New RPi seems not to work

I was able to locate a power supply with a current indicator. This made it clear that the board was not functioning.

How so ?

Current( total in ) = 0.17A. ( This should be at least 0.7A from what I can gather from the discussions.)

No, When booted a model B uses approx 450mA plus whatever your peripherals require. Stress the GPU and you may use more.

Clearly, this is most likely the current for the peripheral circuit, and the CPU is not drawing current. No amount of fiddling with the rest is going to help.

My fully functional R-Pi with all peripherals connected draws ~75mA when I install a deliberately erased sd card. So I'm not sure what, if anything, it tells you.

Yes, you may have a faulty Pi, or sd cards that are somehow incompatible, or an issue with writing the image etc. It's hard to tell.

However, unless you can acquire a known working sd card with an image on it that's been proven to work in another Pi I don't know if it's possible to definately say it's faulty - yet.

I'm starting to wonder if there's a bad batch.  It could also be that there are a few random bad boards, and the vast majority work fine so we don't see queries.  That doesn't help if you're the one with a bad board.

If there's any suspicion of a bad batch, then when people come here with problems one of the very first things we ask needs to be what the FN1207xxxxx label on the bottom of the board is. That'll quickly show if there's a pattern of closely related serial numbers.

Also likely not relevant to Johns particular problem, but nobody bothered to ask the much too obvious question if the particular input on the TV was known to be working and if that input had been selected.

Not everyone who comes here asking for help will be a rocket scientist (No offense meant John, especially if you are ), so we should start with the basics before assuming the worst.

I'm very guilty of expecting people have some basic level of knowledge, but the audience for the Pi is such that this may not be true. So I'm trying hard to ask all the dumb questions that might just help someone

selsinork wrote:

 

I'm starting to wonder if there's a bad batch.  It could also be that there are a few random bad boards, and the vast majority work fine so we don't see queries.  That doesn't help if you're the one with a bad board.

 

If there's any suspicion of a bad batch, then when people come here with problems one of the very first things we ask needs to be what the FN1207xxxxx label on the bottom of the board is. That'll quickly show if there's a pattern of closely related serial numbers.

 

Also likely not relevant to Johns particular problem, but nobody bothered to ask the much too obvious question if the particular input on the TV was known to be working and if that input had been selected.

 

Not everyone who comes here asking for help will be a rocket scientist (No offense meant John, especially if you are ), so we should start with the basics before assuming the worst.

 

I'm very guilty of expecting people have some basic level of knowledge, but the audience for the Pi is such that this may not be true. So I'm trying hard to ask all the dumb questions that might just help someone

Here Here!  I have seen that some people on the forums just assume you know linux inside and out but the fact is that most people don't.

Here Here!  I have seen that some people on the forums just assume you know linux inside and out but the fact is that most people don't.

I've been using linux for more than 20 years, since before RedHat/Fedora, Debian or Suse even existed. Back then 'linux' was two floppies and didn't really support hard disks properly.

I can confidently say that I don't know linux inside and out

I Have discovered my issue was related to a slightly dodgy image on the SD card.

I recreated the image and it worked fine.

It appears that I was a little hasty in my conclusion.

It is true that the obvious can sometimes be overlooked. But, yes, the setting on the TV was appropriate and known to be working.

There is no activity on the green LED at all.

As far as SD cards go, I have tried 2. Both appear to have valid images with a full file structure as viewed from another Linux system. For the Raspian version, there is also a windows accessible section with booting files as mentioned in the trouble shooting guide.

It appears that I have come to the end of what can be done, since I have no access to a known working card. It seems to me that if the device is so sensitive to the card type, perhaps it should be supplied with a tested card.

John Tendys wrote:

 

It is true that the obvious can sometimes be overlooked. But, yes, the setting on the TV was appropriate and known to be working.

There is no activity on the green LED at all.

As far as SD cards go, I have tried 2. Both appear to have valid images with a full file structure as viewed from another Linux system. For the Raspian version, there is also a windows accessible section with booting files as mentioned in the trouble shooting guide.

It appears that I have come to the end of what can be done, since I have no access to a known working card. It seems to me that if the device is so sensitive to the card type, perhaps it should be supplied with a tested card.

It is supplied with a card but you have to pay extra for it ! Not sure if E14 have started this yet but I know that you can buy working cards from RS.

It is supplied with a card but you have to pay extra for it ! Not sure if E14 have started this yet but I know that you can buy working cards from RS.

Next week: http://uk.farnell.com/samsung/raspberry-pi-prog-4gb-sdcard/memory-sdcard-raspberry-pi-4gb/dp/2113756

There is no activity on the green LED at all.

That's not good.  with earlier firmware there was little noticable activity on the green led until after the kernel was loaded.  With recent images this has changed and you now get two or three very noticable flashes very quickly after power on.

As far as SD cards go, I have tried 2. Both appear to have valid images with a full file structure as viewed from another Linux system. For the Raspian version, there is also a windows accessible section with booting files as mentioned in the trouble shooting guide.

There should be a windows accessible section on all images as the SoC uses a small FAT16 partition to store the GPU blobs, start.elf and the kernel.img.

Another stupid question from me.. You mentioned earlier using Winimager to write the card. Did you try writing the card using the linux system as well ?

It seems to me that if the device is so sensitive to the card type, perhaps it should be supplied with a tested card.

Perhaps it should be, not sure it would help. If it doesn't boot you're then left with the question whether the supposedly tested card and/or Pi is at fault.

SD card compatibility is getting better, if you'd been trying this back in April when the first ones were delivered they were a whole lot more picky about what worked.

Anyway, seems you're doing all the right things. If you still can't get it working or find someone local with a working one you can use for further troubeshooting then you don't seem to have a lot of choice. Go for the RMA.