get correct EDID info nor use resolutions freely:

@Pol Another user has already reported the same bug, see:
https://forum.recalbox.com/topic/23299/emulation-station-starts-fine-using-a-raspberry-pi-4-with-recalbox-7-1-1-reloaded-and-my-monitor-but-some-games-have-a-black-screen-with-audio/8

Thank you very much, indeed it seems pretty much related, so maybe theres not much to do but wait and see if next kernel or firmware from the raspberry 4 devs fixes this. I' ve been reading quite a lot and seems to be that Rpi 4 handles video output very differently from older models, both HDMI and composite outs.
Its also a major letdown for me that its composite out is not only more difficult to set than that of the older Pis but also forces the clocks to a lesser speed (not much they say but its no good news for me). One of the main reasons i got a pi is to connect it to crt... But well, thats another story.
Thanks again for the info and perhaps some one else can confirm certain modes dont work regardless of tv and hdmi cable? Or, on the contrary, maybe someone CAN achive this on Rpi4? Best regards

Hi to all and thanks for your attention. First my specs:
Raspberry Pi 4 8gb with 5v 3.1a power supply and micro hdmi to hdmi cable (nisuta, 4k capable).
Tested with various microsd cards, Recalbox 7.1.1, fresh installed several times, with default config.txt. Also did test with overclocked settings, same results (absolutely stable by the way, with the oc sets).
I'm connecting to a Samsung 1080p led tv through hdmi standard port, also tried with another tv of same specs TCL 1080p hdmi etc.

The problem: i want to set different CEA modes for different systems, especially Commodore64, Amiga and others wich use 50hz refresh modes, and i can't get other modes than these:
Mode 1 (vga 640x480p 60hz)
Mode 4 (720p 60hz)
Mode 16 (1080p 60hz)

When I specify in Recalbox.conf c64.videomode=CEA 17 HDMI (576p 50hz) or
CEA 31 HDMI (1080p 50hz) and then launch a game it goes back to ES every time or if I try specifying other modes sometimes games start but go into one of the mentioned 60hz modes. I tried several other modes but I seem to be stuck in 60hz world...

My findings:
I gain access to linux terminal with a nice app called Termux. Once I'm into Recalbox I do:

tvservice -m CEA (or DMT)

to get EDID info from my tvs (both same results). And here is the thing that gives a hint: instead of listing a set of "reasonable" available modes as seen on:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/config-txt/video.md
the list that I get (both for CEA and DMT) is very incomplete, with modes numbers all mixed up in incorrect order and ridiculously high or low and odd resolutions, timings and specs.
Here's a shot of the CEA output

DMT is equally odd.

The thing is, with my older Rpi 3B through hdmi to the same tvs blah blah, using tvservice gives a perfectly "normal" list of modes and I can change them as I like and they function properly (I have to say I have Recalbox 6.1.1 installed on my rpi3, but I suspect all of this may have nothing to do with Recalbox's version).
So the tvs EDIDs are out of the question. Something else has to be broken.

So my thoughts are: may it be RPI 4 fault? Can you get a normal edid modeslist? Or maybe a lacking firmware (rpi4 is still at a young stage compared to rpi3) or maybe the micro hdmi to hdmi cable? Tested two cables by the way, one i bought many years ago and one i bought this year, same strange tvservice output.

As a last thing to say, it's not only killing my possibility to select proper 50hz modes but i'm also incapable of using interlaced modes (I need them to use the pi with a hdmi to yprbr adaptor to conect to crt through component, i can only get 240p which is cool enough but ES without 480i is unreadable. But this is a side story.. obviously the root of the problem resides in hdmi not being able to create such modes)

Thanks in advance for any input on this
Best wishes to all community and thanks one more time for Recalbox to the developers

@Zing said in PI4 stuck on loading screen after changing theme:

@Pol

Samsung 32gb msd, hdmi plug

• Can you test with another SD card (original and at least class 10)? (some users reported that although the card did not appear to be defective, changing the SD card solved the problem)
• Have you tested with another HDMI input? (Some users reported that switching the HDMI output did the trick)

Will test with another sd card but this one has been working for me the last 3 or four years, its class 10 and im pretty sure its not damaged, i use recalbox 7.1.1 on it and simply if i dont touch that particular setting everything works fine, but i will try a fresh install on another and report back.

