RPI boot problem (some OT)
I know this isn't the best place to talk about Raspberry Pis, but there
are people here who are familiar with them, and probably people who can
point me to the correct place. And they do run Debian...
My 2G RPi4 arrived yesterday, and it doesn't boot, not all the way
anyway. The red power led goes on, the green 'disk' activity led
flashes, it displays the square rainbow flash image, but doesn't go any
farther than that (the green led stays on). The rainbow display stays on
forever, as far as I can tell.
I've already tried:
Loading a known working 3+ Buster -- did nothing; no surprise. But that
chip was built from the same Buster NOOBS file as the one I prepared for
the 4.
Replacing the SD chip -- no difference.
Reloading the SD chip -- no difference in the boot process. When I went
to gparted to repartition the chip, it looked like it had begun some of
the Raspian partitioning. But it hadn't finished; there was a huge area
that was still available.
Downloading and installing a different NOOBS file (lite instead of full)
-- no difference.
Looking for help on the RPi website -- very little help; they talked
about a new bootloader and told me how to see if I needed it. I didn't
(the green led comes on and blinks). And I already knew how to plug in
the HDMI cable :-)
Looked for help anywhere on the web -- lots of other RPi4 boot problems
discussed, but not mine.
Giving it an hour or so to cogitate and go on to the next step -- the
rainbow was still on the monitor, but the green led had gone out.
This is not the first 'Pi I've loaded a Raspian OS into (the 2 was the
first), and I followed the same procedures I always have. It is,
however, the first time I've had any trouble at all.
The 'Pi seems OK to me -- it does display that flash screen, and that
takes working some CPU cycles and some working RAM. I don't think the
software's bad -- it seems to do quite a bit of stuff trying to boot.
I'm at a loss. A solution/suggestion or a URL would be greatly appreciated.
--
Glenn English
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