JMikeH
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Pi 3 won't boot

Sat May 07, 2016 8:32 pm

***I have read the boot up problems sticky note***
I just received the following from Adafruit: Pi 3 B, SanDisk 8GB with Raspian 1.9 preloaded, power brick 5.25V @ 2.4A.

I installed the SD card and connected my monitor to HDMI, and the keyboard, and mouse to the USB ports. At power up the red LED came on and the green LED flashed once.

I booted with only the 8GB SD card in place. Same result. Red and 1 flash of green.

I downloaded NOOBS Raspian 1.9.0 and programmed a 2GB Micron SD card with my Mac Book Pro. I understand that a 2GB card won't work, but I thought I might flash more than 1 time as it tried to boot. Same result. Red and only 1 green flash.
Any suggestions?
Regards, Mike

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Rive
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Re: Pi 3 won't boot

Sat May 07, 2016 8:38 pm

JMikeH wrote:***I have read the boot up problems sticky note***
I just received the following from Adafruit: Pi 3 B, SanDisk 8GB with Raspian 1.9 preloaded, power brick 5.25V @ 2.4A.

I installed the SD card and connected my monitor to HDMI, and the keyboard, and mouse to the USB ports. At power up the red LED came on and the green LED flashed once.

I booted with only the 8GB SD card in place. Same result. Red and 1 flash of green.

I downloaded NOOBS Raspian 1.9.0 and programmed a 2GB Micron SD card with my Mac Book Pro. I understand that a 2GB card won't work, but I thought I might flash more than 1 time as it tried to boot. Same result. Red and only 1 green flash.
Any suggestions?
Regards, Mike

Download jessie instead of NOOBs on a bigger sdcard, and expand the file system
DNPNWO

epoch1970
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Re: Pi 3 won't boot

Sat May 07, 2016 8:40 pm

You could try raspbian jessie lite: https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/
It's ~1.4GB so will fit fully on your 2GB card.
"S'il n'y a pas de solution, c'est qu'il n'y a pas de problème." Les Shadoks, J. Rouxel

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Rive
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Re: Pi 3 won't boot

Sat May 07, 2016 8:46 pm

epoch1970 wrote:You could try raspbian jessie lite: https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/
It's ~1.4GB so will fit fully on your 2GB card.

Lite is headless, stripped down.
DNPNWO

epoch1970
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Re: Pi 3 won't boot

Sat May 07, 2016 10:48 pm

Sure. But it boots.
"S'il n'y a pas de solution, c'est qu'il n'y a pas de problème." Les Shadoks, J. Rouxel

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mahjongg
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Re: Pi 3 won't boot

Sun May 08, 2016 12:37 am

you may have "read" the boot problems sticky, but you don't seem to have understood it, read it again!
Throw away your 2GB cards, and buy a new 8GB card, so its really empty, as you seem incapable of emptying (formatting) SD Cards.

JMikeH
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Re: Pi 3 won't boot

Sun May 08, 2016 3:52 am

Dear Moderator,
I used the 2GB card to see if it would boot beyond the one flash point. I didn't expect it to boot all the way. I used the SDCard formatter as specified by Rasp.org. The card was empty, and there was plenty of room for the OS.
I understand that you get a little frustrated with beginners (I got my first Apple II+ in the 1970's), but I get frustrated with products that don't work when they are just out of the box.
Mike

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B.Goode
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Re: Pi 3 won't boot

Sun May 08, 2016 8:23 am

Mike / @JMikeH

Your frustration and disappointment at your purchase not working 'out of the box' is understandable and justified. I hope that among other things you will be letting your supplier know that the goods they sold were apparently not 'fit for purpose.'

It is unusual - but in the nature of things not impossible - for the RPi board itself to be DOA. In a post on these forums earlier today a spokesperson for Raspberry Pi has said: "Every single one is tested before leaving the factory." [ viewtopic.php?f=63&t=147191&p=969948#p969948 ]

Your instinct to try 'The Simplest Thing That Might Work' is a good one - but the implementation of it is flawed for reasons you don't understand yet.

To pursue that line of investigation there are 2 things you might try, assuming that you want to reuse your existing 2Gb card and keep the 'suspect' original 8Gb card as 'evidence':

1. As previously suggested, download and install Raspbian Jessie Lite. https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_lite_latest This is a version of the Raspbian Operating System without the components that allow it to produce a graphical display, so you will see a command-line interface only.

or
2. Download, install and run the NOOBS Lite (network install only) Installer. This is only an Installer, it is NOT a full Operating System. The only point to installing it is to prove that the RPi is capable of booting from the sd card reader.

To re-inforce what is already in the troubleshooting guide you have already referenced: the methods of installation for these two approaches are different and mutually incompatible -

To 'flash' the image of a directly installed OS such as Raspbian no prior preparation of the card is needed. The download has to be 'unpacked' to recover the .img file held within it, then that .img file has to be transferred as a bit-by-bit copy (NOT by copying the file itself) to the target SD card. The Raspberry Pi guide to doing this on a Mac is here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentati ... ges/mac.md [Simply 'Copying' the .img file to the card will not work.]

