problem turned out to be that the SD card mounting socket

A Micro sd card adaptor , is used for this SD module but the SD card socket did not connect to the SD card well

I have found this problem on several sd modules from ebay that i had on hand , with 4 failing out of 10 in the end
pushing the adaptor card in and holding it in place solved the init problem , for a test , but clearly a better socket is need when using a sd card it seems than the cheep ebay ones

regards

sheldon