MiSTer FPGA Forum

Hello all, I have bought the parts to build a MiSTer and it's now up and running but I do have a real problem and need help.

I bought a sandisk sdcard to use, flashed mrfusion2.2 to the card then added the update_all script.
it seemed to install fine and then it took something like two hours to update. it all worked fine until I turned off and came back an hour later, when I turned it on I just get a black screen, nothing else. tried resetting and nothing.

So I reflashed the sdcard and started all over again, which was fine until I turned off and came back.. black screen again.
So I tried another sdcard, and again.. after turning off I have a black screen but this time the red led on the io board is pulsating. reset and nothing.

How do I fix this?
Thank you

Have you checked the dip switches are firmly in the correct position for booting from SD card? I can't remember what the default flash behaviour is but it is quite often something like pulsing an LED.

Yeah I checked that last night, they are correct.

Try to download the SD Installer release .7z file and extract the Linux folder and MiSTer file to your SD card.

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/SD-Inst ... n64_MiSTer

Thanks for the help, I got the file and give it a go. install went okay but again when I turned off and back on.. stuck on a black screen.
Right now I'm utterly baffled and getting more frustrated by the hour. FedEx fannied me about with delivering the de10, this on top is the last thing I need.

NewMisterInTown wrote: ↑Sat Sep 18, 2021 12:13 pm Thanks for the help, I got the file and give it a go. install went okay but again when I turned off and back on.. stuck on a black screen.
Right now I'm utterly baffled and getting more frustrated by the hour. FedEx fannied me about with delivering the de10, this on top is the last thing I need.

Make sure the SD card is well seated. If it pulls out of the slot then it will give you a black screen.

Just been trying again and again, flashed the latest mrfusion (2.3) to the sdcard. The install went fine and it rebooted to the mister menu screen.
but when I turned off and back on. black screen again

Really running out of ideas now, I try to be a patient guy but this might just been seen flying through my window soon.

I've tried 3 different sdcards, 2 different kinds of image writing software, tried copying another MiSTer and menu.rbf file like was suggested on twitter and nothing works.

Did you try with just bare MiSTer - no SDRAM, IO, etc?

Maybe try the fix in this twitter thread?

https://twitter.com/MiSTerFPGABot/statu ... 1913436162

akeley wrote: ↑Sun Sep 19, 2021 10:35 am Did you try with just bare MiSTer - no SDRAM, IO, etc?

Yes I did, it's just the same. (also yes I saw that twitter solution and copied the files but the same. black screen)

Stupid suggestion: is it pingable from the network when the screen goes black?

Bas wrote: ↑Sun Sep 19, 2021 3:12 pm Stupid suggestion: is it pingable from the network when the screen goes black?

Not a stupid suggestion but I do have a stupid answer: I've no idea and I'm not sure how to test it.
(although my first two installs, I ran the wifi script and connected it online, so you'd think the two times I did that, when I turned off/on it wouldn't have that problem?)

tbh I'm losing my patience and considering the amount of money I've dropped on this thing, I'm so annoyed right now. Various people have been kind enough to suggest things on here/twitter and other places but nothing worked. quite frankly I wish I'd not bought it as my wife is getting annoyed at me wasting so much cash on an ornament.

The trickiest bit is figuring out the IP address, if any, your board received. Usually your router hands those out and it's likely that it has a screen in its interface where you can list the currently active addresses on your home network.

Brute force scanning your network is also an option. You need a portscanner for that, like nmap. This is a free tool. What you're looking for is a device on your network that listens for connections on port 22. The command for that, assuming your local network is numbered 192.168.0.0/24 (addresses between 192.168.0.0 and 192.168.0.255). Adjust as appropriate:

nmap -p 22 192.168.0.0/24

Every device with an open port 22 will respond to this. Nite the IP addresses. You can use the Putty SSH client to connect to your MiSTeR using username 'root', password '1’.

If that works, your board and the OS look like things can be salvaged. My guess then would be that your screen can't or won't handle the signal MiSTeR is sending.

Surely the IP address can be seen before you switch the Mister off, after the update ?
It won't change after the update, mine never has.
Lastly, could the SDCard, somehow, maybe getting corrupted during the final stage ?
Are you putting the sdcard in the first slot, not the second SD slot on the IO board ?

So close yet so far!

I had it working and I ran update_all and it took ages but updated the files. all was working fine until I took the sdcard out and put it into my PC to copy some games onto. Win 7 kept asking me to 'scan it for errors' but I tried hitting no but then it wouldn't allow me to copy files to it. So I had to click yes and even though it said there were no errors, after I copied a couple of dozen games to it and put it back in the MiSTer.. I'm back on a black screen again.

How annoying. coincidence or my PC did something it hated? I'm not sure.

Try to upload the games from your computer via network instead via SMB/CIFS(eg. \\mister) or (S)FTP(eg. Filezilla or winscp).
It won't solve the actual problem, but this way you won't have to remove the SD-card and it'll keep windows from ruining the filesystem when doing checks which it seems to be doing.

nizce wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 6:20 pm Try to upload the games from your computer via network instead via SMB/CIFS(eg. \\mister) or (S)FTP(eg. Filezilla or winscp).
It won't solve the actual problem, but this way you won't have to remove the SD-card and it'll keep windows from ruining the filesystem when doing checks which it seems to be doing.

