Raspberry Pi Diary - There's power but screen is dead

We are Noobs

I ordered a Raspberry Pi B+ from Maplin last week and it arrived the other day. All the other parts had already arrived, and we'd downloaded NOOBS (which we definately are!!) and copied the files onto the micro SD card ready.

Rashberry Pi B+ in it's Pibow Coupé case

Tonight we put everything together, plugged it into our TV, borrowed the USB keyboard from the kid's computer and plugged the Pi into 5v power supply.

We got lights, but the screen remained blank!

Tried it on the monitor in the other room, still nothing.

Why Won't it Work?

The thing we noticed was the green ACT light wasn't flashing, which indicates that the Pi isn't booting. The two main causes of this are:-

• Power supply has insufficient current.
• The card isn't readable.

First I switched to my iPad charger unit as a power supply,.. but still nothing! (both LEDs still on solid)

After a little bit of googling it seems that the card isn't readable. If you format the SD card using SDFormatter using a Mac (which I did) then make sure you use the Full Overwrite method. Damn, that's gonna take some time.

Full Format The SD Card

The screen grab shows attempt number two, the first time (after about an hour) I brushed against the card in the reader slot and it crashed the software. Had to fix the format in Disk Utility and start again.

In the mean time I've re-downloaded the NOOBS software for when the card is ready. I'd like to rule out bad files too while I'm at it.

Overall - a disappointing start!