Lakka 2.3.1 for rPi4 won't boot

Libretro Lakka
#1

Hi everyone, I’m a Linux newbie. Have been trying to install Lakka on my new rPi 4 but have been getting black screens , not even the Lakka logo.

I used my Win10 laptop with a built in SD reader/write to flash with Etcher the Lakka 2.3.1 for rPi 4 , granted I’m using a cheap low end Canvas Select 16gb Kingston micro SD but I get the same issue with a SanDisk. And I can actually get Raspbian buster to run on this cheap SD card so I don’t think that’s the issue

I tried reflashing 3 times already to no avail Just a side note maybe? I get a failure to mount message after I finish flashing my SD card via Etcher but I also get the same message flashing Raspbian buster and that didnt screw it up.

Any input? Sorry no have no screen or any specific error message to share because there is NO screen at all

1 Like
#2

I did the roundabout way by using NOOBS and a nightly build of Lakka whew

Scratch that, so I did manage to get successful OS install and I STILL GET a black screen on boot! WHYYYYY

#3

Okay so it turns out a totally derped. Lakka can’t run on computer monitors. F me right?

#4

I went and got the official Raspberry Pi micro HDMI cable from Micro Center just to be safe. HDMI cables and displays are tricky. I had no issues since using their official cable.

Lakka can run in computer monitors. I’ve done it many times but every cable is build different even when is the same HDMI format.

Good luck

#5

Huh , learn something new. I have always found articles that say all HDMI cables are essentially the same. Guess I could try swapping the cables around when I feel the need. Luckily I intended to hook up my pi to my TV to begin with. I was just using my computer monitor as testing ground.

#6

I hope you don’t mind and can forgive me if I hijack this thread. Unluckily I can’t create a new one and I must share my pain hoping in some support

I have got a rpi 4 and bought it mostly for mame. Since retropie isn’t ready yet I have focused much of my time on lakka with disappointing results

I use pinn and I have installed it regularly . Initial experience was great. I had more troubles finding working roms than making lakka working. It indeed worked out of the box.

With my first roms everything worked great on my 4K tv. I really love the CRT geom shader and the game looked great with it and I could play fine.

Hence I looked for more roms. When i finished and returned to lakka some days later, something wasn’t right. I couldn’t enable the shader anymore without dropping the frame rate to 8fps. Couldn’t figure out why ,but I also realised that that poor gpu would have a hard time with the fill rate at 4k. I spent hours to try to figure out how to reduce the resolution without any results. Among my numerous tests I tried to reset the config and as result now lakka stopped to work, like if all the fundamental files have been deleted . I have now a menu with retro fonts and just few options with no way to fix it. It seems that the only solution is to reinstall everything which would also mean I got to reinstall all the other os on the card too . Since that is quite some work I decided to install retroarch on the raspbian . It works and and can set the resolution to what I want, however I cannot figure out why after I download the cores, retroarch doesn’t have the permission to write the files to install them.

I am fine to use retroarch on raspbian too, but it may not be ready for it?

Please any advice is highly appreciated

#7

To clarify I am asking the following questions

. With pinn can I reinstall lakka without affecting the other os? . Can I change lakka resolution? It should be a feature to add if not . Why all of the sudden the performance got worse ? . Can I recover from the lakka without options and retro font state? . Can I run retroarch on the rpi4 without lakka ? If so why I can install new cores because permission issues ?