tty2rpi Add-On (shows core based pictures and videos on a HDMI or DSI display)

[dcrosby]

But the Marquee looked really great, and most people had no idea it was a monitor, until it showed the time or the Halloween greetings,
I've included the images (AI Generated for full disclosure) here in the post, you're welcome to use or alter them to your own liking, I claim no IP on these... Enjoy!

Zip Contains original PNG's ready for uploading... change the ini to point to your seasonal folder and bingo... if I have some time I may make some Christmas ones, as it's not "All AI" I had to do some editing as spelling as you can tell was terrible, and I had to go in and save what I could on short notice, as I had a lot of other things to prepare for Halloween.

[RealLarry]

Sorry somehow Halloween was really small in my neighborhood some of the kids are growing up, and not enough young families have come in to replace the elderly people who have stayed put. I refuse to give up, and we still try to do a pretty nice house, but I went through about 1/3 of my typical candy haul, which typically goes 80-90% so I try to build in some buffer, but this year was shockingly small, but people still enjoyed the show...

However, a light but beautiful setup! I really love the chosen theme (Mars Attacks) and the loving details. Look at the beamed-up cow! And the cat in front watching the warning sign (a real cat? Would be a perfect coincidence!). Many thanks for your pictures!

We had many more kids this year prayin' sweet or sour. And we setup decoration and a small rotating projector which was displaying Halloween objects against neighbors house while burning down some branches and garden waste at a safe place.

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[NinDragoon]

I can not get this to work. I have tried all the steps under setting up the pi, Ini files, and media. I have an rpi4b with the 32 bit lite image.

My problem is that I just have a blank screen with a blinking underscore in the upper left corner. I'm sure I'm missing something but I don't know what. I think I'm supposed to see a tty2rpi logo, correct?

[RealLarry]

I can not get this to work. I have tried all the steps under setting up the pi, Ini files, and media. I have an rpi4b with the 32 bit lite image.

My problem is that I just have a blank screen with a blinking underscore in the upper left corner. I'm sure I'm missing something but I don't know what. I think I'm supposed to see a tty2rpi logo, correct?

Then let's start debugging... What type of display are you using (HDMI, DSI ...)? Did you build the SD manually or by Raspberry Pi Imager?

[NinDragoon]

HDMI, 24 inch 21:9 innocn display.
Raspberry pi imager. Some settings didn't stick like wifi ssid and pwd. Fixed in config.
I was going to try an earlier rpi image, bullseye. I'm Hoping that maybe some dependencies in there would help.

[RealLarry]

Okay, standard setup. bullseye/bookworm doesn't matter, but bookworm should be preferred.
You should see a splash screen ("tty2tft is booting up") while booting.

The blinking cursor indicates that the RPi is something doing but also waiting for something. Backup and edit /boot/firmware/cmdline.txt and remove all unnecessary things that quiets all kernel messages. Your line should read

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console=serial0,115200 root=PARTUUID=f82aec4c-02 rootfstype=ext4 fsck.repair=yes rootwait cfg80211.ieee80211_regdom=COUNTRYCODE

Keep PARTUUID and COUNTRYCODE from your setup!
After booting, the kernel/boot process should output way more lines then where the last lines should be relevant when boot process isn't continued.

[NinDragoon]

I'm doing a clean install now. I think I fubar something. Is it normal to not be able to access cmdline.txt and config.txt from a desktop? /boot/firmware is empty but I can access those files on the pi in nano.

Update:
Clean install with rpi4b 1gb ram on 32gb SanDisk microsd of bookworm lite 64-bit. Wifi settings from imager did not save again.

cmdline.txt shows:

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console=serial0,115200 console=tty1 root=PARTUUID=7408b5cb-02 rootfstype=ext4 fsck.repair=yes rootwait cfg80211.ieee80211_regdom=US

Is it supposed to have "console=tty1"?

[RealLarry]

I'm doing a clean install now. I think I fubar something. Is it normal to not be able to access cmdline.txt and config.txt from a desktop? /boot/firmware is empty but I can access those files on the pi in nano.

/boot/firmware (the 1st of two partitions) is getting mounted in the boot process. When inspecting the SD (the partitions) on a PC the "firmware" folder is located on the FAT32 partition, while /boot is located on the 2nd partition and is just a copy of the kernel(s) and ram disks.

Update:
Clean install with rpi4b 1gb ram on 32gb SanDisk microsd of bookworm lite 64-bit. Wifi settings from imager did not save again.

Alas, this is unusual, but I got this reported one or two times where the RPi and AccessPoint didn't like each other. Other users reported similar things - even with MiSTers WiFi and/or tty2oled/tty2tft displays - when running an AccessPoint with a mixed 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz.

Is it supposed to have "console=tty1"?

That could be, yes, and is okay; this defines the (default) visible console for messages while booting. If you change that to eg. tty2, you may see nothing at startup but can change to that console by pressing ALT+F2 ...

[NinDragoon]

Still having the same problem after everything is installed. Even tried another microsd. No tty2rpi boot screen.

