Got my Raspberry Pi, but...

Dear Joel

dont give up

raspi is realy as simply as computer can be

same issue i found on my first rpi start

in case when my tv is not connected and switched on in time of startup

yellow RCA conector is used for video output.

can u utilize/test this (analog tv) video signal?

in case that i dont connect rpi to net, only one red led light is also on.

also try to verify content of sd card in another pc

in official image you can find file issue.txt

in latest includes "Raspberry Pi reference 2012-10-28 (armhf)"

You know the basics already.

At poweron, red should go on (indicating 3V3 is present and nothing more)

green ok should start flashing when the os is loaded.

If green shows no activity, problem can be supply, sd card or Pi itself.

power can be checked by measuring the TP1 - TP2 voltage.

It can be the power adapter or the cable between the adapter and the Pi who are responsable for the voltage being 2 low.

The Pi has some polyfuses which also can be responsable for lower voltage readings.

sdcard itself can be checked on a pc. You should be able to see the small fat32 boot partition and it's boot files. it's only 50 - 70MB in size.

The larger linux root file partition is ext4 and can only be checked on a linux or mac system. (You have tools under windows to open ext4 partitions as well.)

If you have another sdcard lying around, it might be worth to give that a try.

Sometimes the sd card socket contacts give bad contact. A visual inspection of those can be usefull in such case.

Don't connect any usb devices during your initial tests. Only start with those after you have seen the green light that indicates the sd card partitions are recognised.

Got my digital multimeter first thing this morning.

Only solid red light shows up when Pi is plugged in.

TP1-TP2 is 5.2...so that sounds right.

Information on the card (as is shown on my Mac) is as follows:

What can/should I do next?

Despite the card looking OK on the Mac, my money is on a corrupt SD card, this has happened a few times to my knowledge at least.

Any chance you can borrow an SD card and image it yourself from one of the images on the Raspi site ?

Solid red light seems to indicate that the Pi can't find a valid boot image. Could also mean the SD card isn't fully inserted.

Like I say, seem to be a number of corrupt SD cards, what do the postal services do to them ?

Steve

Joel Heffner wrote:

 

Got my digital multimeter first thing this morning.

 

Only solid red light shows up when Pi is plugged in.

 

TP1-TP2 is 5.2...so that sounds right.

 

Information on the card (as is shown on my Mac) is as follows...

 

What can/should I do next?

As Steve says, you could download a new SD card image, preferably to a different SD card.  This has the advantage that you'll be getting a newer version of the OS, which will most likely perform better.  OTOH, it's a long process and the whole point of buying a pre-loaded SD card is to avoid this.

If you know someone nearby who has a RasPi you could try swapping SD cards and see which RasPis work with which cards.

Otherwise, at this point I'm thinking your best bet is to send it back for a replacement.  You need to get an RMA (Return Materials Authorization) from the vendor's web site.  Since TP1-TP2 looks good and the SD contacts look good and the SD directory looks good, here are the most likely problems IMO:

1.  The contents of an SD card file is corrupted.    Try is copying the files from the SD card to your Mac and see if you get any bad file errors.

2.  An iffy solder joint has failed.  They do a quick go/no go RasPi test at the factory, but at this price range you're not going to get burn-in testing, so thermal cycling and/or transportation may have caused an iffy solder joint to fail.

3.  An iffy PC board trace has failed.  A hair-line crack can survive initial testing, but fail after thermal cycling.

RMAs help the manufacturer and designers to learn what's going wrong.  From the small number of problems people are reporting relative to the number of RasPis out there (I think well over 500K) I would guess that the yield is already pretty high, but that doesn't help if you're one of the unlucky ones either with the RasPi itself or the SD card.

Hi - do you if you have a 512MB Pi?  If so, then the issue is that this pre-programmed card is too old based on your screenshot (June 17 kernel and firmware).

Your profile shows USA so I assume you purchased from Newark element14.  I'd recommend you contact customer service and ask for a replacement:

http://www.newark.com/jsp/bespoke/bespoke2.jsp?bespokepage=newark/en_US/custsrv/index.jsp

The newer pre-formatted cards have July 15th kernel/firmware which is recent enough to boot the 512MB Pi.  Once you receive the replacement card, you can update it to the most recent firmware to enable the extra memory with these instructions: http://www.element14.com/community/groups/raspberry-pi/blog/2012/11/14/update-process-to-enable-to-full-512mb-ram

Cheers,

Drew

ooo maybe that's my problem then, the 'issue.txt' file on my sd card says:

Raspberry Pi reference 2012-06-17

Generated using spindle, http://asbradbury.org/projects/spindle/, e8c77c6, stage4-lxde-edu.qed

but I have a 512Mb model B.

I'll get a new distrib on it.

Ta,

Mark.

ooo maybe that's my problem then, the 'issue.txt' file on my sd card says:

Raspberry Pi reference 2012-06-17

Generated using spindle, http://asbradbury.org/projects/spindle/, e8c77c6, stage4-lxde-edu.qed

but I have a 512Mb model B.

I'll get a new distrib on it.

Ta,

Mark.