Dead Board?

[icebox electrical]

I just received my A13-Olinuxino-MICRO board.
Plugged in a vga monitor, sdcard and a 5v power supply and nothing happened!
No image, not even vga sync (the green light on the monitor went out)

Is my board dead or is there something I should do to make it work??
Thanks

[JohnS]

Try some booting some software.

John

[icebox electrical]

The SD card has an image on it 

[dave-at-axon]

Do you have a serial cable you can connect to UART1? It has to be the Olimex one or you can use an FTDI to TTL (3.3V) board with a suitable cable assembly. DO NOT connect anything with RS232 levels on it.

I think Olimex should state on the website that this cable should really be considered for first time orders as it saves you so much hassle as it can tell you what's going on with the boot cycle.

[icebox electrical]

I have a serial cable but there's no output from that either.
Assuming I have a bad sdcard or the data on it is bad, will the monitor sync up? i.e. is there firmware in the a13 to give a vga output even though there's no os?

At least if I know that the board does something/anything I can check, It will save me returning it for a new one that may potentially be exactly the same.

In the meantime I'll check the sdcard and image
Thanks

[dave-at-axon]

Even if you don't have an SD card installed, there should be output from the bootloader programmed into the device.

I can power up an A10S or A20 with no SD card and see serial debug output.

What settings are you using on the terminal connected to the serial port?

[icebox electrical]

The serial port settings are 115200,n,8,1
I've looked at the txd output with a scope but there's no data activity on it.
Maybe the board is dead after all??