Harmony Cart Not Working

[Grizzly Adam]

My spouse got me a Harmony (not the encore) cart for Father's Day. We went to use it last night and could not get anything more than a black screen. I trouble shooted with two different Ataris and two different power supplies, everything but the Harmony cart worked. I tried to update the software on it, but the software will not connect to the Harmony Cart-- it just says searching. Please help.

[Grizzly Adam]

I am still awaiting support. I spoke with @thecavalry on the Discord server and he suggested I try a different SD card. I grab a 4gb sd card, formatted it to fat32 and copied roms to it direct from a .zip file. I am still getting nothing but a black screen with the harmony cart. I have also tried connecting the cart to the bios updater with a known good data cable and neither linux nor windows detected the harmony cart. It seems it's dead, Jim. @batari

[alex_79]

Usually a working Harmony cart displays something on screen even with a bad SD card (or no SD card at all), so the black screen isn't a good sign.

On Linux, remember that the software needs read/write access to the serial port. Check your distribution's docs to see how to give your user such permission (e.g. on Arch Linux, which I'm using, you need to add your user to group "uucp"). Or run the software as root.

Also, check that a new serial port device is created when you connect the Harmony to the PC (e.g. /dev/ttyUSB0)

Edited August 2, 2023 by alex_79

[Grizzly Adam]

4 hours ago, alex_79 said:

Usually a working Harmony cart displays something on screen even with a bad SD card (or no SD card at all), so the black screen isn't a good sign.

Yeah, and the fact that I can't connect even on windows is concerning. I am hoping that there is some sort of warranty if it is truly dead.

[alex_79]

2 hours ago, Grizzly Adam said:

I am hoping that there is some sort of warranty if it is truly dead.

Don't worry, Fred (@batari) is a trusted member of the community (and he has been for a long time). This is an hobby and it's made in the spare time, so it might take some time for him to respond if he's busy with work family, etc., but he will surely sort this out.