Startup Woes

[abasel]

I have just received most of my hardware. I switch the Pine64 on (powering with the power adapter provided) nothing displays on either of the screens ie not on my TV and not on the 7" LCD that was provided.

Any ideas?

[Ghost]

I have just received most of my hardware. I switch the Pine64 on (powering with the power adapter provided) nothing displays on either of the screens ie not on my TV and not on the 7" LCD that was provided.

Any ideas?

Have you put a microSD card with an operating system on it into the relevant slot on the Pine A64 board?

[abasel]

I have just received most of my hardware. I switch the Pine64 on (powering with the power adapter provided) nothing displays on either of the screens ie not on my TV and not on the 7" LCD that was provided.

Any ideas?

Have you put a microSD card with an operating system on it into the relevant slot on the Pine A64 board?

I purchased it with the microSD (which I was under the impression came with the OS on... seem to remember reading that somewhere). I have inserted this card into the board.

But regardless of the OS should there not be some sort of output to the display, even if it's an error?

[Ghost]

I have just received most of my hardware. I switch the Pine64 on (powering with the power adapter provided) nothing displays on either of the screens ie not on my TV and not on the 7" LCD that was provided.

Any ideas?

Have you put a microSD card with an operating system on it into the relevant slot on the Pine A64 board?

I purchased it with the microSD (which I was under the impression came with the OS on... seem to remember reading that somewhere). I have inserted this card into the board.

But regardless of the OS should there not be some sort of output to the display, even if it's an error?

If there's no OS, there's no display output.

I would try burning the OS onto the microSD again. It could be that they sent you a blank by mistake. 

Which operating system do you want to try out?

[abasel]

I have just received most of my hardware. I switch the Pine64 on (powering with the power adapter provided) nothing displays on either of the screens ie not on my TV and not on the 7" LCD that was provided.

Any ideas?

Have you put a microSD card with an operating system on it into the relevant slot on the Pine A64 board?

I purchased it with the microSD (which I was under the impression came with the OS on... seem to remember reading that somewhere). I have inserted this card into the board.

But regardless of the OS should there not be some sort of output to the display, even if it's an error?

If there's no OS, there's no display output.

I would try burning the OS onto the microSD again. It could be that they sent you a blank by mistake. 

Which operating system do you want to try out?

Which do you recommend? I am just playing at present so will probably try a few.

[Ghost]

I have just received most of my hardware. I switch the Pine64 on (powering with the power adapter provided) nothing displays on either of the screens ie not on my TV and not on the 7" LCD that was provided.

Any ideas?

Have you put a microSD card with an operating system on it into the relevant slot on the Pine A64 board?

I purchased it with the microSD (which I was under the impression came with the OS on... seem to remember reading that somewhere). I have inserted this card into the board.

But regardless of the OS should there not be some sort of output to the display, even if it's an error?

If there's no OS, there's no display output.

I would try burning the OS onto the microSD again. It could be that they sent you a blank by mistake. 

Which operating system do you want to try out?

Which do you recommend? I am just playing at present so will probably try a few.

Well, you've got the software download page here.

Debian might be a good place to start. You can find a link here. If you are using a Windows PC to burn the OS, you might want to use Win32DiskImager. If you are using a Mac, try Etcher or ApplePi Baker. Or if you are using a Linux-based system, you may be at home using the dd command via a terminal.

So, download the image, download the appropriate burning software if necessary, burn the image onto the microSD, then try putting the microSD into the Pine again and try booting once more.

[abasel]

Thanks after burning the image it booted up

[Ghost]

Thanks after burning the image it booted up

Excellent, very pleased to hear it.

[pfeerick]

But regardless of the OS should there not be some sort of output to the display, even if it's an error?

Glad you got it working with Ghost's help. Just to clarify this point, ARM based boards like the pine64 are very dumb. There is no BIOS or EFI like on a Intel-x86/AMD64/PowerPC platform. Hence, if there is no OS on the microSD card, onboard NAND or other compatiable storage, it is as intelligent as a block of wood. First thing the ARM processor does is start loading data from the storage device, and it is at that point it starts realising what it is (via the power that is uBoot - which is essentially the ARM version of a BIOS - which is loaded form the storage device). 

So in a nutshell, no (or a blank or corrupt) microSD card on a pine64... you have a paperweight

Again... welcome to the party!

[z4v4l]

But regardless of the OS should there not be some sort of output to the display, even if it's an error?

Glad you got it working with Ghost's help. Just to clarify this point, ARM based boards like the pine64 are very dumb. There is no BIOS or EFI like on a Intel-x86/AMD64/PowerPC platform. Hence, if there is no OS on the microSD card, onboard NAND or other compatiable storage, it is as intelligent as a block of wood. First thing the ARM processor does is start loading data from the storage device, and it is at that point it starts realising what it is (via the power that is uBoot - which is essentially the ARM version of a BIOS - which is loaded form the storage device). 

So in a nutshell, no (or a blank or corrupt) microSD card on a pine64... you have a paperweight

Again... welcome to the party!

arm boards aren't any dumber than other platforms. all architectures start with the predefined address, pointing somewhere in the permanent code storage (Rom), be it arm or x86. arm cpu's on these SoC's start with Rom code, located in the SoC. then that romcode loads firmware from some non-volatile storage into SRAM and transfers control to it. and it's uboot which is nowadays arm boards "BIOS".
the only considerable difference, on the arm SBC's there is no such a thing like dedicated NOR flash storage for firmware. that's why fw is placed somewhere beyond MBR on the eMMC, SD. And then "shadowed" into SRAM by the romcode. In NOR, it could execute in place (XIP). But this is not architecturally forbidden, it's just
cutting off prices. Arm SoC's support NOR flashes, SPI etc, their romcodes might deal with XIP. some arm soc's romcodes can even load its payload through network, understand FAT etc.

For the topicstarter: to see output of your firmware, thus uboot, you need to attach your board to the terminal (your PC would be that), through the serial port (with the help of USB-TTL adapter).