It does, it lights up green or red depending on the state (charging or turned on) and I have tried with the original and a second cable I have. The light does not flicker so I doubt that it is a faulty connector. I did read through the last two updates on this board. One thing I did notice was that somebody ran into a similar problem, in which they tried to install an update directly on the Flasher instead of adding directly through Apps, which resulted in the same black screen. Would you think this happened with mine? (Please take into account that my 4-year old son plays with it so I am assuming he probably messed with the options to boot under Start+Right, Select+A,etc.)