Keyboard computers (400, 500, 500+) • Raspberry Pi 500+ and "initramfs"

This is my out of the box experience after getting a brand new Raspberry Pi 500+ from Canakit.

My system:
Raspberry Pi 500+
Official power adapter 45 Watts, 5.1v
I discovered that it had an official Raspberry Pi 256GB NVME with the official image on it it, after troubleshooting this issue all day.

I downloaded Raspberry Pi Imager on my PC v 1.9.6
I downloaded the latest Raspberry Pi OS Full with recommended software
I imaged a BRAND NEW Sandisk 512GB USB stick -- the same I've used on most of my projects
I also imaged a brand new Sandisk 512GB micro SD card.

The Problem: The image starts to boot on each media, but after the black-and-white text starts scrolling, it always end up in Busybox, with a prompt (initramfs).

Even the official Raspberry Pi NVME craps out in the same place.
I've looked for help, but pretty much all of the advice I've seen either deals with this as a Linux problem, and therefore there are no specific instructions for people with Raspberry Pi's, or the adviceis unclear or gives you some steps to do which did not work in my case.

I don't know if I should return this, or if there is a simple solution.

This should not be the experience out of the box.

Statistics: Posted by dwirish — Mon Sep 29, 2025 11:45 pm — Replies 0 — Views 28

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