That would be a lot easier but being honest here, I'm not sure how to. I did look for it on my Win7 networks list but nothing showing.

Ahh ok, just try hitting windows button + R or simply open the start menu and type \\mister and then press enter.
That should work, as long as you have the mister connected to the same network as your windows client that is

Windows file explorer should open and let you browse the folders on the mister(SD-card)

If that doesn't work, then samba is not activated on your mister(can't remember if it is by default or not)
You can manually activate it, but then I think you need to SSH into the mister and rename a file. It's easy, but not if you don't know how to SSH to a machine and enter commands to the terminal.

If above doesn't work, try using winscp to connect to it or some other FTP client.
You can find a real easy guide for winscp here: https://winscp.net/eng/docs/guide_connect
Username is root and password is 1 by default if you haven't changed it.

If SMB is not enabled it won't work.
The best way is to use an IP scanner.
Download and install Advanced IP Scanner.
Open a command prompt and type ipconfig.
On my PC I get
Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::6de3:93f9:587c:3877%11
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.80.36
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.80.254

The IPv4 Address gives you your subnet (192.168.80.xx in my case)'
Start Advanced IP Scanner, type 192.168.80.1 - 192.168.80.254 (in my case) and click on Scan. You will get a list of what was discovered on your network. Look for a device with the name being an IP address and an arrow on the left of the networked computer icon. If you click on the arrow it will expand and show that is is running an FTP server. It will be your MISTer and now you know its IP address.
If there are several devices with an IP address for the name, an arrow on the left which expand to FTP you will have to try each one until you can reach MISTer.

A perhaps easier alternative(since you got it working until you move the sd-card to your computer) to find out the IP address of the mister is to start up the Mister and open System Settings menu(on the mister), press left and there is the IP of the mister.
Enter that IP in the field named 'hostname' if using for example Winscp.

If it does that, then what nizce said. I thought you couldn't get it to do anything after installation. The Putty thing should be a breeze once you have the IP.

I’d return it if you can. Like any product, some of them are defective from the factory.

is it still giving you a black screen.. if so.. have you got an on/off switch on your power cable. try powering it without the switch adapter

bazza_12 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 21, 2021 7:51 am is it still giving you a black screen.. if so.. have you got an on/off switch on your power cable. try powering it without the switch adapter

this was my first assumption as well, a faulty power supply

i had a similar issue where if i cold booted (no power, then started the MiSTer by plugging in AC adapter) the MiSTer would boot fine
but if i did a cold reset, i would get a blank screen.
this was corrected by a new power supply AC adpater

however, i think the issue OP has is different, where the user is cold booting every time, and it either works or doesnt,
which also points to a power supply issue, imo

..edited..

aww, sorry to hear about that man

i would at least, as a last ditch effort, attempt to re-connect everything on the MiSTer, make sure everything is connected well/securely,
and try a different power supply

(selling it will be quite quick)

that's really sad.. i'm sorry that you've wasted your time/money.. i hope you can get some of the cash back.. take care..

NewMisterInTown wrote: ↑Tue Sep 21, 2021 7:57 pm A very nice and kind friend actually posted me an already setup sdcard to try which was really kind of him and I was thrilled to get it this morning in the post so I put it in and turned on and the MiSTer booted up in seconds.

I spent the next hour plus playing Wizard of Wor and Berzerk which was a total delight, but sadly it all goes to hell then. I powered off, had my dinner and came back, turned on.. black screen. reset it and.. black screen. took the sdcard out, waited 2 mins, replaced it, turned on. black screen.

So it seems the MiSTer is fine if I leave the power on and never unplug it, obviously that's not an option.

I am calling it a day now, I had a real problem with FedEx getting the de10 in the first place, so I'm not going down the refund/replacement route.
am going to cut my losses and ebay it, I know I won't get all my money back but I guess I'll probably get half or so. I will just stick to emulators in the future.

Before I leave I would just like to say a huge Thank you! to everyone here that tried to help me, I really appreciated it. Thank you all.

bye bye

There's an issue that some of us on the forums have had where the DE10 has an intermittent bootup problem. I have this issue. I have to reboot my MiSTer 1-10 times before it boots properly. When you reboot the MiSTer and you just get a black screen, what LED lights are on solid? On mine, I know it will NOT boot if I don't get the orange/amber light come on solid. I reboot it until that comes on and I'm good to go.



Just FYI.

kfreiberg wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 2:41 pm There's an issue that some of us on the forums have had where the DE10 has an intermittent bootup problem. I have this issue. I have to reboot my MiSTer 1-10 times before it boots properly. When you reboot the MiSTer and you just get a black screen, what LED lights are on solid? On mine, I know it will NOT boot if I don't get the orange/amber light come on solid. I reboot it until that comes on and I'm good to go.

Just FYI.

there's something else going on.. i've never had this issue.

bazza_12 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 2:52 pm

there's something else going on.. i've never had this issue.

I'm glad to hear you've never had this problem, but that doesn't mean it's not an issue or that it's not the OP's issue.

Feel free to jump in and see if there's anything that can be done to help via this thread if you like! Any help on this would be much appreciated, it's a very annoying issue.

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