As for the input /output i dont understand what i have to do.. do you mean replacing the hdmi cable? Sorry im not native english speaker..
For your interest, i'm sending 1920x1080p 60hz and works fine till i change that setting in ui settings

@Pol said in PI4 stuck on loading screen after changing theme:

@Zing I'm reproducing the exact same bug here and I am shure now one thing that triggers the loading screen forever (system becomes unusable) is selecting from the ES Main Menu under UI Settings the "crt and tiny screen" as the system view, plus "crt no text" as the gamelist view.
In particular, the second one (crt no text) because that's where it crashes, but i didn't try it without the crt system view so to reproduce the bug both should be selected.
I'm using recalbox 7.1.1, fresh install (several times, always happens) on raspberry pi 4 8gb, Samsung 32gb msd, hdmi plug, standard config.txt and recalbox.conf settings.
Hope its useful for debugging,
Best regards

Sorry I forgot to say I'm also using the default theme (recalbox-next I think)

@Zing I'm reproducing the exact same bug here and I am shure now one thing that triggers the loading screen forever (system becomes unusable) is selecting from the ES Main Menu under UI Settings the "crt and tiny screen" as the system view, plus "crt no text" as the gamelist view.
In particular, the second one (crt no text) because that's where it crashes, but i didn't try it without the crt system view so to reproduce the bug both should be selected.
I'm using recalbox 7.1.1, fresh install (several times, always happens) on raspberry pi 4 8gb, Samsung 32gb msd, hdmi plug, standard config.txt and recalbox.conf settings.
Hope its useful for debugging,
Best regards

@macu Think of a "core" as an emulator, for instance there are many emulators for SNES: Snes9x, higan, etc... Each one is a core.
Then there are libretro adapted cores (the ones that use the retroarch environment) and standalone cores (with their own environment, configs, etc). Recalbox uses libretro and standalone cores, sometimes you can choose between them as is the N64 case. Sometimes not (Dosbox for instance). The devs choose cores availability depending on the system (Raspi, PC, etc), they do so with performance un mind. N64 emulation is tricky, especially in lower end machines like Raspberry Pi, so its a matter of trial and error which core is better for a game.

@macu yes it is normal. Only libretro cores have the retroarch menu.

@luis-fontes 2) you can't make partitions writable past rebooting the recalbox because that's the way recalbox protects itself against bad file handling or whatever, but doing as I said on the last post you will only have to go through the PuTTY thing only when you are saving the shaders/configs for a new system, you may even do It all in one session.
Tell me if this worked for you, if you are using the same retroarch config for all systems its really very simple.

@luis-fontes 1) To have the shader loaded every time you start a game, after selecting and saving the shader you have to also save the retroarch settings. You can do It with the default retroarch config or per system (core).
For example, I use different video settings per system so I save a custom retroarch config for SNES, mame, megadrive, etc.

In the retroarch main menu go to "Configurations" then select "Save new configuration"; a file with the name of the core (e.g: mame078_libretro.cfg) will be created in ./recalbox/share/system/.config/retroarch/config (assuming you are using an sd card).

Next you have to edit the file "recalbox.conf" in ./recalbox/share/system pointing it to your new custom retroarch configuration that will apply only to that Core (system). E.g. for the Mame system, add the line: mame.configfile=/recalbox/share/system/.config/retroarch/config/mame078_libretro.cfg

@luis-fontes Hi, it gives error because it tries to save to a write protected partition. You have to access the Linux console (using PuTTY through WinSCP if you are on Windows) and type:

mount -o remount,rw /

That's it now configure your desired shader, apply it and save it, no more error message I can say it works in my Rpi 3b recalbox 6.1

@The_Mole I was wondering that too... Maybe you can fix it, will you share it please?

Hi
If you mean composite out, set sdtv_mode=16 for NTSC or 18 for PAL (in config.txt, you have to turn off read-only attribute first). Those are progressive modes, no flickering. For interlaced, modes use sdtv_mode=1 for NTSC or 2 for PAL.
Then on recalbox.conf set default videomodes to "default", also with N64 and dreamcast.
Don't use "DMT" modes as they refer to VGA monitor timings, not CRT Tvs.

