(10-03-2016, 11:33 PM)tampadave Wrote: Topgun505,

Welcome aboard!  As mentioned, you're going to learn lots and quickly.  Your first lesson being: "WTF???!"  Ahh.. the subtle joys of hacking!

Now.  My first PB (pine boot) was from an early 8 gig image onto a card that was supposed to be 64GB.  Got it at "Best Buy."  Thought it was a sandisk.  It turned out to be a waste of money.  Just dd'ng that image onto the card worked fine, it was only 8 gb into it.  When I expanded the partitions to use the whole card, that's when card i/o errors started popping up and the whole thing failed.

Went and got a 32GB class 10 sandisk from WalMart, imaged it with"xubuntu-xenial-mate-20160528-longsleep-pine64-8GB.img", and it worked.  

Like it's been said, the pine64 does not have a bios.  It doesn't post.  My display is an hdtv, hdmi 1.4.  The thing about hdmi is hdcp.  Unless the connection clears an encryption handshake, it's not going to display.  So unless the boot gets past that, you'll not see a thing.

I'm betting that if you are using an hdtv, the input shows up and you're able to pick it, but then it goes out.  hdcp.  Sucks.

Anyway, I use GNU/Linux to burn my images, dcfldd specifically.  And just to avoid complications, I do it from a tty device, not from within a window manager.  dd is the goto tool for this stuff.  But so far as I know, Windows doesn't have it.

Because your ARE now using GNU/Linux, I recommend you set up your main pc to dual boot W#/Linux.  Ubuntu is the most accessible distribution I've used, and it is popular because it is easy and full blown GNU/Linux.  (It doesn't try to look or be like Windows.)

The pine64 sits inside a number of categories, including embedded computing (due to the arm64/AArch64 cpu), and there are goobs of things you can do with this board.

In case you suspect a doa (pretty sure is isn't), you can access it through the top usb port, which is an OTG port, and so long as there in NO microSD card in it, do a FEL Boot:

Code:

https://linux-sunxi.org/FEL/USBBoot

will get you started, and that will give a sanity check on the pine64.  You'll need an "A plug" to "A plug" cable, which is not common.  I've been looking for an easy way to sanity check these boards, and there are a number of ways to do that, but none of them are "easy," using stuff an ordinary user would have on hand.  (Which drives a point: you are no longer an ordinary user.)  ssh was mentioned, but that likely does not work if hdcp is failing, which it is.  I've only suggested the FEL boot because I've done it, and it verified the board for me, at which point I proceeded to get a good image onto a good microSD, and now it works.

I do not know how much you know, about this stuff, though I see you've said you are new to GNU/Linux.  This can be overwhelming at first, cause you know how to do stuff in "dos" but now you're in linux.  It is almost easier, I think, if you knew nothing at all, cause it will frustrate you when things work differently.  They are different here.  Better too, but you'll have to see that for yourself.

As is the case in all learning, none of this is hard once you're familiar with what you are doing, and what you are doing it with.  Booting to GNU/Linux and using that to work with this (pine64) overcomes many of your initial difficulties, because you'll be able to use the same tools used to build the pine64 in the first place.  Think of it as "leveling" on the quick.  This should help too:

Code:

https://learn.adafruit.com/what-is-the-command-line

Knowledge without experience is just an idea.  You're now becoming truly knowledgeable about computers.  Heck, later you can even build your own kernel!  Something you'll NEVER be able to do in M$.

Wow I sure do like to type....



David

(10-06-2016, 02:55 PM)Topgun505 Wrote: To be totally honest I knew it wasn't going to be easy.  I knew learning a new system would take some time.  I had seen the steps to get the image on the SD card and it didn't seem that bad ... But if it is going to turn into a huge project JUST to get the bloody thing booted up it's almost starting to sound like more trouble than it's worth...<edit> ...most of what has been suggested thus far has been largely greek to me and has just been rather frustrating.

(10-06-2016, 02:55 PM)Topgun505 Wrote: To be totally honest I knew it wasn't going to be easy.  I knew learning a new system would take some time.  I had seen the steps to get the image on the SD card and it didn't seem that bad ... But if it is going to turn into a huge project JUST to get the bloody thing booted up it's almost starting to sound like more trouble than it's worth.  Sorry but I'm not setting my main pc in a duel boot mode just to get this thing up and working.  And the monitor currently being used is the only monitor I have available to try and get this thing working.
 To answer early questions ... no ... know ABSOLUTELY ZERO about Linux of any sort.  Nor am I much on networking either so most of what has been suggested thus far has been largely greek to me and has just been rather frustrating.