Pine A64+ won't boot?

[afr0]

Yeah, i think a lot of people are freaking out and not giving enough time for the Pine to boot, just because they see the red LED. I do think that Pine64 should have not changed the consumer version to have a red LED, that's just confusing.

Damned! I feel so noob, that was just that...  I plug an HDMI cable an voila, that works...!

Thanks for all, I just have to try different imgs

[Andrew2]

I do think that Pine64 should have not changed the consumer version to have a red LED, that's just confusing. I saw somewhere that it can take up to 10 minutes for the OS to boot up for the first time, after that it should be much quicker.

Yes, changing the led color from green to red was probably not the smartest move since all available product images show a green led if any and red is associated with "something's wrong".

Anyway: Instead of waiting for a first boot that never finishes it's way more easy to try to nail the two most common SBC boot problems down:

• verify that the process to burn an image to the card is able to succeed (an alarming number of counterfeit cards is in the wild and it's also a well known issue that USB card readers as well as SD/TF adapters can cause data corruption). The two best tools have been mentioned before.
  
• check not only the PSU but also the cabling. It's also a well know issue that USB cables with high resistance lead to voltage drops. The Pine64 can theoretically be fed with very low voltages (according to the AXP803 datasheet) but pratical experiences indicate the opposite
  

I would suspect that he runs into the first problem (which is more easy to diagnose). 

And unfortunately it's not that easy to check for undervoltage/undercurrent with the Pine64 without using additional equipment (a year ago I made a Mini Armbian image that booted a Banana Pro at 144 MHz and used two of the available leds as status feedback while increasing cpufreq and load continually and measuring the available voltage through the PMU -- no idea if one of AXP803's ADC could be used for that already)

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Yeah, i think a lot of people are freaking out and not giving enough time for the Pine to boot, just because they see the red LED. I do think that Pine64 should have not changed the consumer version to have a red LED, that's just confusing.

Damned! I feel so noob, that was just that...  I plug an HDMI cable an voila, that works...!

Oops, ok, the psychological component of a red led shouldn't be underestimated

Did your Pine64 came with something like a quickstart guide explaining the meaning of the led color and what to connect first to the board before powering it up?

[falk.ben@gmail.com]

Yeah, i think a lot of people are freaking out and not giving enough time for the Pine to boot, just because they see the red LED. I do think that Pine64 should have not changed the consumer version to have a red LED, that's just confusing. I saw somewhere that it can take up to 10 minutes for the OS to boot up for the first time, after that it should be much quicker.

Personally i would gather as many cables and adapters you have, and try each combination with 10 minutes running to make sure there's nothing wrong.

Yea, that was definitely me.  I was running headless, so when I only saw the red LED, I kinda thought something was wrong, because I'd seen a video somewhere with a green LED, most likely from a development board.  And yea, the first time I booted with an Android image, it took a while.

[masto]

I wanted to quickly share my experience tonight trying to get Android (or Remix OS) up and running. It may help explain why it's different for everyone. I apologize for lapsing into storytelling mode; skip to the end for the summary.

Anyway, I'm fairly geeky but my primary machine is a Mac. My board came today and I naively assumed it would be as "simple as pi" to get it running: dd an image onto a microSD card and away you go. Of course as I learned, that's not the way we do things here (although why not supply a simple image?).

I downloaded three OSes: arch-pine64-bspkernel-20160304-1-xfce4, Pinea64_android_lollipop_db1000_20160216, and RemixOS_pine64_B2016022702_1000MB_LAN_Beta. I started with Arch because it didn't require Windows or PhoenixCard to get it installed: "pv arch-pine64-bspkernel-20160304-1-xfce4.img > /dev/rdisk5" did the trick. But my first fail was here: I wasted a lot of time thinking there was something wrong with the image or the card, when it was my USB power adapter. I used to have a nice beefy one set up for playing with new single board computers, but it recently crapped out and I temporarily substituted another one from the parts drawer. Turns out it wasn't good enough. When that dawned on me, I hooked up a USB cable to a bench power supply, cranked it up to 5.1V/2.1A and let 'er rip, and it booted just fine into Arch Linux. 5 minutes of that was enough, I really wanted to see Android, so the real time sink begins here.

Once I gave up searching for alternatives to PhoenixCard and accepted that I'd have to deal with it, I figured I'd just dust off my Windows 10 VMWare Fusion image (which hasn't been started since last August) and use that. And indeed, it all seemed to work fine: PhoenixCard claimed to successfully write the RemixOS image to my 64GB Samsung Evo card. Popped it into the Pine and got nothing (apart from the red LED). It wasn't a matter of not waiting long enough, I waited and waited, and the current draw was a steady 130mA the whole time. Clearly not starting up.

Things get a bit fuzzy here since I tried so many different things: three different microSD cards, both the Lollipop and RemixOS images, three different SD card readers, internal USB ports and the ones on a Thunderbolt docking station, three different USB hubs in between the computer and the card reader, USB 2.0, USB 3, all the VMware compatibility settings, reinstalling VMware tools, rebooting the VM and the Mac, plugging the microSD card into an adapter to use SD card readers, writing to a USB stick instead (intending to dd it to the microSD card afterward), and all of these things alternating with SD Card Formatter voodoo. It was frustrating the crap out of me because I know the thing works with Arch, but I could not get a working Android image to save my life. Worse yet, different combinations of hardware produced different behavior: most of the time PhoenixCard would error out, but sometimes halfway through the "burn" process, other times failing right at first formatting step, occasionally locking up Windows' USB and requiring the card reader to be unplugged. Sometimes the SD Formatter utility worked but PhoenixCard produced formatting errors. Sometimes the other way around. Sometimes neither. And yet with my original configuration (and only that one: an "Inland All-In-One USB 3.0 Card Reader" plugged directly into the Mac) PhoenixCard would appear to work but produce a card that doesn't boot.

