Pinebook Pro only started once

[River]

Pinebook Pro only started once, after that  I got black screen and see green power light on. 

I don't know what to do.  I have no other  linux machines.  but I do have working windows machines. 

Advice in discord  did fix it  since  no one  knows exactly  how to make a micro SD card in windows work.  I tried but it's not working. 
I'm not even sure I'm using rigt file.

some people in discord said to use SPI  file, then other people would come into discord and say no SPI file can't be made in windows.  at this point It has been many hours and screen is still black .   

people in discord seem to disagree on metod.   some will say to make a tow - boot but I can't make it work in  Etcher. 
some say don't do that.   I'm not sure which  are the correct steps  since I'm getting conflicting  information. 

All I know is  Pinebook  doesn't work, black screen and only every booted  up into Manjaro One single time.

[KC9UDX]

Don't do anything with the SPI ROM. Don't mess with tow-boot at this point. As I said in the other thread, use a different computer to re-flash your eMMC.

Unfortunately this is sort of common for Manjaru to do this. But if you keep up on incremental updates, it doesn't happen (as far as I know).

[River]

Don't do anything with the SPI ROM.  Don't mess with tow-boot at this point.  As I said in the other thread, use a different computer to re-flash your eMMC.

Unfortunately this is sort of common for Manjaru to do this.  But if you keep up on incremental updates, it doesn't happen (as far as I know).

also when you say using another computer  to re-flash te eMMC.   
how do I physically attach the EmmC module to another PC? 
Can the other PC be windows computer since my only other PC is windows.

[KC9UDX]

You can get an adaptor to connect the eMMC module to a USB port. Pine64 sells them; they may be available elsewhere, I have no idea. You can use Windows. I won't be able to help with that though as I don't run Windows.

You will of course need to remove the eMMC from the PBP, which isn't all that bad.

[River]

Thanks I will purchase one of those. I have Manjaro KDE installed now and PINEbook Pro works. Several people in live discord chat guided me through install.

I had to fix Permissions for Etcher inside Windows Virus Settings to allow it to make Micro SD card. then was able to make 2 working SD cards both with Armbian on them
a 16GB and a 32GB MicroSD worked ( I used the XFCE version here https://www.armbian.com/pinebook-pro/ ) .
Booted into Armbian, and then used some commands to download and install Manjaro KDE to the EMMC (where it was corrupted).

I also successfully made a 8GB MicroSD in Etcher, but for whatever reason , it refused to boot in the PBP (maybe it's too small to actually work).
I don't know the minimum size for MicroSD card you need but only 16GB and up booted for me.

[KC9UDX]

Most of the ones I use are 8Gb. I'm not sure why a smaller one wouldn't work, but it may have something to do with the way Etcher works. Now that you have Manjaru working, you could use it to write an 8Gb card and see if that works. Also, it would be worthwhile to know if the 16Gb one you made still works. If it doesn't, that probably means that the U-boot that came with Manjaru will not allow you to boot from micro-SD card anymore.

[River]

Most of the ones I use are 8Gb.  I'm not sure why a smaller one wouldn't work, but it may have something to do with the way Etcher works.  Now that you have Manjaru working, you could use it to write an 8Gb card and see if that works.  Also, it would be worthwhile to know if the 16Gb one you made still works.  If it doesn't, that probably means that the U-boot that came with Manjaru will not allow you to boot from micro-SD card anymore.

Manjaro no longer works ,  I  got to point I was so frustrated  trying to get tow boot to work that I now have tried  most every method I could find in the different forums.  The last method was to Delete the UBOOT From EMMC- Manjaro.

But before I did that I made SPI.Installer.img   SD cards  2-3 of them and none of them boot.
I  also  Inside of manjaro before I deleted the UBOOT  from it,   I   deleted the    SPI  flash chip   /dev/mtd0   and   SPI  SD won't boot.  I also tried to direct write to it   and tow boot will not boot from the SPI chip   and it will not boot from  SD card with spi.installer.  and it will not boot  if I  write the  Tow-BOOT...bin  to the SPI chip directly either.

