PI3 Question

I'm using NOOBS sorry.

Thank you for that link but I just got done with that one too.  No luck.  The only way I can get out of the looping 4 blinks that way is to replace two of those files with new (recovery.elf and recovery7.img).  Any other file replacements do nothing.  When I replace those two files it comes up but with a new NOOBS install. 

The 4 flashes gives some indication to the problem relating to start.elf

R-Pi Troubleshooting - eLinux.org

beacon_dave Makes a good point. If true, the start.elf is not up to snuff for this processor. Did you actually get dist-update to work? This should correct the file mentioned.

I followed his instructions exactly.  the dist update didn't help either and ran it again as he said to do and it said it was all up to date.

Hi Dan,

This might be a good opportunity for disaster recovery testing.

A big part of all of my software development is to make sure that everything can be rebuilt from scratch on a brand new machine.

If it's not easy to re-build a project from scratch, then that's a risk.

I may be very wrong, and yours may be much more complicated than what I've worked with, but usually there are a defined set of steps, installs, tweaks, updates, etc that need to be made to enable a project.

Documenting those steps can be a real pain, but also a real life saver.

Even if the SD card can be upgraded to Pi3 today, there's always the chance that Pi4 will provide new challenges. And there might one day be a better SBC at a better price that you will want to support.

In your position I'd probably bite the bullet and see if I could figure out the install steps again. It might be less work than trying to figure out how to upgrade the SD card to work reliably on Pi3.

ps, I ran into something similar with my first Pi to Pi2 upgrade, thinking the upgrade would save me time. Then after the VERY lengthy upgrade process it didn't work anyways because my WiFi adapter drivers were all wrong. AND the upgraded SD card was not backward compatible like I was thinking it would be.

I ended up setting it up from scratch, which was ultimately much faster.

Cheers,

-Nico

I agree with you 100%.  I might lose two or three days and I already know I went way too deep without properly documenting everything

The bummer part is there wasn't any real support answers and initial research looked like everything, might be a slight pain but doable.  I am more used to manufacturers saying yes/no especially on such a huge topic.  So getting to the point of testing and then a wall is disappointing.

and yea, quite a bit running... a made a vpn data acquisition server out of one with environmental control and remote and web updates.. Fun project, don't really have to go to P3, thought I could expand the project.

http://growatcher.com

If start.elf won't launch, it may be corrupt.

Note that 4-flashes may point to a defective SD-card holder, if one or more of the data contacts is intermittent it can lead to this problem.

More to check!

I got a second PI3 in the mail today to verify the 4 flashes weren't contact related.  Both same results.

Thought I would re-image the SD card again and follow the steps again just in case any corruption.  Doing that now.

May not want to update beyond NOOBS 1.4 though as it looks as if the partitioning has changed with NOOBS 1.5

"Because of this partition change it is not advisable to 'upgrade' the version of NOOBS on an existing SD card from a version prior to v1.5 to one at v1.5 or later."

https://github.com/raspberrypi/noobs/wiki/NOOBS-partitioning-explained

Ug, with after reading that I feel like I could make it work but hacking it to work.. I think I might have to go with what Nico suggested up above and bite the bullet if I decide PI3 is worth it down the road.

Thank you all for the help!