DOA pin64 2GB - what now?

[bongo]

i got my 2gb pine64 yesterday.

- i first tried to install android (latest rooted version) but all i got was the red led. btw: i created the flashcard using the "usb image tool", as phoenix did not accept this image.
- next try i gave to the android phoenix card image, which i burnt using the phoenix tool. creating the flashcard succeeded on the 2nd try. again the same effect. only the red led.
- 3rd try i was using debian jessie. again the same. nothing but the red led ;-(

i did this test using a kingston 16gb micro sd, which was tested to be fine and has successfully been used with a raspi before.
i tried two power supplies which both are rated 2A and have been used with a raspi.

all i have connected to the pine64 is the hdmi monitor.

i measured the current, drawn from the power supply. after turning on, it's at about 400mA, going down to in between 250mA and 300mA after some time.

what else can i do?

looks like i got a dead one ;-(

[lenny.raposo-pine64.pro]

Hey bongo can you tell me what display you have connected, in other words is it a tv/lcd that supports full 1080p?

Let me know mate

[tkaiser]

i measured the current, drawn from the power supply. after turning on, it's at about 400mA, going down to in between 250mA and 300mA after some time.

Good catch and that means your board boots nicely but display negotiation fails (known problem and as expected unless you use a direct HDMI connection to a screen capable of 1080p60)

Using Android/RemixOS will be challenging when you connect Ethernet to the board since on 1st boot it will remain at the splash screen forever (you can wait even years and nothing will happen) and on 2GB boards the driver will crash later.

See also http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=514

[bongo]

ok, looks like this helped!
thanx a lot!

i've tried 2 different monitors, one with 1024p and one with 1050p. they both showed nothing.
now i tried with a 1080p monitor...magic...linux shows a picture.

so now i moved to android, and this boots too.

Q1:
so how can i change hdmi resolution to support something else than 1080p?
android allows me to configure for 720p, but doing so, the pine64 still provides 1080p.

Q2:
and how can i connect to the internet, i inserted an usb wifi donge (used this on a raspi before) but it seems that this is not recognized by the pine64 as i have neither a mac nor does it seem to see an wifi networks.
does the pine64 only work with wired network?

[Ghost]

ok, looks like this helped!
thanx a lot!

i've tried 2 different monitors, one with 1024p and one with 1050p. they both showed nothing.
now i tried with a 1080p monitor...magic...linux shows a picture.

so now i moved to android, and this boots too.

Q1:
so how can i change hdmi resolution to support something else than 1080p?
android allows me to configure for 720p, but doing so, the pine64 still provides 1080p.

Q2:
and how can i connect to the internet, i inserted an usb wifi donge (used this on a raspi before) but it seems that this is not recognized by the pine64 as i have neither a mac nor does it seem to see an wifi networks.
does the pine64 only work with wired network?

Adjusting resolution via the software menu in Android is currently non-functional. Hoping for a fix for this in an upcoming update.

Pine64 works using the WiFi/Bluetooth accessory available during the kickstarter campaign, but not with usb WiFi dongles as of yet, as I understand it because the necessary software isn't in place for the Pine to recognise and utilise them properly.

[tkaiser]

ok, looks like this helped!

And now think about how cool it would be if this very basic limitation that applies to ALL AVAILABLE OS IMAGES out there would be written to the download page so that new users don't have to waste their time again and again and that the very same 'is my board DOA?' question could've be avoided.

Regarding your other questions: Nope, only 1080p60 available on both Linux and Android based images. Wired Ethernet in Linux images has been fixed by the only active community developer here 4 weeks ago and wireless USB dongles except of the SDIO connected WiFi/BT board do not work simply because Allwinner forgot to enable them in their kernel.

So using Linux you've no problem using GPIO related stuff and Ethernet now and with the next kernel update also a huge variety of wireless dongles (this is community driven development) with Android/RemixOS you're simply lost at the moment (this is vendor driven development).

[bongo]

thanx for the infos!
so this means that wired ethernet will not work with android?
i.e. i won't be able do have any internet connection from android?
or did i misunderstand?
thanx!

[tkaiser]

The Ethernet driver code we got from Allwinner is obviously untested 32-bit code. With the availability of the 2GB board variant an integer overflow in the specific driver has been discovered. This has been fixed in longsleep's kernel weeks ago: https://github.com/longsleep/linux-pine6...6021a4484f

As far as I know both latest Android image and RemixOS image do not contain the aforementioned fix. Unfortunately the 'release notes' in the wiki are just laughable since everything that would be relevant is supressed there: http://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pine_A6...ge_Release

Simply try it out. If you're affected RemixOS will reboot. Maybe the Android image is not affected but this is then due to another bug that prevents using the whole 2 GB DRAM. At least with the first Android images only 1 GB is detected on 2 GB boards and therefore the Ethernet bug isn't triggered. So you either run in problems due to Ethernet driver crashes causing reboots or performance degradation since you can't use the full 2 GB RAM. Great, isn't it?

[rahlquist]

ok, looks like this helped!
thanx a lot!

i've tried 2 different monitors, one with 1024p and one with 1050p. they both showed nothing.
now i tried with a 1080p monitor...magic...linux shows a picture.

I feel your pain. I have tried a total now of 7 TVs and monitors (both with hdmi and also with a hdmi to vga adapter on 4 of them) and only 1 works with the Pine. 

The pine folks griped in their last update that 8 out of every 10 of the returned DOA boards were still working fine, guess they should have made sure the boards did something simple like say, output video to more than one resolution....