Booting a RPI 1 B+

[Tim Kientzle]

> On Dec 30, 2015, at 8:41 AM, Martin Birgmeier <la5lbtyi at aon.at> wrote:
> 
> I have prepared a (16 GB) micro SDHC card from
> ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/arm/armv6/ISO-IMAGES/10.2/FreeBSD-10.2-STABLE-arm-armv6-RPI-B-20151229-r292855.img.xz
> (i.e., dd'd the 480 MB to the card).
> 
> I have a barebones RPI 1 B+ into which I insert the card. The only
> available connection is via Ethernet, i.e., no monitor, no keyboard, no
> serial.
> 
> After applying power something seems to happen in that after a while,
> the Ethernet LEDs on the RPI blink in a way typical for Ethernet.
> However, that's it, specifically my DHCP server never receives a
> request, nor does the RPI in any way become accessible via Ethernet. In
> fact, not a single Ethernet frame reaches the DHCP server (checked via
> tcpdump).
> 
> After shutting down and doing a binary comparison of the card's contents
> with the image, there are very few changes; mounting the image and the
> card and then doing a diff -r shows no differences at all. The
> filesystem on the card also has not been resized.
> 
> The RPI runs its original Linux fine.
> 
> Any pointers as to what is going on?

You should consider getting a USB serial adapter cable such as:

   http://adafru.it/954

This will let you see the earliest boot messages and any errors that may be appearing.

As others have mentioned, it's worth trying different SDHC cards, since the SD drivers do not seem to be compatible with all cards.

Tim