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While trying out PiFmRds, I accidentally touched a piece of metal between two of the GPIO pins for a split second and my Pi B immediately shut off.

After leaving it for a week, I re-flashed my SD card with a fresh image and tried booting the Pi. It managed to resize the filesystem and reboot halfway before the screen went blank and the red power LED went dim. It's hit and miss even getting it anywhere past the rainbow screen without the power LED slowly fading out to nothing.

At this point, I would've accepted defeat however the Pi still sometimes seems to show signs of life (e.g. The boot text displays for some seconds before it cuts out again).

Any ideas if/how this can be fixed?

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  • 1
    Does the CPU chip get very hot very quick? If so,buy a new Pi.
    – joan
    May 19, 2017 at 23:57
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    You could try a different power supply, otherwise you're Pi is fried.
    – 88weighed
    May 23, 2017 at 13:52
  • Found this, it says to wait a couple days and then try it again. I think that's probably a good idea. You should also read over the document and follow the instructions there. Hope this helps! Apr 27, 2018 at 1:11
  • If the red LED is fading off, my first thought would be a damaged polyfuse which will no longer handle the full current of a fully booted Pi. After a few days it will partially recover, but quickly revert back to being useless when you try to boot it. As a last resort, you can try powering the Pi directly from the 5v GPIO pin - effectively bypassing the damaged polyfuse, though I'm not sure if this would work on a model 1B.
    – Botspot
    Sep 23, 2019 at 23:43

1 Answer 1

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I would suggest trying a different power supply, as if the power supply has been damaged then it would explain why the Pi keeps cutting out. Alternatively, you could use a cheap USB power logger to look at the current that the pi is drawing.

However if you try another power supply and it still doesn't work I would say the pi is probably dead.

Also watch out to see if the CPU is heating up much hotter than usual as this can sometimes happen.

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