Dead new PBP?

[Jam3s007]

Hello all!

My PBP arrived today. unfortunately… it appears to be dead on arrival. The power button did nothing. I plugged it in and that didn’t help. I tried holding down the power button. All that I have to go off of is a red LED indicator that comes on when I plug in the charger. Anything I should try? What do I do?

- James

[KC9UDX]

Make a micro SD card with a bootable image. Disable the eMMC. Search here for "dead PBP" or "won't power on", this happens a lot.

Most likely it is working but the software is crashing early.

[Jam3s007]

Make a micro SD card with a bootable image.  Disable the eMMC.  Search here for "dead PBP" or "won't power on",  this happens a lot.

Most likely it is working but the software is crashing early

Thanks for the reply!

Disconnecting the battery and holding down the power button for a bit, disconnecting the eMMC/reconnecting the eMMC/battery did absolutely nothing. Blank screen with no indication anything is happening.

I will try that. I’ll have to use my steam deck since I already lent out my working laptop to my neighbor ?

[tophneal]

it's possible the battery arrived depleted. This is another common cause of this behavior, and I've found that often the PBP won't boot at all until it hits a certain level of charge. I've had mine run down several times, where I had to leave it charge for a few hours before I could get it to boot back. up.

[Jam3s007]

it's possible the battery arrived depleted. This is another common cause of this behavior, and I've found that often the PBP won't boot at all until it hits a certain level of charge. I've had mine run down several times, where I had to leave it charge for a few hours before I could get it to boot back. up.

It’s been hooked up to the wall for hours now. Tried disconnecting/reconnecting the battery/eMMC module and no dice. Trying to boot via SD/USB stick now…

[KC9UDX]

Per @tophneal , if that's your issue, you may need to charge it with USB-C for a while before using the normal charging port. But be careful, do NOT use both at the same time: that can damage the charging circuit.

Else you really need a bootable micro SD card, with the eMMC disabled via the switch.

Keep in mind that the power LED (and the others) are entirely software controlled. Without software actually running and turning them on, you never get any sign of life (except maybe a warm CPU).