Raspberry Pis not booting

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dennistarwood
 
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Raspberry Pis not booting

Post by dennistarwood »

I purchased two Raspberry Pis (one came free with $350 or greater purchase) from Adafruit as well as the Starter Pack, all at the same time. I can get neither to recognize an OS installation on an SD card. In every case, I can only get the red power light to show, no matter how long I wait or what combinations I try.

I have tried the microSD card that came with the Starter Pack as well as an SDHC card I already owned. I have tried the instructions from Adafruit Learning System to install Raspbian as well as independently attempting NOOBS. I have tried formatting both cards with the formatting tool recommended in the instructions as well as SDFormatter and OS X's Disk Utility (MS-DOS formatting). In every case, I saw what was expected at every step of each instruction set until I tried booting on the Pis.

I am using all the materials from the Starter Pack, including the power cord and microSD card reader. I have tried plugging into a surge protector as well as directly into a wall socket. I have tried booting with a keyboard and HDTV (purchased from Adafruit) plugged in and with only the SD card plugged in.

I've attached a screenshot of the Raspbian installation on the microSD card. I've also attached a photo of one of the Pis. They appear identical. For the NOOBS installation, I was careful to copy the contents of the unzipped folder onto the cards and not the folder itself.

Please advise how I can provide better information to identify what I'm doing wrong to begin using the Pis or if there is reason to believe hardware somehow plays a role. Thanks for your help in advance.
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adafruit_support_rick
 
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Re: Raspberry Pis not booting

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

It looks like you simply copied the install files to your SD card? That won't work. You have to actually install the system onto the card. (You can't properly format the SD with Disk Utility, by the way)
Please follow these instructions:
http://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-rasp ... sing-a-mac

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dennistarwood
 
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Re: Raspberry Pis not booting

Post by dennistarwood »

Thanks for your prompt response. The file list screenshot does show my final attempt at using the script at the link you provided. To verify, I ran the script against both SD cards again just now and experienced the same results. After your note, I checked the formatted disk size. In both cases (4GB and 16GB SD cards), the SD cards format down to 58.7 MB despite the script claiming to copy 2962227200 bytes. Could the script somehow fail on BANNED? Is there an issue with the script and 2013-09-25-wheezy-raspbian.img?

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adafruit_support_rick
 
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Re: Raspberry Pis not booting

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

Odd. I have some of the same files as you, and some different ones.
MacOSX can only read the boot partition on the SD card - the actual system is in another partition which MacOSX can't read (it's formatted as EXT2, and MacOSX doesn't support that format).

What do the LEDs on the Pi do? The red LED should be on no matter what. The green LED next to it should blink while booting. Does the green LED light up at all - especially, does it glow faintly?

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dennistarwood
 
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Re: Raspberry Pis not booting

Post by dennistarwood »

The red light always glows. The ACT light has a tiny green dot inside it that is very faint. This is true for both Pis. I am using the 5.25V DC 1A charger that came with the Starter Kit. I have also tried other chargers I own, though most only rate 5V. (One rated 5.2V.)

I mentioned I am using the Starter Kit microSD card. I also mentioned I am using a second SD card. That's a Lexar 16GB SDHC card.

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adafruit_support_rick
 
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Re: Raspberry Pis not booting

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

The faint glow on the ACT light means that the Pi did not find a bootable SD card.
Check this troubleshooting page :
http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting# ... on_display

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dennistarwood
 
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Re: Raspberry Pis not booting

Post by dennistarwood »

I am closing this thread to let you know I have solved the issue. Also, I am closing it so I can be properly mocked.

It turns out that putting the Pi into the provided case makes it very hard to see I should use the SD card holder under the Pi and not the USB SD card holder provided in the Starter Kit. I realized this when I saw "Turn the board over" in the last link provided.

I look forward to embarrassing myself many more times as I learn how to work with hardware and not just software. I also look forward to buying more from Adafruit. Thanks for your time this weekend.

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Re: Raspberry Pis not booting

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

No problem. Glad you figured it out! :D

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