Could my pi be dead?

[PythonMaster]

Hi everyone,
I am new raspberry pi and I recently decided to get RPi 4B.
Anyways, I was doing a small project and when I finished, I pulled the jumper wires from the breadboard and the wire connected the GND and 5.0v touched which caused the RPi to reset. Now, I don't own a monitor nor keyboard nor mouse, so I just use a VNC server on my laptop. When the 2 wires touched the VNC server got disconnected, so i waited for the RPi to boot up but the LED was solid red and the ACT was solid green.

I searched this forum for help but all i found that the polyfuse just needs time to heal, but i just learned that the RPi 4B doesn't have a polyfuse, it only has an OVP diode

It's been a couple hours and still nothing...I tried reinstalling raspbian and even tried a new SD card, so is it dead?

PS:Sorry for post being so long...I just wanted to give you all the details

Thanks in Advance

[pcmanbob]

HI.

So your 5v is fine because the red LED is on , what happens if you try booting your pi without the SD card installed ?

if its working correctly the green LED should flash 4 times the wait and repeat.

if it does not do this then you may need to reload the EEPROM you should follow the instructions on the downloads page under Recovery

https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/

[wildfire]

Hopefully it's not but this is a warning to others who may make a similar mistake.

The GPIO's are not plug and play, when messing around with circuits always make sure your Pi is powered down (including removing mains voltage) before you make any changes.

[PythonMaster]

HI.

So your 5v is fine because the red LED is on , what happens if you try booting your pi without the SD card installed ?

if its working correctly the green LED should flash 4 times the wait and repeat.

if it does not do this then you may need to reload the EEPROM you should follow the instructions on the downloads page under Recovery

https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/

I tried running it without the SD and the green LED was still solid green.. I even tried to reload the EEPROM with bootloader and still nothing

[PythonMaster]

Hopefully it's not but this is a warning to others who may make a similar mistake.

The GPIO's are not plug and play, when messing around with circuits always make sure your Pi is powered down (including removing mains voltage) before you make any changes.

Do you have any solution to this problem?

[wildfire]

Yep, but it'll cost you $35-$55.

[pcmanbob]

If you completed the recovery of the EEPROM correctly then I would say you pi has suffered unrepairable damage, replacement is the only option.

[mahjongg]

read the boot problem sticky in beginners/trouble-shooting.

and yes, it seems your PI is dead.

[PythonMaster]

If you completed the recovery of the EEPROM correctly then I would say you pi has suffered unrepairable damage, replacement is the only option.

I just remembered something...the sd card that had the bootloader was previously formatted and had raspbian, so how do I unformat it and uninstall raspbian then do the bootloader

[drgeoff]

You don't "unformat" a card.

A card can be restored to a single unformatted FAT16, FAT32 or exFAT partition by using the SD Card Association's formatter. Files can then be copied to it as usual. If using Etcher or similar to put an image on a card that can be done without a prior format as the image overwrites the partition table and format info.

[PythonMaster]

You don't "unformat" a card.

A card can be restored to a single unformatted FAT16, FAT32 or exFAT partition by using the SD Card Association's formatter. Files can then be copied to it as usual. If using Etcher or similar to put an image on a card that can be done without a prior format as the image overwrites the partition table and format info.

I'm sorry, but I am new to this whole SD formatting stuff, so can you please tell me how to restore my card

Thanks

[fruitoftheloom]

You don't "unformat" a card.

A card can be restored to a single unformatted FAT16, FAT32 or exFAT partition by using the SD Card Association's formatter. Files can then be copied to it as usual. If using Etcher or similar to put an image on a card that can be done without a prior format as the image overwrites the partition table and format info.

I'm sorry, but I am new to this whole SD formatting stuff, so can you please tell me how to restore my card

Thanks

What is lacking from the Raspberry Pi Foundation website Help pages ???

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentati ... /README.md

[hippy]

The power LED is powered from 5V, the ACT LED is powered from 3V3, so, despite the 5V to 0V being shorted, it appears that the PMIC is powering up so it is hard to tell what, if anything, has been damaged, and if the Pi is actually dead.

Notionally shorting 5V to 0V should not damage anything, except the PSU or board tracking. It should be no worse than pulling power, but one never knows in what order supply rails may collapse or turn off, what affect that may have, what over-voltage conditions that may lead to on other connected GPIO pins.

