I can think of two things to try in this situation:
1. verify your roms with Goodn64, which will not only tell you if it is a good rom, but will also name it the correct name for recognition. Less effective but also an OK check is to run the roms on the PC to see if the problem is with the rom or the emulator (note: some PC emulators will play bad roms so this isn't completely effective).
2. This information comes from the official surreal help thread. A black screen may also mean you don't truly have the surreal version 1, but actually the gueux.net version, which I believe only works on soft mods. There's more info than I have on Iriez's official surreal help thread that deals with this specific problem. Definetly check it out if you haven't already.