NeoGeo roms fail to load, I see 000-lo.lo before going to blue screen

[Spartan]

Hello all

Recently acquired a preconfigured MiSTer from MiSTer addons.
Was able to flash my SD and run the update script.
I was also able to fire up a few cores and run some roms (ex SNES) so all that seems to be good.

I am running into an issue w/ NeoGeo though, which is actually my main motivation for using a MiSTer.
No matter what game I try to load I see the same result. I briefly see 000-lo.lo in the upper left hand corner and the screen goes to blue.
Any idea what I'm doing wrong? I have the the additional ram module for NeoGeo. I have the NeoGeo bios files loaded too.
The only thing I can think of is bad rom files or bad bios files but I've tried a couple different versions.
Thanks for any guidance

[ExCyber]

Seeing 000-lo.lo but no "C" ROM suggests that the loader isn't finding the game ROM files it expects. Are these emulator sets? By default (i.e. without a custom romsets.xml file), the MiSTer Neo Geo core mostly supports Darksoft-formatted sets. These contain pre-concatenated/interleaved/decrypted ROM banks with simple uniform names like "crom0", "prom", "srom", and so on. There are a handful of exceptions that follow a different format, such as the Bad Apple demo (Final Burn format?).

[Spartan]

Thanks. I ended up downloading another set of roms, a set I found via link on another forum. (It was a link to 'MiSTer neogeo bios/rom/rbf/September_2019' on archive dot org) I copied everthing over to the sd card except for the .rbf core file since it was outdated. This download did have a romsets.xml file, I was missing this file before.

Though I'm still unable to load roms, I am getting much farther than I did before. I do see a Neogeo boot screen for some games...though it is distorted. It appears that the region is also set for Europe though I am in the the US/NTSC. Eventually once I get passed the boot screen, I see an error. Any ideas how I can resolve this hurdle?

[dave18]

Might be worth running the memtest utility to confirm whether your SDRAM is OK. Also, what size is your SDRAM module? It needs to be 128mb to run some of the bigger NEOGEO ROMs, although the smaller ones should run fine with 32mb.

[Spartan]

Ran the mem test, seems good.
Ram module is 128.

[bazza_12]

stating the obvious here really, have you tried another bios file? or even another copy of the bios files you're using as they may not have d/loaded or transferred properly?

[Spartan]

stating the obvious here really, have you tried another bios file? or even another copy of the bios files you're using as they may not have d/loaded or transferred properly?

Well I think that might be part of my issue. I recently installed the 'updater all' script and ran that to get the NeoGeo bios. However the script only loads 3 out of the 5 required bios files. It installs 000-lo.lo, sfix.sfix, and uni-bios.rom. So I have to manually find and add sp-s2.sp1 and neo-epo.sp1 but I am not sure if there is an issue with these since I just randomly found these files online. Additionally, I can't confidently say that the roms and romsets file i have is 100% ok. I don't really know of a good source to to find both 'verified' roms and a romset file. Can someone point me in the right direction for this?

Additionally the region displays as Europe? Could this be part of the problem? How can I change this being that I'm in the US?

[jca]

3 BIOSes are enougth when you have Unibios. The 2 other BIOSes are for the arcade bios and the console bios, Unibios does both. By default the region is set to Europe but it is not the cause of your problem. To change anything in the Unibios go to the Unibios web site, everything is explained.
I suspect your problem comes from your game roms. Are you sure you got the DarkSoft pack?
Make sure to carefully read the readme on the Wiki, everything is explained.

[aberu]

Something is different with your files. I have the Darksoft Neo Geo set, and when you zip up AOF2, it's 11.4MB, not 12.6MB.

lEIGx7VkIF.png (89 KiB) Viewed 12840 times

[Spartan]

Something is different with your files. I have the Darksoft Neo Geo set, and when you zip up AOF2, it's 11.4MB, not 12.6MB.

lEIGx7VkIF.png

BTW, thanks for your help/feedback with this.

I think the screen shot I had previously was not from the Darksoft set. I have since downloaded the Darksoft set but still seeing different file sizes. I think they're different though because I'm on Linux, not using NTFS, and not compressing with the same utility as you.

However, I am happy to report I think I have found the answer to my problem via some help from someone on Discord. I was transferring files to the Mister using FileZilla. Transfer type in FileZilla defaults to 'Auto' but it apparently needs to be set to 'Binary'. Once I made this setting change, I was able to successfully load NeoGeo games on the MiSTer. Great success!

