Orange light no boot blues :)

[feoh]

Hi all.

I'd been running the stock Manjaro 20.08 distro, and somehow in playing around with trying to get sleep to work (Since realized it probably is the magnet positioning) I can no longer boot my Pinebook Pro off of emmc.

In fact, I can't boot it *at all* if the emmc is enabled, even if have a distro that works great if emmc is disabled in the SD slot, like Manjaro 20.08 or mrfixit 2001 debian stretch.

I have a new bigger emmc chip and the emmc to usb adapter coming from HK, but:

A) How could I have gotten myself into such a state? It seems incongruous that you could 'brick' a laptop in this way through software.
B) Is there anything I can do short of replacing the emmc chip?

Thanks in advance. I love the platform and am committed to diving as deep as I need to in order to get going

-Chris

[KC9UDX]

You could erase the eMMC and rewrite U-boot to it. It sounds like so you did was somehow bugger the U-boot portion of the eMMC.

[nightranger73]

It seems latest Manjaro u-boot has some issues. It stays red/orange for at least 10 seconds then it turns green when the kernel is loaded but in my case it won't reboot from SD. I have to power off and turn it on to reboot from SD

The suggested fix from manjaro forum is to revert to
uboot-pinebookpro-bsp

[feoh]

You could erase the eMMC and rewrite U-boot to it.  It sounds like so you did was somehow bugger the U-boot portion of the eMMC.

Thanks, but how? If I boot with the emmc enabled *at all* I get the infinite orange light with no change no matter how long I wait.

I know about the long orange light delay bug prior to regular boot. This is different. It goes orange and stays there, for, hours in  fact.

[KC9UDX]

You'll have to disable the eMMC, power up, and at just the right time during booting, turn it back on. There are instructions here on how to do it safely. The thing is, the PBP is very, very fragile with the bottom taken off. And, if you turn it upright with the bottom off, parts fall out.

Since you're getting a new eMMC and USB adapter, I wouldn't worry about it. Putting the new eMMC in will solve your problem. But you probably will want to "downgrade" the Uboot as suggested.

[feoh]

You'll have to disable the eMMC, power up, and at just the right time during booting, turn it back on.  There are instructions here on how to do it safely.  The thing is, the PBP is very, very fragile with the bottom taken off.  And, if you turn it upright with the bottom off, parts fall out.

Since you're getting a new eMMC and USB adapter, I wouldn't worry about it.  Putting the new eMMC in will solve your problem.  But you probably will want to "downgrade" the Uboot as suggested.

Thanks.

Totally replacing the emmc did indeed fix this. IMO it's awfully bad that Manjaro still references the emmc even when booting from SD, that really threw me for a loop.

[wdt]

>it's awfully bad that Manjaro still references the emmc even when booting from SD,
Nothing to do with manjaro, it is the rk3399 bootrom and its search order (for idbloader/uboot)
If it matters to you, blank the emmc uboot area, but then a bit hard to boot from emmc
(you need blank SD, with a uboot installed to do this, boot from emmc I mean)
This is a good way to "test" uboots, since it is forced to use the one on SD
Do not expect sleep to work well with mainline uboot, the ATF is not right (arm trusted firmware), use bsp
And there is a command, if you get timing wrong,,
echo fe330000.sdhci >/sys/bus/platform/drivers/sdhci-arasan/{un,}bind ,,, emmc switch must be in enabled position