How not to start your MiSTer journey

[Karmeck]

I bought a mister by chance, an old contact asked if I wanted to buy a pvm. Said I was looking at a mister, he happened to have one for sale, so I bought it.

About a month later evrything is in place, as he had no USB board, I had to wait for that to arrive.

Befor this I also bought a cheap, flat, vga monitor.

Issued immediately as you need to edit the ini to use a vga screen.

Soon after I started testing cores. Got black screen from all of them, no audio.

MemTest did not even work.

Ran some updates. MemTest now works, shows only red all the way down to 80.

Did a clean install, removed and reattached the ram (2.5 128). MemTest still fails.

Gba only works on ddr3.
Game boy works randomly.
Neogeo does not work. At first it would load the game, but then quickly switch to green error screen. Now it won't even load.
486 works.
Snes works.

I would guess the ram is to blame here.

Seller only ran a few arcade cores, I guess those don't need ram, so he never noticed the error.


So if you are buying a used mister. Ask then to run memTest and use a hdmi screen first.

[Chris23235]

The USB board isn't necessary, you can use every USB hub (prefered a powered hub).

[Karmeck]

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I'm don't know if the power supply I got with my purchase is strong enough. But since other, non sdram, cores works, I guess I can't blame the power supply.

Don't have a USB hub to try with unfortunately.

[Chris23235]

The 2A power supply should be fine.

[ToothbrushThreepwood]

Your SDRAM is broken according to memtest, so what you describe is to be expected (all cores that don’t need SDRAM are working, those that need it don’t work).

Can you post a picture of your setup, especially a close-up picture of your SDRAM module.
Maybe someone can point out what the error is based on that information (e.g. a bad soldering/transistor, or incorrectly plugged in).
Have you tried testing it with a different SDRAM module?

Don’t worry, you’ll be up and running in no time! Worst case you’ll have to buy another SDRAM module, but those are cheap (and in stock).

[Karmeck]

Your SDRAM is broken according to memtest, so what you describe is to be expected (all cores that don’t need SDRAM are working, those that need it don’t work).

Can you post a picture of your setup, especially a close-up picture of your SDRAM module.
Maybe someone can point out what the error is based on that information (e.g. a bad soldering/transistor, or incorrectly plugged in).
Have you tried testing it with a different SDRAM module?

Don’t worry, you’ll be up and running in no time! Worst case you’ll have to buy another SDRAM module, but those are cheap (and in stock).

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New ram is on its way.

[Karmeck]

And to add to the problems. Pin 10 was not soldered. On my 6.1 io board. Taken care of now. So that I can properly use the serial port for my mt32-pi zero.

[PistolsAtDawn]

Ouch. Glad you figured it out though. This device is magic!