So now, I'll be transferring the Darksoft files to my MiSTer. However, I'm still lacking an up to date or relatively complete romsets.xml file...unless the complete file is around 23/24 kb or so?

[ExCyber]

Yes, the default/official romsets.xml file is only ~23.5KB. Darksoft sets don't require a list of file names because they all use the same names, which the loader uses as defaults.

[Mort Handsome]

I was transferring files to the Mister using FileZilla. Transfer type in FileZilla defaults to 'Auto' but it apparently needs to be set to 'Binary'. Once I made this setting change, I was able to successfully load NeoGeo games on the MiSTer. Great success!

^^^ THIS!!!!

Now I have great success too!

I've been trying to get the NeoGeo core to run for a couple months. MonitorTest would run, but nothing else. Setting Filezilla's transfer type from auto to binary fixed everything.

Thank you!

[Spartan]

I was transferring files to the Mister using FileZilla. Transfer type in FileZilla defaults to 'Auto' but it apparently needs to be set to 'Binary'. Once I made this setting change, I was able to successfully load NeoGeo games on the MiSTer. Great success!

^^^ THIS!!!!

Now I have great success too!

I've been trying to get the NeoGeo core to run for a couple months. MonitorTest would run, but nothing else. Setting Filezilla's transfer type from auto to binary fixed everything.

Thank you!

Awesome, glad this worked for you too!

[aberu]

Something is different with your files. I have the Darksoft Neo Geo set, and when you zip up AOF2, it's 11.4MB, not 12.6MB.

lEIGx7VkIF.png

BTW, thanks for your help/feedback with this.

I think the screen shot I had previously was not from the Darksoft set. I have since downloaded the Darksoft set but still seeing different file sizes. I think they're different though because I'm on Linux, not using NTFS, and not compressing with the same utility as you.

However, I am happy to report I think I have found the answer to my problem via some help from someone on Discord. I was transferring files to the Mister using FileZilla. Transfer type in FileZilla defaults to 'Auto' but it apparently needs to be set to 'Binary'. Once I made this setting change, I was able to successfully load NeoGeo games on the MiSTer. Great success!

So now, I'll be transferring the Darksoft files to my MiSTer. However, I'm still lacking an up to date or relatively complete romsets.xml file...unless the complete file is around 23/24 kb or so?

Oh wow, I'm glad you figured it out! Sorry for late reply, I'm kinda in and out.

I am so used to using WinSCP which isn't using FTP at all, but SCP (secure copy protocol, like ssh copy) and that doesn't have this problem. I would never have guess that filezilla was the fix.

For the romsets, it's in the releases for the Neo Geo github

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/NeoGeo_ ... r/releases

Follow the instructions in the readme (https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/NeoGeo_ ... stallation) depending upon your rom set.

[Milspex]

neo geo core is pretty finnicky at times.

Sometimes the .neo files don't load at all, sometimes the darksoft pack roms don't load.

[Captain FPGA]

Something is different with your files. I have the Darksoft Neo Geo set, and when you zip up AOF2, it's 11.4MB, not 12.6MB.

lEIGx7VkIF.png

BTW, thanks for your help/feedback with this.

I think the screen shot I had previously was not from the Darksoft set. I have since downloaded the Darksoft set but still seeing different file sizes. I think they're different though because I'm on Linux, not using NTFS, and not compressing with the same utility as you.

However, I am happy to report I think I have found the answer to my problem via some help from someone on Discord. I was transferring files to the Mister using FileZilla. Transfer type in FileZilla defaults to 'Auto' but it apparently needs to be set to 'Binary'. Once I made this setting change, I was able to successfully load NeoGeo games on the MiSTer. Great success!

So now, I'll be transferring the Darksoft files to my MiSTer. However, I'm still lacking an up to date or relatively complete romsets.xml file...unless the complete file is around 23/24 kb or so?

Oh wow, I'm glad you figured it out! Sorry for late reply, I'm kinda in and out.

I am so used to using WinSCP which isn't using FTP at all, but SCP (secure copy protocol, like ssh copy) and that doesn't have this problem. I would never have guess that filezilla was the fix.

For the romsets, it's in the releases for the Neo Geo github

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/NeoGeo_ ... r/releases

Follow the instructions in the readme (https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/NeoGeo_ ... stallation) depending upon your rom set.

Grab and dump a few test roms from another set. Delete both the Neo Geo core along with the bios then run update all.

Test and report back here afterwards.

EDIT: Aaaaaand now I feel like a fool for posting a solution too late as apparently you found a fix and all is well! Gr8 job!!!