After months of it just sitting on my desk collecting dust, I finally decided to play with my Raspberry Pi only to discover it no longer worked. All I got was a red LED, and no video. I initially thought it was not getting enough power, as that is a common issue, so I tried a few USB cables and various chargers, and saw no difference. I then tried various SD cards, HDMI cables, images/distros on the SD card and still I couldn’t get this damn thing to turn on.
I then delved in a little deeper with my multi-meter and do some more diagnostics. Unfortunately since my cheap case kept falling apart I had used a bit of crazy glue to hold it together, which mean I now had to break my case to get the Pi back out. Since I was intending to put this in an old Nintendo case I did not shed any tears over this. Eventually I found I was getting a proper 5V between TP1 and TP2. However when testing the voltage between TP2 and the F3 fuse I found a significant voltage drop of about 0.7v. At this point I was determined that I was dealing with a blown F3 polyfuse and luckily before I ordered a new one or soldered in a bypass I tried to temporarily bypass it with an alligator clip, but alas, it still wouldn’t boot. So I was left scratching my head again.
Frustrated, I was about to give up and order a new one, but I decided to try one last thing and I took a pair of tweezers and carefully lifted each gold pin in the SD card receptor and tried again. Much to my surprise, it worked. The green light flickered and once I plugged in the HDMI cable I saw the OpenElec logo on the screen. Yay! Now I can get back to building my RetroPi station out of an old NES 🙂
Update: After powering off the unit and re-imaging the SD card with Retro Pie I found myself back in the same no boot scenario. Once I switch back to OpenElec is then again will boot. So I’m not sure what’s going on with RetroPie but I will have to diagnose this issue tomorrow.
A seasoned Senior Solutions Architect with 20 years of experience in technology design and implementation. Renowned for innovative solutions and strategic insights, he excels in driving complex projects to success. Outside work, he is a passionate fisherman and fish keeper, specializing in planted tanks.