Not able to power on PineTab anymore

[zkajdan]

Hi, hoping that maybe someone has advice on this...

After finally getting my pinetab connected to wifi, I ran

Code:

sudo pacman -Syu

for the first time, and suddenly during the update I got a big message

Code:

This screen locker is broken and unlocking it is not possible...

and from there on, the pinetab did not react to anything anymore...
I tried to restart it, but after it had successfully been powered off, I've not been able to power it on anymore... It just stays dark.
I've also tried connecting to the laptop via the UART console, to see if it's just the display - but I don't see anything in a screen terminal either.

I have no idea what to do, since I can't re-install without somehow switching it on...

Would anyone have an idea what to do? Many thanks!!

[FortunateFowl]

Given it failed on an update I suspect that it is not a hardware issue, just something that was borked in the update.

There are a couple things we can check.

What software did you use on the laptop for the UART adaptor? What message did you get when you tried?


Otherwise did you ever change anything with the bootloader of the system? If not it should be possible to simply boot to an SD card with no additional changes.

Do you have access to a microSD card? Perhaps try getting a copy of, say mobian, https://images.mobian.org/pinetab2/weekly/ on an SD card and try to boot that up.

For getting mobian on the SD card, I recommend using bmaptool to copy it, it was significantly faster than using dd.

[zkajdan]

Hi, many thanks for your response!!

> What software did you use on the laptop for the UART adaptor? What message did you get when you tried?

I did sudo screen /dev/ttyUSB0 1500000, as per the pinetab wiki (https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PineTab2#Co...RT_adapter). I didn't get any message, just a blank screen (which stayed blank after trying to power on the pinetab).

> Otherwise did you ever change anything with the bootloader of the system? If not it should be possible to simply boot to an SD card with no additional changes.

Oh, that's great to know. I didn't change the bootloader. I will do as you say, and let you know ASAP!

Thanks again!

[FortunateFowl]

Perhaps try the UART adaptor with minicom instead of screen as well.

I was able to reproduce what you described with my pinetab. On screen I tried a couple of times and had no message the first time, and only an illegible message the second time, but with minicom I get the correct output that shows the bootup process. This is with a pinetab that likely has a similar issue to yours as the original install is not working and I am running from the SD card slot.

So hopefully this is what you need to fix it.

For me, I am using this as an opportunity to try out different images from the SD card before reinstalling.

Good luck