Featured Articles
Announcing Pi
Technical Specifications
Raspberry Pi FAQs
Win a Pi
Raspberry Pi Wishlist
Actions
Forum Thread Details
  • Replies 8 replies
  • Subscribers 707 subscribers
  • Views 880 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Related

Is my Raspberry Pi finished out of the start gate?

e14 Contributor

I took delivery this past week.  Waited until I could download an OS and install it onto a 32 Gig SD card before I begin playing with it.  Once I did that, I plugged it in and......nothing.  Tried the composit vidio....nothing.  Tried the HDMI port.....nothing.  I was expecting at least some kind of a BIOS screen even if it didn't see an OS.  So.....is it DOA?

Parents

  • Some things you can check.

     

    If you plug the sd card in a windows pc, you should at least see the boot partition with the boot files in it. It's approx 70MB in size.

    The Pi does nothing when the sd card is not plugged in, as the boot partition contains the firmware which can be compared to a pc bios.

    The green ok led on the Pi is like the hdd led of a pc. It should start flashing when the os is read from the sd card.

    For a stable Pi operation, you need a TP1 - TP2 voltage of at least 4.85V. The testpoints are clearly marked on the board.

    The Elinux site might be the place for more information to fix your issue.

    Some people also reported bad contacts on the sd card socket. A visual inspection of those contacts doesn't hurt.

  • in reply to e14 Contributor

    After trying the two OSs, I note no green led showing drive access.  The power supply was purchased specifically for the RPi and is a 5 volt at 1 amp, pleanty of power to supply the unit.  I haven't measured the voltage at the test points yet but suspect no issue with this.  It will be verified. 

Reply Children
  • in reply to e14 Contributor

    I'd recommend you measure the voltage on the test points, also try to see if the board works with a smaller (4-8G SD card).

     

    What brand/model/class is your 32GB card ?

  • in reply to e14 Contributor

    Peter Beauregard wrote:

     

    After trying the two OSs, I note no green led showing drive access.  The power supply was purchased specifically for the RPi and is a 5 volt at 1 amp, pleanty of power to supply the unit.  I haven't measured the voltage at the test points yet but suspect no issue with this.  It will be verified. 

    Quite a few people have had trouble with a Micro USB cable.  Some have very thin conductors so the voltage drop across them can be high enough to make RasPi sad.  There's also a voltage drop across polyfuse F3, but this is usually small unless F3 is bad.  So even though your power supply is fine, you could still get a low voltage at TP1-TP2.  If you have a volt/multimeter handy it's easy to check.

     

    If you're not getting any green LED flickering then most likely (1) the voltage drop is too large, (2) the RasPi itself is bad, e.g., a bad polyfuse F3 or a bent pin in the SD socket, or (3) something is wrong with the SD card image even though it looks fine to Windows.  I have heard of people having trouble writing a RasPi SD card from a PC's built-in SD card reader but it works OK with an external SD card reader.

     

    You might see if there are any RasPi users or groups near you so you can try booting with a known good SD card.