I want to use i2c-0 as well as i2c-1 in my project. i2c-0 connects to the TP port for use with the touchpanel by default. On the baseboard are 2k pullups between the TWI0-{SCK,SDA} pins and VCC-CTP.
I found that with with the pull-ups installed (R96 and R97), external pull-ups to 3v3 just create a voltage divider and the TWI0 pins don't go high enough for the A64 to detect the i2c bus is idle. (I first tried removing the ferrite bead, FB3, attempting to sever the connection to VCC-CTP, but that didn't make a difference.) I suspect the problem is that VCC-CTP isn't enabled and is instead acting as a strong pull-down.
So here's what I did to make TWI0 functional from Linux on SO-Pine + Baseboard; I think the same should work on standard Pine64.
De-solder R96, R97, and FB3.
Solder wires to the center 2 test points on the group of 6 directly behind the TP connector on the bottom of the board
Connect your wires to external pullup resistors to 3v3. I used Pin 0 on the Pi2 bus for 3v3.
Alternatively there's surely a way to enable VCC-CTP; this is shown as a 3v3 regulator in the AXP803 chip on the SOPINE schematic. With this enabled, one could get 3v3 and ground from the test pads on the back, as well. Or use an appropriately sized ribbon cable. If someone knows how to enable this, please share. I didn't find this while searching.
Loaded up the Longsleep Ubuntu on my working 2gb Pine. But on a working HDMI I'm getting "Format not supported." I didn't find anything in the Wiki or this forum.
What should I try to get HDMI working?, sam
Hi guys, I'm running kernel 7.1 with build https://github.com/ayufan-pine64/android.../tag/0.1.1 in Pine A64+.
Sometime during the boot, there's kernel panic and boot failed. Have to replug-in the power to reset.
Following is boot log get from serial port, kernel panic due to bug:
I have a 14” Pinebook prototype that was used for testing and QA at the beginning of the year. In the process of testing the unit got damaged and no longer works (which doesn’t matter anyways, as current images are not compatible with this hardware). Since it just sits there and takes up space, I figured that I will tear it down so we can better understand how these things are put together in case someone wishes to mod or repair their unit. Now, those more observant of you will surely notice that this 14” design is different to its production counterpart, and more akin in some respects to the 11” unit, so keep that in mind if you ever want to attempt any repairs or modifications on a production Pinebook.
I think it important to mention that you should not reproduce this disassembly as it may damage your unit and will void your warranty.
[TL : DR] Here are some key points if you don’t want to read the entire post:
Replacing the screen isn’t all ‘that’ difficult and...
replacing most components isn’t particularly difficult either, with the notable exception of...
... the keyboard, which is rather hard to remove from the chassis.
Unfortunately I cannot embed pictures in this post so they will be hyperlinked. You can also find all pictures from the teardown here.
The first thing I took apart was the screen (stupid of me - I should have removed it from the body first...oh well). The screen is held in place by plastic hooks which run all around the bezel of the screen. There are also four metal pegs holding it in place which located under the squishy pads / standoffs on each corner of the bezel. The plastic hooks release easily when a pry-tool is inserted but the metal pegs require considerably more force to come undone. If you do it super gently few marks will remain on the plastic. I can confirm that the construction is the same is true on the 11” production model.
Inside, the LCD is held in place by four screws - 2 at the bottom and 2 on top. Other than that we also find the webcam, which is connected to the same cable as the LCD panel, and two magnets for the hall switch. That’s pretty much all there is - not that you would expect anything else. [edit] It appears that on the 11” production unit the wifi antenna is also routed inside the the screen, so one should be careful not to tear it by accident when separating the bezel from the back of the lid.
To remove the screen from the body of the laptop - which I should have done in the first place - you will need to take of the bottom cover. The bottom cover is only held in place by 10 philips screws so it comes off very easily; lift it from the front and gently pull up.
To separate the screen from the body, all that is needed is to undo the hinges on both sides and the screen connector located on the main board. The hinges are held in place with philips screws and come right out. After removing the screws, the hinges need to be carefully bent back to a 90* angle (as if the Pinebook would be normally used) and to separate the screen all one needs to do is push it away (back) from the body. If the hinges are ‘flat’ it is very difficult to separate remove the screen/ lid.
Onto further disassembly. The first thing that needs to go is the battery. The battery connector on the main board pops up and out when gently lifted from the bottom. The battery itself is held in place by a couple of screws - there is no adhesive, so removing it is very easy.
Next up the daughterboard on the left side of the body (when viewed upside-down from atop). It’s held in place by two large screws and some adhesive tape. There is only one connector for a ffc cable held down by a hinge that needs to be lifted. You will need to gently pull up and away from the plastic case to remove it, because the USB socket sits inside the plastic.