[RealLarry]

Meeeh...But are you getting some more output after editing cmdline.txt or still just a blinking cursor?

[NinDragoon]

Meeeh...But are you getting some more output after editing cmdline.txt or still just a blinking cursor?

Yes, it is verbose now. One error I'm getting is unable to open /dev/fb0. It still results in a blinking cursor once done.

I should see the tty2rpi boot image as long as I follow the install instructions up until
"Read on the next chapters for the media content and a readup of the INI fles. When done, just reboot your RPi and continue with setting up the MiSTer"
Correct?

[RealLarry]

Correct. Let me setup a fresh Raspberry (don't have a 4 left, but a 5) to better understand what might go wrong at your setup.

[NinDragoon]

Correct. Let me setup a fresh Raspberry (don't have a 4 left, but a 5) to better understand what might go wrong at your setup.

Thank you so much!

I think this is one of the most amazing mister peripherals, so getting it to work would be great!

I have a 5 I could follow along with if everything works.

[RealLarry]

RPi5 is running fine. Did all steps "like a Noob" and didn't edited /boot/firmware/cmdline.txt nor /boot/firmware/config.txt
RPi is starting verbose, is showing its "...booting up..", followed by reporting its IP addresses and is waiting for commands while showing the tty2rpi logo. Can't reproduce your "issue" for now...it could have been that a package broke during one of the last system updates, but that doesn't look like the case at all. I'm relatively sure that your issue is buried in /boot/firmware/config.txt - please post your file...

[NinDragoon]

I did not change config.txt the last 2 times, just doing "noob" installs.

I tried a fresh install on pi5 and went back into imager settings after making another sd card to reset wifi password and that solved the connection issue there.

Something new I tried was changing the username to tty2rpi, I had pi previously out of laziness. Pi 5 works.

Tried the above on 4b and now works as well!

Update: Everything is still working. After going through it twice correctly now, I have no idea how I can mess it up. I doubt that it's the username thing. I did set boot splash off in an earlier attempt.

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[RealLarry]

Update: Everything is still working. After going through it twice correctly now, I have no idea how I can mess it up. I doubt that it's the username thing. I did set boot splash off in an earlier attempt.

Glad that you made it at the end! But a pity that we haven't found the specific problem.
Phantastic mature setup you have, love it!

[NinDragoon]

I had that marquee screen ready to go for over a year waiting for a solution like this!

Only problem now is that games in organized sub folders in "Arcade" don't show the marquee, only ones in the "Arcade" root folder solely. I will have to find out why or move files around.

[RealLarry]

Only problem now is that games in organized sub folders in "Arcade" don't show the marquee, only ones in the "Arcade" root folder solely. I will have to find out why or move files around.

Looks like that you've edited MiSTer.ini and set log_file_entry=1 ? Then you may have found a bug!
After starting a MRA (from _Arcade) the MRA/rbf is setting the /tmp/CORENAME to the correct value (eg "alpine" for "Alpine Ski"). This is still the fact but tty2rpi (in MiSTer) doesn't fetch that for _Arcade subfolder. Has to be fixed...

[NinDragoon]

Mister.ini says log_file_entry=0.

[RealLarry]

Only problem now is that games in organized sub folders in "Arcade" don't show the marquee, only ones in the "Arcade" root folder solely. I will have to find out why or move files around.

Can you give me an example on that subfolder organization? I did a simple /media/fat/Arcade/A/Ace Attacker (Japan, S16A) [FD1094 317-0060].mra and removed the corresponding original file, but this test is working fine together with tty2rpi.

[NinDragoon]

Can you give me an example on that subfolder organization? I did a simple /media/fat/Arcade/A/Ace Attacker (Japan, S16A) [FD1094 317-0060].mra and removed the corresponding original file, but this test is working fine together with tty2rpi.

After some testing making new folder structures and setting problematic MRAs to root of _Arcade, I think my set up just doesn't fix the name of all of them.

On another note:
Just got a pi zero 2 w today and can not get 2560x1080 resolution to work properly T_T. Rpi 4 and 5 are fine, but I was hoping to have the rpi zero 2 w as a plug and play solution with power and data from the serial breakouts to gpio.

I added to config.TXT:
hdmi_drive=2
hdmi_ignore_edid=0xa5000080
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=87
hdmi_aspect_21_9=7
hdmi_pixel_freq_limit=400000000
hdmi_cvt=2560 1080 50 7 0 0 1
#config_hdmi_boost=4
max_framebuffer_width=2560
max_framebuffer_height=1080
framebuffer_width=2560
framebuffer_height=1080

But the resolution change only works in console and then goes to another resolution, 1152 by 768 or something.

[RealLarry]

Just got a pi zero 2 w today and can not get 2560x1080 resolution to work properly T_T. Rpi 4 and 5 are fine, but I was hoping to have the rpi zero 2 w as a plug and play solution with power and data from the serial breakouts to gpio.

