eMMC/SD catch-22

[zaius]

WTH? When did this happen... talk about a step backwards!? It's getting close to two years ago that ayufan made the SPI bootloader available for the rockpro64 which would boot USB, PXE, SD then eMMC... which I would have thought was directly transferable to the PBP, as long as you don't mind no uboot display during the uboot phase.

I agree that many of the problems posted on this forum are about getting the PBP to boot.  There is all this talk about taking apart the computer, juggling switches, and whatnot. Verbosity during startup isn't the issue.  It's that they can't start up their computers at all.  Getting the bootloader on SPI, where users are unlikely to accidentally rewrite it, would solve almost all of these problems.  So it should be a priority.

[pfeerick]

but I've seen several instances of this issue and that's the problem. It would have been nice to have USB booting right out of the gate, and hell, the PBP currently has no visual output (save through UART) during u-boot phase. 

Not good! This was the whole reason we were moving towards SPI boot, so that you have a basically unbreakable boot mechanism with better boot priorities and more options. Plus you'd have the ability to have a builtin mechanism that could say 'YOU FOOL, GIMME A VALID BOOT IMAGE' when you... don't! :-P Rather than have people think it's broken. That's one of the reasons I liked having the original pinebook - I loaded the uboot onto the SPI there, even though it (the A64) has the right boot priority (SPI -> SD -> eMMC)... it just meant it will always be there if I do something more stupid than usual or something goes horribly wrong.

[tophneal]

but I've seen several instances of this issue and that's the problem. It would have been nice to have USB booting right out of the gate, and hell, the PBP currently has no visual output (save through UART) during u-boot phase. 

Not good! This was the whole reason we were moving towards SPI boot, so that you have a basically unbreakable boot mechanism with better boot priorities and more options. Plus you'd have the ability to have a builtin mechanism that could say 'YOU FOOL, GIMME A VALID BOOT IMAGE' when you... don't! :-P Rather than have people think it's broken. That's one of the reasons I liked having the original pinebook - I loaded the uboot onto the SPI there, even though it (the A64) has the right boot priority (SPI -> SD -> eMMC)... it just meant it will always be there if I do something more stupid than usual or something goes horribly wrong.

Luckily we do have some people moving in that direction. crystalgamma (in the IRC) is working on petitboot/levinboot that should hopefully provide a (even just minimum) UI and @xalius I believe has his own ongoing efforts.

The progress may not be quick, but at least it's happening and some awesome people are still steering us in the right direction.