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+--- Thread: My pbp is a sleek, black, flat brick, and won't boot from any kind of media (/showthread.php?tid=14232)
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RE: My pbp is a sleek, black, flat brick, and won't boot from any kind of media - rotwang - 06-22-2021
(06-21-2021, 09:08 PM)straightwalker Wrote: No boot SOLVED
My experience for what it's worth:
I went through all the suggested fixes (described in a previous post: flashing zeros to SPI, checking daughterboard cable, etc) and finally started over. I had tried so many approaches, that I was losing track. I used a second computer, a 2gb HP celeron laptop running puppy Easy OS on a usb stick.
I disabled the 64gb emmc and removed it. I had already flashed the SPI with zeros. That left only the sd slot for booting.
I downloaded balena-Etcher on the HP, unzipped it, and changed permissions to allow execution. I downloaded the Manjaro ARM KDE plasma... 21.06 . I put a 32gb Kingston HC1 "Canvas" sd into a usb multipurpose reader from IOGear Model GRR304SD and put reader into a USB 2.0 port. I used Etcher to flash the 21.06 file onto the sd card. After the file was flashed (5 min), Etcher ran a validation check which failed. I redid the flashing, and the validation check said the flashed image was fine.
So, I loaded the Kingston sd card into the bare bones PBP, held the power switch down for a minute, clicked the tiny reset button on the motherboard, pushed the power switch for a few seconds, AND, for the first time in two weeks, the PBP lit up and went into action.
One down, one to go.
I removed the sd card, enabled the emmc , pushed the power switch and got nothing. So:
I loaded the emmc card on to an Ordroid USBEEMMC (Olympian LED) reader that I bought for the purpose, and put it into the 3.0 USB port on the HP. When mounted, I looked at some of the files and found that I had previously flashed the Manjaro KDE plasma...21.07 file, the one meant for intel machines. Using Etcher again, I flashed the ARM 21.06 file that worked on the sd card.
I reinserted the emmc card in the PBP, and it worked fine. Put the sd card in as well; and that worked.
So, it was all my stupidity. I highly recommend Etcher, the Ordroid USB-Emmc reader, and the IOgear USB reader. I used the pricier sd cards to be safe. If I have trouble in the future, I would not flash zeros to the SPI until every other option failed. It took me days to do and I'm not sure that it was needed.
Loving my PBP.
Your experience leaves me with the frustratingly remote possibility that the problem _is_ software and not something physically wrong with the sdcard reader. I am not super excited to go out and buy multiple high-quality SD cards, a usb connector for flashing the SPI, and a eMMC-to-USB reader, and then spend weeks more futzing around with this thing only to find out the sd card reader is physically not working anyway.
And it just seems much more likely that (in my case) the sd card reader is not working because Manjaro wasn't detecting the sd card the one time it booted after the keyboard was replaced. (That's the same sd card and arch linux image that Manjardo _did_ detect and boot from _before_ the keyboard was replaced.)
Given all that, wouldn't y'all say that the most likely explanation of what happened to my machine is the sd card reader got hosed when support replaced the keyboard, and that was followed by me hosing the eMMC with a uboot flash and Manjaro update? Leaving me with no way to boot my machine.
Should I go back to PINE64 support now? Or do you think I should get some cables and start messing around with flashing the SPI?
Thanks for all the ideas! I do like trying these things, but on the other hand I've had this PBP for like two months now and it has booted exactly twice. I look forward to the day where I'm wrestling with Arch linux's idiosyncrasies instead of the PBP's.
RE: My pbp is a sleek, black, flat brick, and won't boot from any kind of media - KC9UDX - 06-22-2021
In my opinion, it's more likely that your SD cards spontaneously stopped working. It does happen. I'm not using expensive SD cards, and I don't know about you, but I can never seem to have enough of them anyway. The cards from Pine64 aren't expensive as far as I recall, but they might take a while to get.
Do *not* do anything with SPI flash unless you know for sure that it somehow got written to. In that case, only erase it. But I wouldn't even worry about that at this point.