My understanding is that just copying the Bootload Eeprom files to the FAT directory of the SD Card should be enough to re-load the Eeprom, but it might be worth erasing everything else and just leaving those files. It would also be worth trying with a different card with just those files.

If not getting the 'Eeprom re-loaded' ACT flashing, I would guess the files aren't being read, aren't in the right place, that the SoC or other hardware has been damaged.

I would suggest finding a monitor and plugging the Pi into it to see what that shows, if anything.

Perhaps order another Pi 4B and put this to one side so you can investigate the issue more leisurely. If SD Cards and other things work reliably with that you can have confidence they probably should work with the Pi which doesn't currently work. That helps narrows down what any issue may be.

[PythonMaster]

The power LED is powered from 5V, the ACT LED is powered from 3V3, so, despite the 5V to 0V being shorted, it appears that the PMIC is powering up so it is hard to tell what, if anything, has been damaged, and if the Pi is actually dead.

Notionally shorting 5V to 0V should not damage anything, except the PSU or board tracking. It should be no worse than pulling power, but one never knows in what order supply rails may collapse or turn off, what affect that may have, what over-voltage conditions that may lead to on other connected GPIO pins.

My understanding is that just copying the Bootload Eeprom files to the FAT directory of the SD Card should be enough to re-load the Eeprom, but it might be worth erasing everything else and just leaving those files. It would also be worth trying with a different card with just those files.

If not getting the 'Eeprom re-loaded' ACT flashing, I would guess the files aren't being read, aren't in the right place, that the SoC or other hardware has been damaged.

I would suggest finding a monitor and plugging the Pi into it to see what that shows, if anything.

Perhaps order another Pi 4B and put this to one side so you can investigate the issue more leisurely. If SD Cards and other things work reliably with that you can have confidence they probably should work with the Pi which doesn't currently work. That helps narrows down what any issue may be.

First of all, thank you for all the info you provided
Second of all, I tried to connect it to my TV and it said no signal

And about buying a new pi
..it is not possible as i live far away that it would cost way too much to get it..i recently got this because my dad was traveling

[Silentme]

Daft question but what are you trying to run?
If its the new version of Rasbian then you may have an issue.
If its anything else you should be aware that for the Pi 4 you need to have a start.elf file in your root as well as a few other *.elf files.
This is down to the new hardware configuration.

Also a good test for the Pi 4 board is to take your SD card out and simply plug it in, you should see both red and green LED's light up.
If they do then your board is OK.

Hope this helps.

[hippy]

Second of all, I tried to connect it to my TV and it said no signal

Does sound like it's dead, though it could still be something else - some people have reported problems getting HDMI signals even with a working Pi. Comparative testing will help verify things do work with a known working Pi but not with the presumed dead one.

And about buying a new pi
..it is not possible as i live far away that it would cost way too much to get it..i recently got this because my dad was traveling

In that case it may be that your Pi adventures have come to an end and can only continue when you do get another.

[Ernst]

A very simple test you can try: insert the card in a card reader on your PC, create a file named "ssh" or "ssh.txt" in the boot partition (the boot partition is the one that should get a drive letter on your PC).

Remove power from the Pi, remove the card from your PC card reader and put it into the Pi, insert power into Pi.
Wait a few minutes and then remove power from the Pi, remove the card and put it into the card reader on your PC.
If you did everything right then the file "ssh" or "ssh.txt" will have been deleted, in this case your Pi is not yet dead.

If it did not work then recreate the card using a Etcher and fresh Raspbian image file, then repeat the above.

Very important: if the Pi looks to be dead after inserting power do not just pull the power plug, wait for the green activity LED to stop flashing before removing power if you can not do a controlled shutdown.

[PythonMaster]

Daft question but what are you trying to run?
If its the new version of Rasbian then you may have an issue.
If its anything else you should be aware that for the Pi 4 you need to have a start.elf file in your root as well as a few other *.elf files.
This is down to the new hardware configuration.

Also a good test for the Pi 4 board is to take your SD card out and simply plug it in, you should see both red and green LED's light up.
If they do then your board is OK.

Hope this helps.

Where do I get the .elf files and how do i give them to my RPi 4

[PythonMaster]

Should I try to measure the volts at TP2 and TP1?

[DarkPlatinum]

Should I try to measure the volts at TP2 and TP1?

Your pi is receiving power. The option I would recommend you doing is format your card and reflash it with raspbian. Look at the raspbian documentation if you need help doing so.

[PythonMaster]

Thanks to everybody who tried to help me...I just have to accept the fact that my pi is dead