To install versions of the NOOBS Installer the sd card needs to be prepared by ensuring that the entire card is formatted such that it contains a single empty fat (FAT16 or FAT32) partition. 'Safely eject' and re-insert the card before proceeding. The unpacked contents of the downloaded archive are then copied - using the standard file copying techniques on your Mac - to the the SD card. [Using low-level tools like dd or ImageWriter is NOT the right way to install NOOBS.] You should end up with an SD card that contains 3 folders and 14 other files, all at the 'root' of the sd card: they must NOT be contained within some other folder.

However you prepared the card, simply transfer it to your (unpowered) RPi, then turn the power on.

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mahjongg
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Re: Pi 3 won't boot

Sun May 08, 2016 2:14 pm

I'm not "frustrated with beginners", and I could have been the person that sold you that apple ][ or TRS-80.

It's just my experience that even people who say that they "formatted the card", actually did not fully format the card, (did not expand the file system) and consequently there are still unused partitions on the card that prevent it from being a suitable medium to install NOOBS on. I suspect that was the case with you. The sticky has extensive instructions on how to actually format a card.

If you had used an image writing tools, it would have been different, as the (DD) tool simply overwrites the sectors on the card it doesn't matter how or even if it was formatted beforehand.

NOOBS however needs a card with just one partition on it formatted as FAT32, or it simply won't boot.
the best (simplest) guarantee to get one in that state is to simply buy a new one.

pre-written cards from third parties are often old and obsolete stock, and may not support a newer version of PI.

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mahjongg
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Re: Pi 3 won't boot

Sun May 08, 2016 2:17 pm

Rive wrote:
epoch1970 wrote:You could try raspbian jessie lite: https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/
It's ~1.4GB so will fit fully on your 2GB card.

Lite is headless, stripped down.
NOT actually "headless", it will send out a video signal, (headless is it won't support , or needs to support, video, no "head" simply means no monitor) it simply won't support a GUI, but it will still boot and give you a video signal. from that it would be possible to update to a full system.

mikerr
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Re: Pi 3 won't boot

Sun May 08, 2016 8:30 pm

From your previous post you say you're using a VGA monitor, try pressing the "2" key shortly after power on.

You can also try editing /creating a file "config.txt" and putting the line "hdmi_safe=1" in it.
Android app - Raspi Card Imager - download and image SD cards - No PC required !

JMikeH
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Re: Pi 3 won't boot

Mon May 09, 2016 6:01 pm

Hi, Thanks for getting back to me with additional info.
Here is the lastest:

I still have the same problem. Red ON and Green 1 flash of less than a second.

I purchased a new 16 GB SanDisk SD card and I did a full format using SD Formatter. I down loaded NOOBS 1.9.0 and copied that to the SD card. I started with the .zip file and extracted that. I got a NOOBS folder and a copied the 'contents' of the folder to the SD card. I also named the SD card 4NOOBS when I formatted it.

When I purchased the Pi 3 form Adafruit I also bought the pre installed NOOBS 1.9 on an 8 GB SD card. The file and folder names and file sizes are the same when comparing the 8 GB and 16 GB cards.

I also checked the power supply voltages at the following test points: PP5 (Gnd), PP1, PP7, PP8, and PP9. All were normal.

I will next try loading Jessie Lite onto the 2 GB card.
Thanks again, Mike

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Rive
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Re: Pi 3 won't boot

Mon May 09, 2016 6:04 pm

If it were me, I would just download and install full Jessie to the 16GB sdcard, not NOOBS, or lite. Just be sure to expand file system, and then go from there.
DNPNWO

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mahjongg
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Re: Pi 3 won't boot

Mon May 09, 2016 7:40 pm

full format may not be enough, if the card isn't already empty, you need also turn on the "resize" option, and fill in the label field.
that is why I keep saying that people use the formatter wrong! That the OS X and the windows version of the formatter have differently named options complicates matters.

or forgo NOOBS, and use the imaging option.

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B.Goode
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Re: Pi 3 won't boot

Mon May 09, 2016 8:13 pm

JMikeH wrote: I also named the SD card 4NOOBS when I formatted it.
If you examine that card now on your Mac, after an attempt has been made to boot your RPi with it, is it still named 4NOOBS? I suspect that it will be.

The relevance of the question is that the very first thing that NOOBS does when it is booted is to resize the FAT partition to a minimum, reformats the remaining space as a linux-formatted extended partition, and renames the card RECOVERY.

So if the name of the card has not changed we know pretty much for sure that the system did not boot, no matter what the monitor (or its absence) or the LEDs might be telling us.

I am starting to think that you may have a 'rogue' device, and that you should exercise your consumer rights (assuming you have them where you live) to return the whole package as 'not of merchantable quality' and ask that it be exchanged for a replacement in working order. (It might not be the RPi itself - it could be the power supply or connecting cable, but you should not have to do that level of diagnosis for a new purchase.)

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