I added to config.TXT:
hdmi_drive=2
hdmi_ignore_edid=0xa5000080
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=87
hdmi_aspect_21_9=7
hdmi_pixel_freq_limit=400000000
hdmi_cvt=2560 1080 50 7 0 0 1
#config_hdmi_boost=4
max_framebuffer_width=2560
max_framebuffer_height=1080
framebuffer_width=2560
framebuffer_height=1080

But the resolution change only works in console and then goes to another resolution, 1152 by 768 or something.

My display equipments are max 1080p so I can't test any higher resolution, but according to this thread it looks like that the Zero's aren't capable of doing a higher resolution like 2k and 4k.

[NinDragoon]

My display equipments are max 1080p so I can't test any higher resolution, but according to this thread it looks like that the Zero's aren't capable of doing a higher resolution like 2k and 4k.

Thanks for the info! I also tried 25hz because it worked to force 4k for pi3b+ and then tried quartering the display to 1280x540 to no avail.

I also figured out what's wrong with my setup! Under arcade, everything defaults to EU so region codes are not appended there. However, when I try to play Japanese roms in _alternatives, it adds j to the end in <setname>.
For example marvel vs Capcom (EU) comes out as mvsc in _Arcade. However, in alternatives, it has the different regions as mvsch, mvscj, mvscu, etc.

If I change set name to the proper value, the marquee displays correctly. Would it be possible to add a wildcard at the end so it can ignore the region codes? Eg mvsc*

[RealLarry]

My display equipments are max 1080p so I can't test any higher resolution, but according to this thread it looks like that the Zero's aren't capable of doing a higher resolution like 2k and 4k.

Thanks for the info! I also tried 25hz because it worked to force 4k for pi3b+ and then tried quartering the display to 1280x540 to no avail.

I also figured out what's wrong with my setup! Under arcade, everything defaults to EU so region codes are not appended there. However, when I try to play Japanese roms in _alternatives, it adds j to the end in <setname>.
For example marvel vs Capcom (EU) comes out as mvsc in _Arcade. However, in alternatives, it has the different regions as mvsch, mvscj, mvscu, etc.

If I change set name to the proper value, the marquee displays correctly. Would it be possible to add a wildcard at the end so it can ignore the region codes? Eg mvsc*

I'm sure that your pictures on the RPi aren't well sorted... In your example Marvel vs Capcom the setname or the MRA is mvsc. The script(s) on the RPi are having a kind of "fuzzy search" routine. That means, if an alternate MRA is setting/sending a mvscu (or eg mvscwhatever) and no picture of the same name is found, the given string is shortened character by character until "something fits" and this would be mvsc.

That means that you could have a picture for every setname (mvsch.png, mvscj.jpg, mvscu.gif) or just "one that fits all", again, this would be mvsc.extension.

[NinDragoon]

My display equipments are max 1080p so I can't test any higher resolution, but according to this thread it looks like that the Zero's aren't capable of doing a higher resolution like 2k and 4k.

Thanks for the info! I also tried 25hz because it worked to force 4k for pi3b+ and then tried quartering the display to 1280x540 to no avail.

I also figured out what's wrong with my setup! Under arcade, everything defaults to EU so region codes are not appended there. However, when I try to play Japanese roms in _alternatives, it adds j to the end in <setname>.
For example marvel vs Capcom (EU) comes out as mvsc in _Arcade. However, in alternatives, it has the different regions as mvsch, mvscj, mvscu, etc.

If I change set name to the proper value, the marquee displays correctly. Would it be possible to add a wildcard at the end so it can ignore the region codes? Eg mvsc*

I'm sure that your pictures on the RPi aren't well sorted... In your example Marvel vs Capcom the setname or the MRA is mvsc. The script(s) on the RPi are having a kind of "fuzzy search" routine. That means, if an alternate MRA is setting/sending a mvscu (or eg mvscwhatever) and no picture of the same name is found, the given string is shortened character by character until "something fits" and this would be mvsc.

That means that you could have a picture for every setname (mvsch.png, mvscj.jpg, mvscu.gif) or just "one that fits all", again, this would be mvsc.extension.

I copied over my MAME marquee folder. I got the images from progetto. Here's a picture.

UPDATE:
I'm going to try changing a known working mra to have it's set name appended with an "e" and see if that trips up GETFNAM matching.
Matching did not work for X-Men: Children of the Atom. Worked for DoDonpachi. Might be a JT core thing since that's what I noticed having problems with the most.

[NinDragoon]

I figured out a fix to my problem!

Line 34:

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      FNAMFOUND=$(find "${1}" -iname "${FNAMSBASE:0:$c}"* -print | grep -i -w "${FNAMSEARCH:0:$c}")

Adding "-w" after "grep -i" forces an exact match.

For example, I was getting too many matches before for mshvsfu, and it didn't know which one to pick. Adding "-m 1" to grep made it choose the Japanese marquee. This was still not acceptable. I figured most of the working games have a marquee and went with forcing a match.

I hope this helps someone else.