This was the last suggestion I tried, deleting UBOOT From the EMMC Manjaro . which is why manjaro does not boot now. it did not help. the SD cards with SPI do not boot up.
https://github.com/Tow-Boot/Tow-Boot/iss...1256913300

[wdt]

Because the pbp has a battery, if it gets into a "bad" state, it can remember that
3 ways to recover from that,,,
unplug battery for some hours, perhaps a day
equivalently, press reset inside OR hold pwr button down, 20+ sec
I think you can figure which is easiest
Don't ever put a sd with an A64 OS in (and try to boot), or you will have to do this
------
But reading again, it (pbp) is not locked up
I assume your 16G armbian sd still boots???
Why not write tow boot to emmc,, use ONLY these not anything with spi in name
-rw-rw-r-- 1 d d 80473 Jan 23 2021 idbloader.img
-rw-rw-r-- 1 d d 80258 Jan 23 2021 u-boot.itb
In the normal location, ie 64 sectors, 8M

[River]

Because the pbp has a battery, if it gets into a "bad" state, it can remember that
3 ways to recover from that,,,
unplug battery for some hours, perhaps a day
equivalently, press reset inside OR hold pwr button down, 20+ sec
I think you can figure which is easiest
Don't ever put a sd with an A64 OS in (and try to boot), or you will have to do this
------
But reading again, it (pbp) is not locked up
I assume your 16G armbian sd still boots???
Why not write tow boot to emmc,, use ONLY these not anything with spi in name
-rw-rw-r-- 1 d d 80473 Jan 23  2021 idbloader.img
-rw-rw-r-- 1 d d 80258 Jan 23  2021 u-boot.itb
In the normal location, ie 64 sectors, 8M

This is most likely  a BUG in Tow-BOOT Display Driver.   which is why I can not install it at all presently.
I am able  to Install OS on emmc, so I'm fine there.  What held me back for many days was trying to get Tow-boot to work and that is not happening because of  this bug in display driver that boots with the Tow-Boot SPI.installer.

My SD cards all work, my SD Armbian works, I ever got  SD Postmarket to work, and SD Manjaro to work.
I'm able to install OS to  EMMC also  since I put both  Manjaro on there (which I broke on purpose yesterday deleting the UBOOT since that was one method from 1 poster in Tow-Boot issues and we wanted to try every  method posted in Tow-boot issues as well).  Then I installed Postmarket OS just fine using the Postmarket  Install  SD,  but that did not fix the issue either. 

After  many days of testing many different things with several  volunteers in  Pine64 Pinebook  chat room (discord)  and doing pretty much every possible thing except removing the SPI  chip and getting the same symptoms,  Screen would just  turn on Dark blue and no Tow boot Icon, no text, no error messages. 
It  turns out it's probably a Display bug in Tow-Boot affecting some  editions of Pinebook Pro.  Many people are having similar problems and reported it to  Issues ticket in  Tow-Boot also, I hope they are able to  release a new one with a fix for the display bug.

TL_Lim  was following  the attempted troubleshooting in  Pinebook Chat and said this last night:
[T] <tl_lim>  ...I suspect is tow-boot's display driver bug. From your description, your PBP indeed boot up from the tow-boot SD card and your observe the green status LED. My takes the LCD display driver that tow-boot using may not have correct LCD timing and cause some LCD display cannot lock the display team and this is why no display. I think someone already file such issue on tow-boot GitHub and hopefully this issue can be resolved soon by update LCD driver. I think your PBP SPI Flash is OK and no need to desold


The Troubleshooting  we did was pretty exhastive of every single  suggestion posted in Pine Forums and also things people did in  Tow-Boot Github Issues:

- wrote Tow-Boot..bin  to  SPI directly from inside Linux on PBPro  but when it boots, just see empty dark blue screen and nothing happens.  (this was attempted 10 times from inside 3 different Linux distros on PBPro).
- burned over 20 copies of  SD cards with tow-boot  SPI.Installer.Img in different ways and using different machines to make sure.  when booting with cards, got same dark blue screen with no words, no tow-boot icon, nothing.  It's an issue of Display,  I think it is indeed loading, but I can not see it becase of display driver bug.
- used over 8 different SD cards. (even ordered more from amazon, just to be sure but those did not change things)
- tried to write tow boot directly to SPI  from  2 different OS  (manjaro and  Postmarket) & also from SD armbian card boot.
- made  different versions of  Tow-Boot even older 2 older versions, non of them booted up
- made SD cards of spi.installer.img from inside linux and inside  windows Balena Etcher on different machines just to be sure the SD's were good. tested the SD cards also (not the problem).
-  all of them do same thing  when I boot up. Screen goes from Black  to  a Dark Blue ( means I have power)  and then  is empty, no  tow-boot icon, no text, nothing.  even if I spam  ESC key when hitting pwr button, nothing happens , no error messages either as some people see in Tow-Boot Issue tickets.
-  I even tried all the different advice from Tow-boot github issues.  one person showed how to delete the Uboot from Manjaro  with 2 lines of CLI.  I did that and it broke manjaro of course.  then  he  basically booted with SD with tow-boot SPI.installer and was able to see menu. This did not work, still just empty dark blue screen.
When I boot , I go from black screen (off)  to  dark blue screen I see if (a)  I load Tow-Boot...bin  into SPI  from inside OS.  it's like menu is invisible.
looks same if I use  any of  8 different SD cards  I made with spi.installer.img.