U-Boot with direct NVMe boot support for eMMC/SPI Flash

[Wizzard]

I am afraid I dont know the meaning of those parameters, I just copied that from that manual page.

As far as I know SPI flash is a circuit on the board that executes every boot and enables booting from various devices. We need to update it to support NVMe too.

[mamboman777]

rkdeveloptool ld is saying "not found any devices" What is the process for putting the PBP into maskrom mode?

[Wizzard]

There is a button inside PBP, it was needed to open PBP.

So, press a button and connect to PC with USB C cable (USB C on PBP)

Then after running " rkdeveloptool ld" you should see if PBP is in maskrom or loader more. Loader mode is better, as I remember.

If it is in maskrom mode, then you should run "rkdeveloptool db rk3399_loader_spinor_v1.15.114.bin"

and download that bin from here: https://dl.radxa.com/rockpi/images/loader/

I am just rewriting the steps from that site, so I hope I wrote it right,

[mamboman777]

rkdeveloptool ld is saying "not found any devices"  What is the process for putting the PBP into maskrom mode?

Ok.  I got it connected finally and I got the message "Write LBA quit.  Creating Comm object failed."  That being said, somehow I got the device to boot from SD and flashed the stock Debian back on the drive.  Now I can reboot into the stock Debian on the eMMC.  I'll call that a victory for now.   I'll work on getting the nvme working later.  I can't really believe how much work this has been to get going.  Thank you for your guidance.

[Wizzard]

I am glad to help. Funny is, that I cannot flash that SPI using my own guide myself I tried it yesterday too to update it with new testing version but I was not successfull, I could not get to maskrom neither loader mode and seems that I bricked my PBP too. Will try again today

[Arwen]

I think many of us need to wait on flashing the SPI. With the same U-Boot software working on an eMMC or SD card, their is little advantage at present to flash it to SPI. Yet, quite a bit of risk of soft-bricking.

Ideally, we would see a more functional firmware image, (U-Boot or other), that supported device selection through display & keyboard, in addition to customizable default boot device. I think that's what I will wait for before I look to using the SPI device.

[Wizzard]

I found out the way how to disable those annoying messages.
Just edit the file /etc/sysctl.conf and uncomment the line:
kernel.printk = 3 4 1 3

[brent.thierens]

Is there any update on this? Is there a guide somewhere with the latest/most functional uboot and how to flash it properly? Now I only seem to get some bits and pieces from different places.

[tophneal]

Is there any update on this? Is there a guide somewhere with the latest/most functional uboot and how to flash it properly? Now I only seem to get some bits and pieces from different places.

You should be able to use this uboot on SPI using these flashing instructions: https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebook_Pro_SPI

[fretinator]

Is there any update on this? Is there a guide somewhere with the latest/most functional uboot and how to flash it properly? Now I only seem to get some bits and pieces from different places.

Here is how I did it.

I ran the SPI mentioned from the command-line from eMMC. 
I used Manjaro and booted the version with emmc install support from an SD card. I chose the NVME drive as the destination.
I opened the device and flipped the eMMC switch to off.
Voila!

I didn't do performance test, but my user test was to go to a graphics heavy sight and scroll. On the eMMC it was noticeably laggy when scrolling. On the NVME it is much smoother scrolling.