Unable to Program New 4.1; Light Blinks Even After Button Press, USB Cable Fine

StilBald

New member
I recently purchased a Teensy 4.1 from amazon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B088JY7P2H , Seller Envistia Mall) and for the life of me I cannot get it to stop blinking and accept a program. I messaged the seller and they asked me to post here.

Here's way too much info of what all I've done up to this point.
-I'm on a Windows 11 PC
-USB cable is good, hooked up a Kindle with the same cable to the same USB port and I can navigate the Kindle folders like a USB drive
-Headers soldered onto board, but no circuits connected. It's hanging free from the USB cable at this point. I inspected my soldering, no bridges between pins.
-Arduino IDE 2.0.4 installed, Teensy Version 1.57.2 installed through the board manager
-In Arduino IDE the Teensy 4.1 board is selected and no port is listed, though under Tools, USB Type is Serial
-Picked a random example sketch that is listed to work with Teensy 4.1 and pushed it to the Teensy. Sketch compiles and I get "Upload error: Failed uploading: no upload port provided" from the Arduino IDE, but the Teensy.exe window pops up and tells me to press the button on my Teensy. The Teensy window is in AUTO mode and displays the hex file in the bottom info bar that is associated with the Arduino sketch I selected.
-Teensy has been plugged in this whole time and the red light blinks twice every 3 seconds. When I press the button, the light continues to blink the same. No change. No change in the Teensy pop up window either.

----Other notes:
-I get no noise/alert from my PC when plugging the Teensy into my computer, it does not show up in Device Manager as an HID, USB, or any other device type. Tried two cables that I confirmed worked with my Kindle. Same for both
-In the App & Browser control bit in Windows I overrode all the system settings to turn everything off for the Arduino and Teensy exe files.
-I have a laptop that I also installed the Arduino IDE and Teensy boards on and I get the exact same thing. I didn't do the App & Browser control settings, but I don't think it matters.
-Teensy has not been hooked up to anything else. Open the bag, soldered on some headers, plugged it in a breadboard and got the above. Unplugged it from the breadboard (I don't know, just in case) and still got the above.


What am I forgetting, what additional information would be useful? I expect that it is a user error keeping me from getting this to work, but I can't figure out what that error is. Any help would be appreciated.
 
Your board seems to have a hardware problem.
From this page:

2blinks.PNG

Do you see something out of the ordinary around the bootloader chip like loose solder particles?

T41.png

Are any parts missing from the backside of the Teensy?

T41back.jpg

Did you try to reset the board to factory default using procedure from this page?

T41reset.PNG

After that procedure, the board should show up in USBtreeview like this:

USBtreeview.PNG



Hope this helps.
Paul
 
Paul,
I appreciate the detailed reply and I apologize for the delay in getting back to you. My schedule is a bit hectic and I don't have as much project time as I'd like. Or maybe I have too many projects, who knows!

Inspecting the bootloader chip with a 30x loupe showed no issues. Flipping over to the back of the board, the capacitor (?) between the 3V and 12 pins looks suspect. I can't recall if I powered this on via my breadboard power supply or connected via USB first, but I checked my power supply and the outputs are 5.0V and 3.3V, so I wouldn't think that's the culprit. In person it's hard to tell if it's a poor connection or cracked, but in zoomed in further with my cell phone (pic attached), to me, it looks cracked.

Multiple times I have tried holding down the button for 15+ seconds before and once or twice the red LED seemed (briefly) brighter. However, just again I tried and the 2 blinks every 3 seconds continues uninterrupted. Unfortunately this is my first Teensy, so I'm not familiar with them, but if there is indeed an orange LED, I have never seen it illuminated.

I appreciate your help. The seller has been top notch to deal with and I have a replacement board heading my way (was supposed to be here today, but USPS is another story). Do you know what the damaged component is? I'd hate to junk the board without trying my hand at repairing it first. Screenshot 2023-03-14 210331.jpg

Edit: Looks like it is component L3 and a ferrite bit, not a capacitor as per this link: https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy41.html#tech
Edit 2: Searching past posts, it looks like I may be able to short the two sides of the ferrite and get the Teensy back up and running again. I'm out of time tonight, but I'll give it a try later this week and report back.
 
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