Here,
https://github.com/recalbox/recalbox-os/wiki/Connect-your-recalbox-to-a-CRT-with-HDMI-(EN)

The correct output of NES would be 256x224 pixels, 512x448 at 2x, close to 640x480, but in reality the horizontal pixels where stretched to fill the 4:3 aspect ratio of Tvs of that time. That means pixels wider than taller (not square!).
If you use LCD TV theres no way to have perfect integer without having black bars on sides and Up/down.
On a CRT TV you can achieve 256x224 and others creating and using custom resolutions only available using HDMI to Vga to scart (or component). There's a tutorial for this that the recalbox team made

@Bkg2k as developers kindly said they intend to take care of the per-game resolution changes, please take a look at this from a retropie user who created a fully customized set of configs to display the closest to pixel perfect for almost all systems. It takes care of horizontal scaling and vertical centering and It does 480i on ES and kodi and 480p on games launch (still no PAL customization).
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/18624/custom-configs-for-crt-using-the-built-in-composite-out
Maybe its useful for you and if you implement It it would mean an easier alternative for CRT users to have the closest representation of retro games with just a cable, being able to use PAL/NTSC switching per system/game without having to switch sdcards.
The results are great as one can ser un that post, even people which used HDMI to RGB are saying they switched to composite for the more authentic feel on some consoles which used composite video

I wanted to add that it is possible to use certain shaders that add a little horizontal blur (just horizontal) to get rid of non-integer horizontal scaling issues like rainbow banding or scroll wriggling, they dont affect speed at all. For all consoles I use:
blurs/blur5fast-horizontal.glsl
And only for megadrive:
blurs/blur7fast-horizontal.glsl
because banding and dithering in megadrive are still there with blur5. Still, with the raspi composite they look great, more crisp than original megadrive (i have one to compare)

Both set with:
Filter: non linear
Scale: 3x

But the guy I mentioned uses other, maybe its even better i didnt try yet, he says It calculates better non integer width (256 for nes snes pcengine, 304 most neo geo, 384 cps, etc. arent integers into 720 Raspberry native horizontal res)

They use two archives, something like "runcommand_onstart.sh" and "runcommand_onend.sh" and they put the tvservice command in them to switch sd resolutions. I wish I knew anything about coding!!!

Sorry pal but afaik thats currently imposible in Recalbox. I have been using RB over composite for years, it's amazing, this is the only letdown so far. I think it can be easy for coders, at runcommand they use "tvservice" to change between SD resolutions; e.g: when an emulator starts switches to 240p and changes back to 480i when it returns to ES. In retropie theres a user that even customized every system and made scripts, look at this :
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/18624/custom-configs-for-crt-using-the-built-in-composite-out
We are indeed too few people, the majority if CRT TV users do HDMI to Vga, then VGA to scart, or they use hats attached to the Raspberry Pi, but I wish the Recalbox team does this some day, i say this very respectfully, of course i feel very lucky just yo use RB as It is

Hi, to my knowledge shaders config is saved when you save the "retroarch" configuration, not the "core" options.

First, in retroarch menu (hotkey+B) select and apply your desired shader (you do this in "Quick menu -> Shaders"). Then go back to the main retroarch menu and go to "Configurations" then select "Save new configuration"; a file with the name of the core (e.g: mame078_libretro.cfg) will be created in ./recalbox/share/system/.config/retroarch/config (assuming you are using an sd card).

Next you have to edit the file "recalbox.conf" in ./recalbox/share/system pointing it to your new custom retroarch configuration that will apply only to that Core (system). E.g. for the Mame system, add the line: mame.configfile=/recalbox/share/system/.config/retroarch/config/mame078_libretro.cfg
To know the name of the system, its the name of the folder you put the roms into. To know the name of the core, it appears in the retroarch menu, at the bottom.

That's it, it's useful also if you want to adjust Video or Input or something else (but the core options) per system.
Just a warning: It happened to me once that after saving it said "error saving file", in my case it was because I had the sd card full, as foolish as it may sound