My Second Attempt at Raspberry Pi

Not giving up on my two 16GB Transcend microSDs, I tried writing ubuntu and openelec images - still no joy. Then I tried installing berryboot which got installed properly. Yey!

I chose Raspbian from berryboot and it downloaded fine (after 2 hours of wait time). It got to the point where raspi-config was up and running. Then it rebooted.

A lot of errors appeared on the screen! I waited till i showed the login prompt. I tried logging in but I kept getting errors and it would even ask for the password. That's the closest I got with Transcend.

Then I bought a Samsung EVO with model code : MB-MP08DA/JP.

Formatted it using SD Formatter 4.0 (mentioned in previous blog). Copied the contents of NOOBS and with fingers crossed, attempted to install Raspbian.

To my surprise, it worked! I'm keeping this config. 

TO ALL MY FELLOW ADVENTURERS: THERE IS SUCH A THING THAT GOOD AND BAD COMPATIBILITIES OF SD CARDS FOR RASPBERRY PI 2 MODEL B!

My First Attempt with Raspberry Pi

I decided to ride on the Raspberry Pi bandwagon. I ordered two "Raspberry Pi 2 Model B" from Amazon with clear case enclosure as I didn't want to waste time scavenging for covers, and two Transcend micro SD 16 GB class 10.

What I didn't know is that it needed a power source (which is sold separately of course)! After looking around for spare smart phone chargers I had a few years back and found out that they've already been disposed, I went to a local electronic shop and bought two micro USB cable adapters. I'm planning to re-use the iPhone USB charger that I have to initially power my first ever Raspberry Pi.

My main computer is a late 2009 model MacBook Pro running the latest version of Yosemite.

When I've finally managed to get all the necessary parts and scouring the web regarding installation of NOOBS here's where I got to:

1. I downloaded and installed SD Formatter 4.0 for Mac
2. I first downloaded NOOBS
3. I formatted both micro SDs using the softwared installed in 1

When I finally plugged the cables, and the SD card to my Raspberry Pi hoping that it will be an easy install, I was disappointed when I got below error:

Error creating file system
mkfs.fat:warning lowercase lables might not work properly with DOS or windows
mkfs.fat: failed whilst writing FAT
mkfs.fat 3.0.26(2014-03-07) 

Googling it didn't yield useful results! Some say, micro SD is busted, etc. which i refuse to believe.

What I decided next is to install the Raspbian image onto the micro SD. So I downloaded the image via bittorrent and after 2 hours of waiting, got to the point where I believe I should follow the command line instructions.

1. Open Terminal app
2. df -h
3. Insert micro SD to card reader
4. df -h (the device was recognized as /dev/disk3s1)
5. sudo diskutil unmount /dev/disk3s1
6. sudo dd bs=1m if="/path/to/your/2015-05-05-raspbian-wheezy.img" of=/dev/rdisk3 (I followed the alternative route)
7. sudo diskutil eject /dev/rdisk3

Here's some output:

3125+0 records in

3125+0 records out

3276800000 bytes transferred in 257.798126 secs (12710721 bytes/sec)

I have now plugged the power cable and tried booting while writing this down, and it's taking an aweful lot of time.

I'm now getting a kernel panic error - sigh.