No Signal

[lobster]

Raspberry Pi arrived.

Problem 1 - there are two sorts of micro SD and I had the fatter one - wrong

Problem sorted (friend came with 5v 1A supply) and slim micro USB

Problem 2 - No signal on TV

Tried two different HDMI cables, checked they were 1.3 and above, they were

Tried two different SD cards (one with Debian and one with Fedora) still 'no signal' message on TV. Tried RCA cable - no signal.

What to try next?

[grumpyoldgit]

Are any of the lights on the board showing?

[abishur]

+1 to the light question, my initial thought is that the PSU isn't working

Side note: On problem 1 you say micro SD, did you mean micro USB?  The fatter one is actually *mini* usb, not *micro* usb

Also is the PSU your friend brought over designed for Apple by any chance? (Idle curiosity) Is there another device that you can plug into the PSU he brought over to see if it's working?

[Chromatix]

Indeed there should be at least one LED alight on the board if it has power.  That is the first thing to check for.

[toxibunny]

Put SD card in PC, edit "config.txt" for TV resolution..?

[lobster]

red power LED = on

Yes sorry I mean I needed the micro USB

The power supply he brought was from his daughter and was a Blackberry

5v 1A rating -

I was using an Apple USB keyboard but switched to another

. . . all the fruits

Team Puppy are suggesting a change of resolution by editing config.sys too . . .

Team Puppy suggestions

Family may be watching 'the Voice' on BBC and hi jacking the TV (how inconsiderate . . .)

[abishur]

Let us know how the config edit works.

Two more questions:

1) Which distro are you using?

2) Did you DD the .img file over or did you just copy/past the .img onto the SD card?

[liz]

What exact card model are you using? (Class, size and brand, please - class 4 from a named brand is most reliable.)

If you don't plug it into a TV, insert the card and turn it on, what happens to the LEDs?

[abishur]

Also it was just mentioned on another thread (and I had forgotten about this) but make sure if you're trying to use it with the RCA (composite) video, that the HDMI cable is unplugged.  If the HDMI cable is plugged in, it will not output anything to the RCA port

[Joe Schmoe]

Out of curiosity, what is the defined result if you apply power to the RPi board with no SD card in the slot?  I'm assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that you would see something on the screen - some kind of error msg.

So, questions about the SD card, the Linux distro chosen, etc, would seem to be premature.

[dom]

No - nothing of the screen without an sdcard.

The bootrom is only a few Kbytes, and it just reads from the sdcard and launches the next stage.

[lobster]

1) Which distro are you using?

I tried Debian and Fedora

2) Did you DD the .img file over or did you just copy/past the .img onto the SD card?

From what I remember I followed the procedure carefully and used DD

Brands - the Debian is unbranded and says class 1
the Fedora is unbranded and has no class (so to speak)



If you don't plug it into a TV, insert the card and turn it on, what happens to the LEDs?

Red power LED goes on

It's me ain't it - I am too stupid to own a Raspberry (the shame of it)

[dom]

With no sdcard, I'd expect just the power led to come on and stay on.

With the sdcard, I'd expect the power led to come on and then the OK led will flicker on and off for tens of seconds. I think it ends up dimly lit. OK is the sdcard activity led.

With the sdcard and network connected, I'd expect the power led to come on and then the OK led will flicker on and off for tens of seconds. The 10M will come on solidly, and the FDX and LNK will be on dimly (flickering with network activity).

This is all without a display attached.

Do you get that behaviour?

[Joe Schmoe]

dom said:  



No – nothing on the screen without an sdcard.

The bootrom is only a few Kbytes, and it just reads from the sdcard and launches the next stage.



Thanks, dom.  That is useful information.

[liz]

Lobster said:



Brands - the Debian is unbranded and says class 1
the Fedora is unbranded and has no class (so to speak)


That's almost certainly the problem. There's a list of tested good cards at http://elinux.org/RPi_Verified.....eripherals - I've been using a Sandisk Ultra2 class 4 2GB card.



If you don't plug it into a TV, insert the card and turn it on, what happens to the LEDs?

Red power LED goes on



Yeah - totally sounds like a borked SD card. Try it with a different one and let us know what happens!

[lobster]

size of cards are 4GB for Debian

and 2GB for Fedora

[mahjongg]

In all probability (if the OK LED doesn't start to flicker) there probably isn't a valid copy of the distro on the card. Make sure you follow the instructions on how to put the image onto the card using the "DD" utility. Simply copying the image file to the SD-card, or even the unpacked files from the image to the card won't work. Maybe you can get somebody to mail you a know good card.

Also make sure your power supply is good, if you can, measure if (during use) the 5V is between 4.75 and 5.25Volt. (I do not know where you can measure on the board, but perhaps you can measure between the two outer pins of one of the two USB (output) connectors on the board.

[lobster]

It doesn't start to flicker guys. I am confident that I followed the installation procedure correctly.

. . . but I will do it again . . . most likely the cards are too low quality for the job.

From what remember I obtained the card from a computer fair or in this case unfair.

Would this SD card from Argos be more suitable

As George Orwell said in 'Animal Farm':

'All memory cards are equal but some are more equal than others '

[asb]

Lobster, this is much better (and provided it's the card pictured, we've run shedloads of them on the Pi with no problems). Kingston tend to have *very* low performance for workloads you get with a Linux filesystem (many random writes). You can get SD cards much cheaper online of course.

[lobster]

thanks asb

It is half the price at Amazon
Argos open at 11AM

May have to pay the higher price, just to be a Raspberrian.

The system calls to SD will not be so much of an issue with Puppy Linux as it resides and runs from memory - not from SD or other media. For now need to get Debian running.

Appreciate everyones help.

Pi hungry?

Check this recipe

[lobster]

Success!

Some interesting lessons.
We used a class 4 Verbatim 4Gig SD card from a local games shop and a USB charger from 'Wilkinson'.

We wrote the image using Puppy Linux and failed to boot.

It is possible the SD card needs formatting before writing and this was not in the instructions?

Then we tried writing the image from Windows 7 (an ancient legacy Operating system) but it worked! It worked after we had formatted the SD card from our earlier attempt.

The red LED flicker was faint but there. Plugging the Ethernet cable and we had lights of every colour - it was Christmas all over again . . .

The Squeeze we ran seemed OK but now the job of getting Puppy on it begins - first I need to ensure our Puppy team (basically me and any stray sardines I can interest) will have an easier time of hardware starting.

Raspberry is sweet. Raspberry works.

Signal now on!

[mahjongg]

congratulations!

P.D. Had some raspberry PI ice-cream yesterday in Amsterdam. Very nice, but be aware that it may contain "pips" that are very hard and can stick between your teeth.

[rmwebs]

I've just received mine and am having problems.

I've got a recommended 1a USB power supply, and 3 different SD cards.

All had debian written to them on a Mac using the command 'dd bs=1m if=debian6-13-04-2012.img of=/dev/disk6s1' as recommended (/dev/dks6s1 was the partition).

All I get is the red power light, no signal on the screen at all. Tried with the following (branded) SD cards:

- PNY 4GB Class 4

- Lexar 8GB Class 8

- Sandisk 8GB Class 4 (MicroSD w/adaptor)

Not looking good

[rmwebs]

Just had a thought. I was doing the dd to /dev/disk6s1 (as that was the disk that was showing up in df -h for the SD card.

I'll try doing it to /dev/disk6 as surely that will be the 'root' of the SD card instead of its partition.

[Joe Schmoe]

Correct.  It has to be /dev/disk6 - as that represents the "raw" disk, not a partition on that disk.

Also, make sure it is unmounted - I used: hdiutil unmount /dev/disk6