Pandora has stopped turning on, and some emulator issues (Split from other topic)

[mrhappy]

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I am pleased to report that I have successfully got a working SD card and have now got my emulators running smoothly.


Unfortunately, this gave rise to a slew of new problems. Firstly, during a game of Gunstar Heroes on my picodrive, the brightness of the console plummeted, leaving the screen very dim and making things hard to make out, this obviously makes gameplay a little tricky. I have tried adjusting the LCD brightness settings but it seems to have no effect. I have tried restarting the console several times but still it remains dark.


Secondly, while playing one of the psx games I have, upon starting it up the emulator menu remained in the background while the game seemed to be having a visual siezure, with the game flickering, spinning, warping and altogether being a nightmarish display.


The problem with my roms not functioning properly would be a lot less irritating if I actually knew how to close the emulator/rom, instead of having to restart the system every time something goes wrong.


Lastly and most seriously, I was mid way through a game of Puggsy, the screen went black although the sound still worked. I tried restarting it and now the console outright refuses to turn on, it does not respond to any action or stimuli, although the LED lights still remain on when plugged into the charger.


Please help. I'm in dire straits here guys.

 

[MarioPandio]

With Picodrive it maybe worth deleting the appdata directory for it and re-running it to make a fresh one. Somekind of setting may have got messed up somehow.


Do the same for PSX reARMed remembering in both instances to back up any save game files, move any roms and keep a copy of the bios files before you delete the appdata folders.


Obviously your newest issue prevents doing any of the above until you get your system booting again.


As the screen is blacked out but the lights are on, does the Fn+I key raise the screen brightness at all? Also is just the Red charging light on, or also the Green Powered On light on the far right?


If the green light is on, can you see the SD card lights activity taking place when you first switch the unit on? Would be interesting to know if its still booting up but the screen and keys are somehow disabled.


edit: Something you could try is setting up an SD card install with a HF image untar onto a blank EXT2 card via a PC as obviously you cant via Pandora. That way you can see if it will boot and its just your NAND install that needs reflashing.

 

[Prometheus]

I can't help much on the more serious problems, since I haven't encountered them and don't know what's going on, there.


However, with regard to emulators, they most often have documentation (this can be viewed in the "Documentation" section of the Pandora menu if you're using Xfce, or by pressing the "Y" game-button with the app in question highlighted in Minimenu) which would usually list this. In the case of PicoDrive, pressing the Select button will bring up the menu, which along with all of the settings and suchlike, houses the exit option. For PCSX-ReARMed, the Space key does the same thing.


While I'm here, I'm going to split off your new questions into a new thread, as I think the serious one, in particular, will get better attention if it's in its own thread instead of buried in the original one.

 

[mrhappy]

Thank you for splitting my thread, friend.


The current state of my pandora is that both the green and red ligthts are on, but the console responds to no action, it is not currently plugged into the charger but shows no response when I do connect it. No buttons seem to have any effect on the system.

 

[mrhappy]

From the looks of things the link between the screen and the console is having diffiulties.

 

[Prometheus]

Did you have a slight tint (usually purple or pink, but rarely it's been reported to be greenish, if memory serves) to the colours on-screen before this happened? I'm no expert, but it sounds like the LCD cable may have either broken, or popped out of its connector somehow.

 

[Devo3d]

(brightness)


Function + I press several times


that is assuming somehow you lowered the brightness too low


for the other issue(the more serious one) you might have drained the battery.


try charging for an hour.then check for brightness.


anything else im at a loss for ideas

 

[mrhappy]

Did you have a slight tint (usually purple or pink, but rarely it's been reported to be greenish, if memory serves) to the colours on-screen before this happened? I'm no expert, but it sounds like the LCD cable may have either broken, or popped out of its connector somehow.

I don't recall a very obvious tint to the screen, but that seems like the most feasible problem. How am I to reattach the cable? Is there anywhere I could have it sent away to?

 

[mrhappy]

Anyone?

 

[Prometheus]

You may want to drop an e-mail to whichever store you bought it from to see what they suggest. My guess would be an LCD cable failure (but bear in mind that I'm not an expert - I'm just going on previous experience and observations), which, depending on where the fault lies, I gather is difficult to repair on one's own.