NAOMI + NET DIMM/RASPI - working through it, please be patient, help appreciated

PCB problems and fixes
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NoAffinity
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NAOMI + NET DIMM/RASPI - working through it, please be patient, help appreciated

Post by NoAffinity »

I decided to take this to a dedicated thread, instead of continuing on the "I received today" thread. Hopefully my puzzling through the learning curve will be useful to others.

Setup:
NAOMI (vanilla/original/not NAOMI 2), unsure of BIOS version
256 MB NET DIMM w/ SCSI and RJ-45, BIOS 4.01
Raspberry PI v3 B (4 USB model)
Adafruit 16x2 LCD blue/white
16GB Lexar C10 U1 microSD card
Capcom I/O

I initially flashed the piforce tools image found under "Installation" here: https://github.com/travistyoj/piforcetools

It didn't work at first try, but I puzzled through it and got it to the point it was loading NAOMI games only (not AW games).

Things that had to be modified on the pi in order to get it working (for the community's reference):
-first, test LCD plate, and follow instructions on Adafruit web site for loading all required software and testing
-edit rc.local to include a command to run piforcetools.py at startup
-apt-get raspi-config (edit /etc/network/interfaces to make network connection dhcp first, and connect pi to a dhcp network)
-enable I2C through raspi-config
-modify code in piforcetools.py so any instances of lcd = Adafruit_CharLCDPlate() are changed to lcd = Adafruit_CharLCDPlate(busnum = 1) (no italics)

Today, I replaced the files within the /boot folder with those from the above link, and apparently they are different than what is contained in the downloadable image.

I am now able to boot and play NAOMI and AW games, but the LCD screen displays gibberish. Any help getting past this hurdle, I think I will be back in business. I'm still in business, just navigating blindly through the LCD menu.

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Re: NAOMI + NET DIMM/RASPI - working through it, please be patient, help appreciated

Post by NoAffinity »

Well, I've managed to get it all working. I reflashed my SD card using the image at https://github.com/travistyoj/piforcetools. I resized the fat partion to 10GB, moved the ext4 partition to be right on the heels of the fat partition, and left remaining area of the sd card unallocated. This is critical, because you can use raspi-config to extend the ext4 partition. However, it will only resize from the starting sector to (at the most) the end of the available space. If you've moved the ext4 partition to the end of the sd card and then booted raspbian, raspbian will log the starting sector of the ext4 partition, and there's no moving it once that's been done.

At any rate, I resized the partition, made all necessary modifications as noted above, tinkered around with a few other things like apt-get'ing git, git clone'd the files from https://github.com/travistyoj/piforcetools (I believe this was also a critical piece), and finally it appears to be working as intended, with AW games booting and a legible LCD screen.

Also, a useful tidbit that was found at the end of the piforce tools support thread on the neo geo forums, for those of you utilizing the 16x2 blue/white plate (not RGB):

For those of you that are using the old white text on Blue background LCD (16x2) and wondering why the backlight flickers on for a second and then stays off, you need to edit piforcetools.py file in the piforcetools directory and comment / remove the following line:

lcd.backlight(lcd.BLUE)

Well, like I said, hopefully my foibles are helpful to others. :oops: :think: :palm: :)
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GeekMan1222
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Re: NAOMI + NET DIMM/RASPI - working through it, please be patient, help appreciated

Post by GeekMan1222 »

For those of you that are using the old white text on Blue background LCD (16x2) and wondering why the backlight flickers on for a second and then stays off, you need to edit piforcetools.py file in the piforcetools directory and comment / remove the following line:

lcd.backlight(lcd.BLUE)
OMG THANK YOU!!!! After spending the most rediculous amount of time scratching my head thinking something was wrong with the LCD's back light, and eventually desoldering the LCD panel to look for issues(found none). I only had code left to deal with and I was about to spend a ridiculous amount of time scrolling through code since the arcade otaku was down temporarily. I had a funny feeling though it had something to do with the "blue" since the circuit traces for the LED go through the "Green" colors resistor ... THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just threw the whole thing back together, tested confirmed fix!!

by the way anyone thats curious Line 34 as of now has that line of code in it
1x New Astro City, 1x Madonna, 1x G-Balance
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Re: NAOMI + NET DIMM/RASPI - working through it, please be patient, help appreciated

Post by juanmiglesias »

This is why I love the community, finally build the lcd for the pi, and the same issue with the blue-white LCD, thank you! this solved it.
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Re: NAOMI + NET DIMM/RASPI - working through it, please be patient, help appreciated

Post by usch »

You May already know about this but i used this Image for my Setup using raspi 4 and Naomi 2:

https://github.com/chunksin/Piforce-Web

The awsome Thing about this Image ist that you can select Games using your Smartphone. In Addition it eleminates the need for a Zero Pic by using Something called a time Hack.
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