At that point, several hours into it, I decided to start blaming VMware, or at least look at the variables:

• Mac + VMware Fusion
  
• Windows 10
  
• PhoenixCard
  
• microSD card
  
• Card reader
  

PhoenixCard is apparently the only game in town, so that has to stay. I already tried three card readers. I have a known-good card that works for Arch (and tried two others anyway). I don't have any other Windows operating systems than 10. But I could take the VM out of the equation: I have one "bare-metal" Windows computer, a Lenovo PC-on-a-stick which also runs Windows 10.

So I dug that thing out, transferred the necessary files onto it, and expected everything to work perfectly. It even has an internal microSD card slot, so I didn't have to mess with a USB card reader. Press Burn in PhoenixCard and.. formatting as normal works.. burn fails right after formatting. WTF. Card seems to work fine for everything but PhoenixCard won't chooch. Ok, let's try plugging a card reader into it: different errors depending on which one I use, just like with VMware. Sometimes it won't format, sometimes gets halfway through and errors out, sometimes craps out completely and needs to be unplugged. Absolute madness. Now I'm down to my last attempt: inland SD card reader #2 plugged into the USB 3.0 port of a Purex mini hub (the USB 2 ports had already been tried and failed). And the f'ing thing worked. PhoenixCard completed the "burn", and unlike the burn-but-no-worky attempts where it seemed to finish too quickly for the size of the file, this one was slow and steady. And when I put the card in the Pine 64, it drew a respectable 800mA and booted into Remix OS. Of course, when I plug in the Ethernet, it reboots, so I apparently can't have it all. But that's a different problem.

IN CONCLUSION, in addition to the Pine 64 being picky about voltages and current and which card you use and whether stuff is plugged into the ports, PhoenixCard is also incredibly picky about which card reader you use to write the thing, and how it's attached to your computer (to the point of only working with a specific card reader plugged into a specific port on a specific USB hub), and on top of that may not work with some computers at all. Oh, and for bonus points, one of its failure modes is to appear to work while writing a card that doesn't boot at all. You pretty much have to be lucky, or have a bunch of hardware around to keep trying more combinations until you hit the jackpot. If I didn't have that stick PC and a couple of extra hubs and card readers I grabbed from the bargain bin at Micro Center, I never would have gotten mine working.

[afr0]

Did your Pine64 came with something like a quickstart guide explaining the meaning of the led color and what to connect first to the board before powering it up?

Nothing on the box without Pine64 and RST/PWR switch

[Andrew2]

unlike the burn-but-no-worky attempts where it seemed to finish too quickly for the size of the file, this one was slow and steady. And when I put the card in the Pine 64, it drew a respectable 800mA and booted into Remix OS.

Thx for the insights. Since you wasted already so much time it would be worth the additional efforts to get the real reason why all your burning attempts had failed: data corruption while burning. Please try one of these two tools (f3 is just a 'brew install f3' in OS X) with any of the 'fast' combinations. I wouldn't be surprised if you're able to blame your card reader afterwards (I've thrown 3 USB3 card readers in the bin a year ago since after discovering f3 I was able to realize that they all start corrupting data after a certain amount of time most probably due to overheating. Now only using the SD card slot in the MacBook).

BTW: The only reason why Phoenix Card seems a requirement is that this tool resizes Android's data partition to the maximum size. With your 64GB EVO you could've dd'ed janjwerner's 32GB image (and then fiddle around with gparted in a Linux VM or booting from an Ubuntu USB stick to use all the space available )

[mhump711]

Ethernet cable plugged in kept mine from booting. Once I unplugged it and power cycled, went right to android

[ML-Anderal]

I had this issue with a 5V 2A power supply and I will explain it to you as they did to me when I had this exact issue. The power adapter you are using may have a safety switch to not allow devices to pull to much power.

If it is a phone power adapter or any other kind that connects USB to a power adapter and source try to connect it to a computer via USB.

If it is a wall plug I would try using a phone cable to a laptop or desktop computer.

I had to purchase adapters online (Amazon) for the Raspberry Pi 2 that was mini usb to wall plug and those have worked fine for my developer 1GB board. Before that though I was plugging it into a laptop or desktop because the safety system in my wall power adapter would not allow me to boot and sometimes it would boot for like 1 minute and shut down... etc... issues like crazy but now that I have a stable power source I have never had it shut down on its own.

(Quick Reminder to everyone.) If you plug a external Hard Drive or other device that may consume a lot of power YOU MUST MAKE SURE IT HAS ITS OWN POWER SOURCE..... Now small usb flash drives are fine but external hard drive, speakers that are more than just 2 channel or anything other than a perphiral or hand held controller needs its own power source or it will shut the board down when you plug it in. Hope that helps anyone it may pertain to!

[frewind]

Hi,

Had the red led and no boot problem myself, I was using a HDMI to DVI cable to plug into a monitor. Plug it into my TV using a standard HDMI cable and bingo, booted no problem....

Thought I would share that for anyone still struggling....

[pine.tree]

Hi,

Had the red led and no boot problem myself, I was using a HDMI to DVI cable to plug into a monitor. Plug it into my TV using a standard HDMI cable and bingo, booted no problem....

Thought I would share that for anyone still struggling....

Thanks for letting us know, some are having some issues but it has been their TV settings. Some had it working but with a pink/green hue, but it was their color settings. Good to know you had no snags! (What level board do you have?)