MiSTer FPGA Forum

I've searched online and also come across this post here ( viewtopic.php?t=6509 ) and can't seem to find any answers.

My MiSTer was working fine for around a year until it suddenly stopped loading cores. As soon as a core is selected the MiSTer will go black, the monitor will report no signal, and the only way to reboot it is to turn off the power supply.

I believe this issue is different from the RAM issue in the linked above post because mine has been working for over a year now and running the mem test detects the ram as well as reporting no errors.

I've tried fresh installs on the memory card with both regular update and update all scripts.

The usb ports all seem operational as it detects my bluetooth adapter for keyboard, wifi adapter for network, and joysticks/controllers. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. If I can't find anything, I'll just have to assume the board itself is somehow the problem...

Well when it comes to troubleshooting, sometimes it helps to start simple. Remove all the extras you're plugging in. Start with just a single USB joystick or USB keyboard. Try a core that doesn't use the SDRAM like the Genesis core. If that works, then try a core that uses SDRAM. If that works, start trying your extras one by one. If you don't have problems with any particular single device, try more than one. See where the breakdown happens. That might help you figure out what's the problem.

if you're still at a loss, might give a new SD card a try, maybe it's starting to wear out?

if money's an issue, take the smallest possible size and load on a few basic cores with a few games.

Since starting to troubleshoot, I've unplugged everything except a keyboard and the wifi adapter. I've since tried using it with just a plug in USB keyboard and am still encountering the same issues.

I've currently formatted and am trying the use of a different memory card. Along with that, after updating I'll remove the wifi adapter and try the suggestion of loading up Sonic the Hedgehog on the Genesis to see if that runs.

I'll update if anything comes up! Thanks!

WIIIIILD. It was the memory card. I can't believe how many wasted hours I spent trying to trouble shoot this thing. Thanks so much!

Ordering a new 256GB mem card. I've had all kinds of memory storage devices fail on me before but this is the first time I've used a micro SD card to failure. Thanks again!

good to hear it got resolved.

i hate sd cards, i've ran into many an issue with these things.
if you check the card to see if it has bad / damaged clusters it reports it's all fine, but then you start reading from the card and it just can't read data properly.