AML-S905X-CC Le Potato fails to boot

So I’m pretty new to the computer tinkering scene and the Le Potato is really my first experience outside of building my own desktop, which is pretty basic.

I got the Le Potato (AML-S905X-CC) last year and flashed Emuelec onto it without any problems. I was using a CanaKit 5V 2.5A power supply without issue until recently when I accidentally plugged a different power supply into the Le Potato (it looked very similar to the CanaKit) and booted it up. The Emuelec boot screen flashed very quickly, then nothing.

When I realized what happened, I plugged in my original CanaKit power supply and while the LED lights indicated a normal boot-up procedure, no video signal was being broadcast to my TV and also the Xbox controller I had been using previously without issue, seemed like it was no longer receiving any power. I took the sd card out and loaded it onto my computer to see if there were any obvious corruption errors, but my sd card seems perfectly fine. Windows recognizes the card and all files are in place and everything looks normal.

Thinking I may have fried my board, I bought a second Le Potato and when I plugged in my CanaKit power supply, no red LED light turned on at all. The blue LED still lights and if I put my sd card into the new Le Potato, the board lights up blue and then turns to green like it should be booting something but again no video signal to the TV and the Xbox controller acts like it’s not getting power.

Now I’m thinking it’s a power supply issue so I bought a GenBasic 5V 3A power supply that specifically claims it’s a power supply for Libre computers but I’m still getting the same issues as with the CanaKit power supply.

I know I’m pretty new at this, so I could easily be missing something super obvious to someone else on these forums. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Update: I found an old sd card, flashed Emuelec onto it and now everything seems to boot just fine on the Le Potato and my Xbox controller works with it. So the issue seemed to be the sd card that was in my Le Potato when I plugged the wrong power supply into it.

In an effort to learn something more from this experience, I’m going to keep this post up on the board. I’m still confused as to why my sd card looks and acts perfectly fine when I plug it into my computer, but not the Le Potato? Also, why would a bad sd card interfere with the Le Potato supplying power to my Xbox controller? I’m still trying to learn and hoping to walk away with some knowledge on this one.

Just because it seems to work in a computer does not mean it actually works without error. SBCs read from the cards and require the data to be correct in order to boot properly. If the data is not valid/corrupt, then SBC will attempt to load the faulty code and there’s no guarantees anything works. That’s why we cover this extensively. Bad/fake SD card is a waste of time.

Okay, I appreciate the reply and now feel like I have a better understanding of what went wrong and why.