Raspberry Pi (no video, doesn't appear to read SD, hot chip)

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terryb
 
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Raspberry Pi (no video, doesn't appear to read SD, hot chip)

Post by terryb »

I just got my Raspberry Pi (Model B 512MB RAM). I have tried everything and can't get it to work.

POWER
I've tried 3 different power supplies with a minimum of 1.5 amps. I've tried using 3 different micro USB cables in all the possible combinations with the power supplies I have. The red LED always comes on and I've tried measuring the voltages on the board and I got 4.94 to 5.2 volts.

VIDEO
I first tried it with my TV plugging it into 2 different HDMI ports (one that I have my video disc player on and the other I have my slingbox on). I tried the cables that I've been using for the player and tv slingbox plus one other really short cable (1 ft). When those didn't work I tried using the composite video out instead. At work I tried plugging it into a monitor using an HDMI to DVI adapter.

OS
I've tried wheezer, fedora, archlinux, and raspbmc on 3 different SD cards (2, 4, and 8 GB). I read somewhere that the green ACK LED should flash when the SD card is being accessed. It never does on my board. Only the red LED is on.

The big chip in the center of the board seems hot to the touch but I don't know what the normal operating temperature would be.

Any suggestions? Adafruit suggested I post this here so that if someone is able to help me it may help others as well.

adafruit
 
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Re: Raspberry Pi (no video, doesn't appear to read SD, hot chip)

Post by adafruit »

That does sound odd, is there anything you see on the board thats broken? its rare for Pi to be DOA :/

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adafruit_support_rick
 
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Re: Raspberry Pi (no video, doesn't appear to read SD, hot chip)

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

Have you reviewed this page to try to identify your symptoms?
http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting

You're reading 4.94 - 5.2 V across TP1 and TP2? That is within the normal range.

The 'big chip in the center' is the one that says SAMSUNG on it? That is the CPU with the SoC and SDRAM chips stacked on top. It should be getting warm. The other large chip labeled SMSC is the LAN controller. It's normal for that to get very hot.

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terryb
 
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Re: Raspberry Pi (no video, doesn't appear to read SD, hot chip)

Post by terryb »

@Adafruit As far as I can tell there's nothing broken. The only moving parts are the clips on the empty connectors and the thing at the bottom of the SD card slot that gets pushed in to make contact when a card is in the slot.

@driverblock I didn't find that page when I was troubleshooting last night. It gave me some ideas. I'm going to try them now. I'm at work so I have to download new images to write to the SD card. I didn't run the writer as admin last night.

Thanks for the replies. I'll post updates as I go through the list of things to try.

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terryb
 
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Re: Raspberry Pi (no video, doesn't appear to read SD, hot chip)

Post by terryb »

Ok, still no luck.

Here's what I did:
I downloaded a new 2013-02-09-wheezy-raspbian.img. The zip files linked to in the tutorial wouldn't unzip correctly and I kept getting a "unable to open central directory" message from Winzip so I used the BANNED instead. I was able to write that image to my 4GB SD card this time running the Fedora ARM installer as administrator. Looks like it wrote the image correctly this time because when I was doing it last night it would only take seconds and then it would say installation had been completed. This time it took long enough for me to see it write the full 1.8GB size of the image to the SD card. I got very excited at this point.

So I hooked the RPi using an HDMI cable with a mouse and keyboard connected. No go. I tried the suggestion of only plugging in the power with nothing else connected. Same thing. No green LED flashing or anything. Next I replaced the bootcode.bin file with the one linked to in the troubleshooting guide. I assume the green ACT LED would've indicated activity just reading bootcode.bin but there was no activity at all.

Oh btw, it is the Samsung chip that's heating up. The other chip right behind the USB ports doesn't heat up at all. While doing all this I also noticed the underside of the board had become hot as well.

Does anyone have any more ideas?

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adafruit_support_rick
 
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Re: Raspberry Pi (no video, doesn't appear to read SD, hot chip)

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

OK, why don't we go ahead and replace the Pi.
Email [email protected] with a link to this thread and your original order number, and ask for a replacement.

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terryb
 
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Re: Raspberry Pi (no video, doesn't appear to read SD, hot chip)

Post by terryb »

Thanks driverblock and Adafruit. I look forward to playing with a working RPi. Can't wait!

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Re: Raspberry Pi (no video, doesn't appear to read SD, hot chip)

Post by Worth »

I am sure you have tried everything but was wondering if you have made sure the microSD card is seated correctly in the microSD card adaptor and the microSD card adaptor is firmly seated and correctly oriented in the SD card slot under the Raspberry Pi board. I had similar problems with loading the distribution package to the RPi. - Worth

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terryb
 
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Re: Raspberry Pi (no video, doesn't appear to read SD, hot chip)

Post by terryb »

@Worth Yes I did. As a matter of fact I had never seen the inside of an SD card slot until I saw the one on the RPi so I didn't know it had that thing at the bottom that closed a "switch" when a card was in the slot. I assume that mechanism lets the host know that a card is in the slot. I checked each of the contacts and made sure the mechanism I mentioned above closed the circuit when the card was inserted.

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terryb
 
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Re: Raspberry Pi (no video, doesn't appear to read SD, hot chip)

Post by terryb »

Hey guys, I just wanted to update you on my progress. I received the replacement RPi on Friday but only got to try it out yesterday. I tried the same 4GB SD card I tried on the previous RPi and it wouldn't boot up. No green LED activity. I was wondering what I could be doing wrong if I still could not get this second one to work. Then I remembered I had replaced the bootcode.bin with the one mentioned in the troubleshooting guide. Since I had only renamed the original bootcode.ini I simply switched it back. Tried powering up and voila a working RPi! Now I can start playing around with it. Thanks again for all your help!

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Re: Raspberry Pi (no video, doesn't appear to read SD, hot chip)

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

Great! Glad you remembered the bootcode.ini thing!

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