Onto the main board. Here you will have to separate the 5 more cables (from left to right as viewed from atop): the microphone, cable running under the battery to the daughterboard, the microphone, the large flex cable is for the keyboard, trackpad and lastly speakers (LCD + camera and battery have already been removed). For the daughterboard, keyboard and trackpad cables, simply lift up the hinge and slide the cable out. For the microphone and speaker cables, wiggle the connectors out from their sockets (don’t pull by the cables - they look fragile). The mainboard is held in place by 4 more of those same screws as found on the daughterboard. To remove it from the chassis, lift it up on the far end of the board and pull away from the plastic where the Micro SD, USB and headphone sockets sit.
With most of the stuff out already the harder part begins, namely trackpad and keyboard removal. First things first - unclip the cable that connects the trackpad to the mainboard by lifting the hinge and sliding out the cable. I will return to the trackpad in a bit…
Onto the keyboard. The keyboard is located under the metal cover which held in place by a couple of philips screws and plastic ‘tabs’. After removing the screws comes the hardest part of the disassembly as you will have to remove, one by one, all the plastic tabs protruding through the metal. I chose to cut of the tips of the plastic using a precision knife and it took me a long time. It’s clear that this part of the assembly was never meant to be removed by the end user (do note, I have since reassembled the keyboard and removing the plastic tabs has significantly affected the rigidity not only of the keyboard but also entire bottom section). Once all tabs are cut, you can lift it up and push it towards the back and the keyboard will slide right out as it is not held in place by glue or adhesive tape. About the keyboard; the keycaps come right off and snap back with ease. The keys have a butterfly-like assembly under which there is a dome.
Lastly, there are the speakers. They are held down with adhesive but can easily be popped out by placing a pry tool in the cable-routing hole and gently pushing up.
And so the teardown is complete. I also managed to reassemble everything without relative ease. I don't know if anything was broken in the process (other than the sturdiness of the keyboard) since the unit was already broken in the first place. If I were iFixit I'd probably rate this device a solid 10/10 because the unit is, for the most part, put together using regular screws and clamps which make things easy to remove and refit. Also, very little adhesive and glue was used on this particular pinebook which is a big plus for repairability.
I checked for updates in Ubuntu Mate and there were a few. Went to install them and it told me that there wasn't enough space in /boot to download. It needed an additional 17 meg.
Looks like it's using the boot partition to download and install updates... need to have it use another partition with more space but I'm not sure how to go about doing that.
I received my 14” Pinebook on 5 May. Paid on 25 April. I don’t know when I put my name of the BTO list but it must have been early.
The package was delivered by DHL. The PineBook was packaged in a plastic “waffle” case for protection. (A note says that this is a shipping case designed for one time use. It did have a few minor cracks from shipping but it did it’s job of protecting the PineBook.) It doesn’t have any external logos but comes with a set of stickers.
I turned it on and it booted Ubuntu Mate. This first boot took a long time but subsequent boot times are less than 30 seconds. Shutdown and wake up when closing and opening the lid works well.
Since the package also included a note to check for an update of the OS, I installed the Pine64 Install utility on my OSX laptop. I was able to download the latest build 20170505. The installed did have some problems with the download as it disconnected about 5 times during the download but fortunately it was smart enough to resume where it left off. After that, I wrote an SD card, put it in the PineBook and booted. It found the new image and automatically installed it and the new image booted up quickly.
I also tried out the Android 6.0 build 20170411 which is the only other option available in the install utility. This also installed automatically from the SD card and booted to Android. The USB next to the power jack doesn’t work on this but a mouse does work on the right side USB port. The HDMI port mirrors the display. (Set it to 720p)
I used the Pine64 Installer to try out the Android 7.1 image (you can drag an image into the installer) and this successfully started to boot but got hung up during the Android animations with a system process failed to start timeout. This did (start to) boot from the SD card and did not install itself in the eMMC memory.
There are two microphone symbols and holes on the case. Informal testing (with Android 6 image) seems to indicate that only the left hand microphone is active.
Initial assessment.
Well, it’s amazing! I bought this pretty much as an impulse purchase to see what was possible with a $99 laptop. It runs great and is quite responsive. The keyboard requires deliberate typing or you will miss keystrokes. The screen is very good for straight on viewing but fades rapidly to the sides (vertical worse than horizontal). The mouse pad is responsive but I did end up with a lot of sudden mouse shifts when clicking. I think I need some practice with it.
The specs mentioned that it can boot from the SD card or internal memory and that would be nice to have multiple OS options rather than installing everything to internal memory (and wiping out the old installation in the process). I’m not sure how to do that. (Android 7.1 image does this)
All in all, I’m very impressed by this $99 notebook. It’s clearly not up to the performance and hardware of a $1000 notebook but for 1/10 the cost, it’s an effective notebook. Once a few niggling software issues are resolved, it should function well.
If you are an experienced Linux user then this post is probably not for you, but if you are new to Linux and the Mate desktop then here are a few pointers on how to make the Pinebook your own. To keep this post as newbie friendly as possible I decided to stay completely clear of the command line and focused on what's already there in the GUI. Before you read this post I’d also like to make it clear that what I outline below is not something you have to do, but rather something you may wish to do.
First things first; before you start tweaking things to your liking, make sure to download the Installer utility to your computer and flash the newest Ubuntu Mate OS image to your Pinebook.
Now you are ready to roll:
1) Creating a new user
Creating a new user may just be the first thing to do after the initial boot. All first and third party images (bar Armbian) come with a preset user and password. The stock user on the Pinebook Ubuntu image is called ‘pine64’. Many if not most users will be perfectly fine with being referred to as ‘pine64’ and having a home folder called ‘pine64’s home folder’, but some of you may wish to have a user and home folder in your prefered name. Now, there are ways to rename the existing user and home folder, but they require a bit of tinkering in the command line. Therefore the easiest option is to create a new user from scratch in GUI. To do so, logged in as pine64 navigate to: System → Administrations → Users and Groups. Once the Users Settings window opens, click +Add in the lower left corner and follow instructions. Once you’ve created your user, select your newly creased profile and navigate to Account Type and select Change. You will be given two options, make sure to set your new user as Administrator and exit. Now you can log off pine64 and log into your user name. Logged in as your new user, you can now remove pine64 by navigating to Users and Groups, selecting ‘pine64’ and clicking Delete.
2) The desktop environment layout
Out-of-the-box the Mate desktop looks near identical to old-school Gnome2 that many longtime Linux users recognise and enjoy. While this is great for (some) old-school users accustomed to this type of workflow, those of you coming from Windows or Mac OSX may find it a bit alien. Luckily the mate desktop comes with a pretty nifty utility called Mate Tweak which allows you to quickly and easily adjust the desktop environment to your liking. You will find the Mate Tweak utility under: System → Preferences → Look and Feel → MATE Tweak. The utility has three tabs: Desktop, Interface and Icons. Under Desktop you can choose which icons, if any, will appear on your desktop. Interface allows you to change the actual layout of the desktop. The first drop-down menu has a number of preset layouts which you can choose from. Surely many of you will quickly recognise that Cupertino and Redmond (Apple and Microsoft’s campus towns) refer to Mac OSX and Windows layouts. Lastly, in the Windows panel you can also switch the close, minimise and maximise button position from right to left by switching from ‘traditional’ to ‘contemporary’.
3) Themes and Icons
There is nearly an endless amount of themes available for the Mate desktop. The stock theme that ships with the image is alright and functional, but I find darker and ‘flatter’ themes easier on the eyes. To change the desktop theme, navigate to System→ Preferences → Look and Feel → Appearance. You will find that Mate comes with a number of preset themes which you can choose from. It is also possible to further mix and match the look of the desktop by clicking the Customise button. The Customise button with open an new panel in which you’ll find Controls; Colours; Window Border: Icons; and Pointer tabs, all of which are pretty self-explanatory. Aside from the various pre-existing themes and icon-sets, you can also download many others from Noobslab and other similar sites. Noteworthily, you can also set your wallpaper in the appearance window – just navigate to the ‘Background’ panel. Wallpapers can also be set by right-clicking the desktop and selecting ‘Change Desktop Background’.
4) Applets and custom launchers
Applets are indicators which can be added to the top and/or bottom panel(s). Custom applets can display weather, notify you of new email, relay SoC performance, allow you to adjust some GUI parameters on the fly, etc. To add new applets right-click a panel and select ‘Add to panel’ - a new window will open and you will be presented with a number of applets to choose from. On the pinebook, I strongly suggest adding the LCD Brightness applet, which allows you to easily set the desired brightness levels of your screen. You can also create your own application launchers. Launchers can run applications in both GUI and the terminal. I will use Chromium browser as an example; if you follow Prophesi’s guide to installing Chromium, you will notice that it requires a flag to work. Rather than launching Chromium from the terminal, you can create custom launcher to include the required flag. Select and add ‘Custom Application Launcher’, name the launcher Chromium and paste the command including the flag in in the ‘Command’ box. The launcher should recognise the application name and set the correct icon for it automatically; if it doesn’t, you can manually select an image by pressing the icon box. Your Chromium launcher is now ready to use.
If you know what sort of desktop experience you’re after then completing points 1-4 should take no longer than a couple of minutes. I find that it's worth putting in the time and making the desktop experience suit your needs and preferences – after all this is Linux, so it's all about how you prefer to interact with the operating system.
Did I forget about something or leave out some important information? - let me know.
Edit: Having tinkered a bit with the desktop I arrived at this - I'm enjoy Apple's desktop paradigm, hence the dock and the top bar. Unfortunately I can't embed the image because there's a limit on the number of attachments