RE: My pbp is a sleek, black, flat brick, and won't boot from any kind of media - wdt - 06-22-2021
I'll echo the above advice,, leave SPI alone, unless you KNOW that you have written to it
As i said above, manjaro has put out bad uboots,
unless there is a specific KNOWN advantage, leave a working uboot alone
A emmc adapter is not so expensive, ameridroid might be quicker
When you have emmc out, you may try long presses as above
Does it go without saying?? after long press a regular 1-2s start press,
a quick tap is NOT enough
For SD cards, the best start with "S", some others are OK, but usually not as good
I prefer samsung
RE: My pbp is a sleek, black, flat brick, and won't boot from any kind of media - rotwang - 06-23-2021
(06-22-2021, 08:32 PM)wdt Wrote: I'll echo the above advice,, leave SPI alone, unless you KNOW that you have written to it
As i said above, manjaro has put out bad uboots,
unless there is a specific KNOWN advantage, leave a working uboot alone
A emmc adapter is not so expensive, ameridroid might be quicker
When you have emmc out, you may try long presses as above
Does it go without saying?? after long press a regular 1-2s start press,
a quick tap is NOT enough
For SD cards, the best start with "S", some others are OK, but usually not as good
I prefer samsung
Alrighty, on the advice of y'all I'll get the eMMC adapter (and some more SD cards) and try re-flashing the eMMC on a different machine. I'm fairly confident I'll be able to get it to boot that way. I think it's less about the cost of the eMMC adapter than that I don't want to wait for it to come in the mail! And it will suck even more if I get the eMMC booting and still have to send the PBP back to get the SD reader fixed.
Thanks yos, I'll let you know how it goes!
RE: My pbp is a sleek, black, flat brick, and won't boot from any kind of media - rotwang - 07-19-2021
OK just to wrap up this discussion:
Nearly a month later I finally have my emmc->USB reader in my hand. I flashed Manjaro onto the emmc, reinstalled it into my PBP, and as predicted, it booted fine.
As I also predicted, my brand new USC Class 3 SD card does not boot and is not detected by Manjaro running on the emmc. It also does not show up in lsblk at all. (Though the USB port on that side _does_ work, so it isn't the mini-board that's toasted.) My best guess remains the same as 6 weeks ago when I first posted: when the PINE 64 folks replaced my keyboard I think they killed my SD port.
Any final suggestions for an SD port not working before I send it back to PINE 64 (again)?
Thanks!
RE: My pbp is a sleek, black, flat brick, and won't boot from any kind of media - bkenn - 08-24-2021
(06-21-2021, 09:08 PM)straightwalker Wrote: No boot SOLVED
My experience for what it's worth:
I went through all the suggested fixes (described in a previous post: flashing zeros to SPI, checking daughterboard cable, etc) and finally started over. I had tried so many approaches, that I was losing track. I used a second computer, a 2gb HP celeron laptop running puppy Easy OS on a usb stick.
I disabled the 64gb emmc and removed it. I had already flashed the SPI with zeros. That left only the sd slot for booting.
I downloaded balena-Etcher on the HP, unzipped it, and changed permissions to allow execution. I downloaded the Manjaro ARM KDE plasma... 21.06 . I put a 32gb Kingston HC1 "Canvas" sd into a usb multipurpose reader from IOGear Model GRR304SD and put reader into a USB 2.0 port. I used Etcher to flash the 21.06 file onto the sd card. After the file was flashed (5 min), Etcher ran a validation check which failed. I redid the flashing, and the validation check said the flashed image was fine.
So, I loaded the Kingston sd card into the bare bones PBP, held the power switch down for a minute, clicked the tiny reset button on the motherboard, pushed the power switch for a few seconds, AND, for the first time in two weeks, the PBP lit up and went into action.
One down, one to go.
I removed the sd card, enabled the emmc , pushed the power switch and got nothing. So:
I loaded the emmc card on to an Ordroid USBEEMMC (Olympian LED) reader that I bought for the purpose, and put it into the 3.0 USB port on the HP. When mounted, I looked at some of the files and found that I had previously flashed the Manjaro KDE plasma...21.07 file, the one meant for intel machines. Using Etcher again, I flashed the ARM 21.06 file that worked on the sd card.
I reinserted the emmc card in the PBP, and it worked fine. Put the sd card in as well; and that worked.
So, it was all my stupidity. I highly recommend Etcher, the Ordroid USB-Emmc reader, and the IOgear USB reader. I used the pricier sd cards to be safe. If I have trouble in the future, I would not flash zeros to the SPI until every other option failed. It took me days to do and I'm not sure that it was needed.
Loving my PBP.
-----------------------
This is another NOOB who was reading your problem trying to solve mine. This post did it! A simple problem that looked like I was going to have to pop the back and get tools, etc. I put the wrong OS on my SD card!!!!! That is why it would not boot. Sometimes - maybe most of the times - it can be the simple things that mess us up. Especially me.