Occidentalis hanging at end of boot with pi plate

[ribo]

I'm having a problem booting up the raspberry pi with the proto plate plugged in. Unless i plug in the plate after boot up the OS locks at the last stage after showing the pi net address and I never get to a login prompt. If i disconnect all the circuits from the plate it still doesn't let me boot up with plate plugged in. Any ideas on what would cause this?

[adafruit_support_rick]

Sounds like the Pi is running out of juice after it enables the network. Are you using a wi-fi dongle? Are you using a 1A power supply?
Not sure why a bare proto plate would make a difference - maybe the power is just that close to the edge that the extra capacitance pushes it over?

[ribo]

disconnected the keyboard and so far it worked once. I have to use the net address +:3000 to get the webIDE initialized (http://raspberrypi.local didn't seem to get through).

Can't understand why a no-load circuit would draw more current than the normal keyboard that runs fine without the plate

[ribo]

BTW I was using a powered usb hub and Ethernet cable to the pi from my airport router.

[adafruit_support_rick]

Was the keyboard was going through the powered hub, or the Pi is powered by the hub? You really want to power the Pi from a 1 Amp USB wall-wart. We've got this one, but if you've already got an iPhone charger or something like that, give it a try. See here for a list of power adapters that work (and don't work!) with the Pi.

Be aware that the Pi does a lot of power management. If you're not using something, the Pi will try to turn it off. For example, the USB/network chip is powered down if not in use. Running a GUI will cause the GPU on the processor to be powered up. I'm not sure about the HDMI chip, but that may also be powered down if nothing's plugged in.

You might want to check your setup against the RPi Verified Peripherals page

The RPi Troubleshooting page is also pretty good starting place if you're seeing problems that look power-related.

You might also try a different SD card. Apparently, there is quite a range in power draw between different cards. The RPi SD Cards page also lists some cards with reported problems.