Cant get the installer to boot on my Pi (B Rev1)
 

I've had Raspbian on my Pi for years, but it was horribly out of date, so I decided to try my favorite distro on it.

I first messed up and burned the Pi2 installer to my SD card and put it in. It displayed the Rainbow screen and got no further. That's when I realized I only have the Pi Version B. (according to https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/v...c.php?t=113614 ) So I downloaded and installed what I believe is the correct installer for the Pi (version 1)to the SD card and now I get just one quick blink on the activity light, then nothing else.

I've tried the Pi1 installer on my original SD card and a micro-SD card with adapter, and get the same result with both.

Could I have bricked my Pi when I booted it up with the Pi2 installer?


Any ideas?

Rob.

Hi Rob,

Have you tried any of the solutions on this Slackware Docs page?

https://docs.slackware.com/howtos:ha...rm:raspberrypi

You won't have bricked your Pi by running incompatible software. ;)

Is it a 256MB Pi B?

If so, try changing gpu_mem=64 to gpu_mem=32 in config.txt on your installer SDcard

Oops, I now see how vague my post was. I was trying the SARPI method. I'll try the manual one next and see how it goes.
I did verify that the gpu amount was set to 32.

Rob.

Hi Rob,

As you were using the sarpi image to install Slackware ARM on the rpi1, I'm interested to know what was failing for you.

Penthux,

I was trying the installer image on the SARPI site for my Pi1, and it just wouldn't boot. I could mount the card on my linux box and see the files on it, but on the Pi, the activity light blinked one time, then nothing.

I put the installer from Daves-Collectives on it, and it boots just fine. Actually installing right now over NFS.

Rob.

Hi Rob,

That's strange. It seems like an issue I would put down to the sd card you're using or maybe a corrupt download. I'm just guessing at that. There's certainly no similar issues for me when I boot with that sarpi image. Thanks for sharing. It's all good info.

Dave's Collective is a Mecca for Slackware Arm on the Raspberry Pi. Everybody should do what you're currently doing. Great stuff! Hope everything works out well.

<edit> Activity LED 1 flash: Do you have a RPi using Micron RAM? (The SoC has a 'M' with an orbit line around it)

Penthux,

No, my SOC is labeled "samsung". (unless I'm looking at the wrong chip).

Rob.

Then I'm still as clueless as to what the issue might have been. :D

So I tried the Daves-collective solution, and could get it to boot up and get through most of the setup, but I couldn't get the source files via my NFS server. The error message went by to quickly and I couldn't find it in any logs. Then I noticed that the SARPI page had a newer version of the installer available, and I tried that one, and it worked. I did decide to use my USB drive for the source files though, so I can't really narrow down that problem. But the end result is that I now have Slackware 14.2 installed and running on my version-1 Pi.

So We'll call this one solved.

Thank you!

Rob

Dave's Collective is a great resource and contains some excellent work. I've found it to be a huge inspiration over the years. Can't thank Dave Spencer enough for his contributions to the Slackware community.

The SARPi images and packages have been frequently updated recently. Mainly due to updates and revisions of the RPi firmware and the results of testing it. Not surprising as it's only been a couple of weeks since Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd. released their latest gizmo.

Well done at getting Slackware ARM 14.2 installed and running. You got there in the end and that's what matters. :hattip: