Troubleshooting Raspberry PI Model A

Model A(+) has no wired ethernet connector and thus it's impossible to access it unless it is connected to a wireless network. To preconfigure the wireless network for a Model A you have two options:

• use writeimage.sh with the -n ssid:psk argument (requires Linux or OSX)
• use a model B to boot it, configure the wireless network in the settings panel and boot the SD card on your model A

The limited amount of RAM (compared to the Raspberry PI Model B & 2) can be a problem. In the default configuration, 128 MB are assigned to the GPU. With SMB & FTP services, video streaming and motion detection enabled, only 30-35 MB are left. Copying files over SMB or FTP will quickly use up this memory. Zipping images or creating timelapse movies will most likely generate an error, even if you reduce the GPU's memory to 96 MB (the minimum). However, if you only use live video streaming, the A+ works quite nice.

It appears that model A boards are more sensible to overclocking than model B ones. If your board becomes unstable (hangs, reboots often or simply presents many error messages), remove any overclocking setting and use the default 700MHz clock.