White LCD.. I've tried everything!
#3
(07-27-2018, 12:15 AM)Flavor Wrote: Hey Lauraadams97!

I hadn't heard of this problem before, but now there is one other person that also has this white screen problem.  Since we are on the forum, and other people may come along here, I will be a bit more explicit about this issue.

For anyone that has a "white screen" problem, the first thing to do is head over to http://freeplaytech.com/troubleshooting and read that information carefully.  The white screen means that the proper data is not getting from the Raspberry Pi to the LCD.  There are many reasons that this may happen, but the #1 reason is that the machine isn't booting up.

Now, Lauraadams97's problem is a bit different, because it is booting up and working fine via HDMI.  Then, I might also suspect the brightness controller, because it is in-line with all the LCD data.  Lauraadams97 was also on top of that and tried it without the brightness controller without any difference.

With the Freeplay Zero, the solder on the Pi Zero itself can DEFINITELY cause a white screen problem.  It sounds like that is not likely the problem here, because multiple Pi Zeros were tested.

Then I might suspect the Freeplay Zero circuit board, but there are some reasons that I'm not jumping to that conclusion just yet.  The one other person experiencing this problem is using a Freeplay CM3.  Of course, this doesn't mean it's not a problem that both of them have, but these boards have been in production for long enough that this problem would have been seen before, I think.

One thing that has changed recently is the RetroPie software itself.  I haven't yet been able to put an exact finger on it yet, but there are things in RetroPie 4.4 that have changed the boot process.  We have seen other issues with the LCD driver bootup and with it running file system checks at bootup.

This makes me wonder if there is some odd combination of factors that lead to this white screen situation in certain cases using RetroPie 4.4 (which is on the latest Freeplay SD images).

My suggestion (for a next step) would be to try the "18032101" SD image, which is the last image before upgrading to RetroPie 4.4.  You could even try older images, if you'd like.  The archive of Freeplay SD images can be found at https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folde...sdtn2R9xJQ

The other thing that would be VERY interesting to try before that would be to try to hook the machine up to a network and then boot it.  If you had a wired ethernet USB dongle, that would be perfect.  Otherwise, if you had WiFi, it would be awesome to try to connect to the WiFi network (using HDMI, I guess) and then shutdown/restart the machine.  See if that helps.  I mention this, because the problem with filesystem checks in 4.4 seems related to it not being able to get the date/time from the internet.

Please post back here with any results.  Thanks!

Thank you SO SO SO much for understanding that I tried everything I could think of! I was able to get it working with the "18032101" image Big Grin You're the best!!
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RE: White LCD.. I've tried everything! - by Lauraadams97 - 07-27-2018, 06:02 PM

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