Mainline U-Boot with SPI, NVMe and SATA boot support

[sigmaris]

...
unrecognized JEDEC id bytes: ff, ff, ff
...

I normally only see this message if disabling SPI flash by bridging pins 23 (SPI CLK) and 25 (GND) on the Pi-2 Bus header. Basically it means the SPI flash chip isn't responding as expected on the SPI bus and can't be identified.

Check you're not disabling communication with the SPI flash somehow (e.g. grounding SPI CLK), if that's not the issue then I'd wonder if your SPI flash chip has a problem.

[Maxpako]

...
unrecognized JEDEC id bytes: ff, ff, ff
...

I normally only see this message if disabling SPI flash by bridging pins 23 (SPI CLK) and 25 (GND) on the Pi-2 Bus header. Basically it means the SPI flash chip isn't responding as expected on the SPI bus and can't be identified.

Check you're not disabling communication with the SPI flash somehow (e.g. grounding SPI CLK), if that's not the issue then I'd wonder if your SPI flash chip has a problem.

It's not grounded, I even tried grounding it and ungrounding with corresponding pins :/

Enviado desde mi NX659J mediante Tapatalk

[Maxpako]

In addition to my previous reply, I've checked the SPI flash chip in the board, and strangely it differs from what it's in the datasheet.

My board has a 25Q127CSIG, from GigaDevice.

According to the datasheet from the wiki: https://files.pine64.org/doc/datasheet/p...Rev2.5.pdf
it must be a 25Q128CSIG instead...

Not sure if this 127-128 differentiation on the chip makes sense.

Anyway, I'm going to order few 25Q128CSIG, and once they arrive I'll solder new one there and try to flash it again.

Edit: I'll assume that the SPI chip is faulty, not that there's a fault in the layers/lanes of the board.

[MisterA]

I just succesfully flashed the latest Uboot version (prerelease from march I believe).

Am I mistaken that this Uboot should make booting from eMMC possible? I tried Armbian focal and it fails to boot: the Armbian logo shows up but then further booting stops.

[sigmaris]

Am I mistaken that this Uboot should make booting from eMMC possible? I tried Armbian focal and it fails to boot: the Armbian logo shows up but then further booting stops.

It should boot from eMMC. Armbian have their own builds of u-boot that might provide or initialise things slightly differently, which might be required for Armbian images. There's a multitude of reasons why the kernel might fail to boot, you would need to see kernel log messages to tell what's going on. A serial console would help, or to disable the Armbian boot logo and see the kernel console instead. Try editing /boot/armbianEnv.txt to have:

console=both
bootlogo=false
earlycon=on
logo=disabled

which might get you more verbose messages on the console instead of the Armbian logo.

[MisterA]

Thank you for your reply.

Well, I'm getting the same thing as the user in this post:

https://forum.armbian.com/topic/14724-ro...-v44-does/

See the photo he took of his screen in the first post.

I failed to boot Armbian and Debian on 5.X kernel from eMMC (or from USB/NVMe). On 4.x kernels it's working.
SDCard is my only option at the moment.

Since I want to use my RP64 as a docker platform I need a 5.x kernel for compatibility reasons and I really don't like the reliability of SDCards.

[LMM]

Hi,

  I suspect :

   - a problem when flashing the image since the boot does not find the file system

   - or the emmc connection : check you properly plugged the emmc

It does not seem to come from the kernel itself since it did not boot yet on the screenshot.

I did not notice any issue with sigmaris u-boot when booting the Armbian release 5.10.35 kernel (on sd, emmc, or nvme, but I have some problem with pxe boot).

Good luck.

[MisterA]

Yeah, I did all that: checked the filesystem, could mount it on another linux box. Flashed several images (debian, armbian focal with or without desktop) several times. There is one constant: as soon as it's 5.x kernel => no boot from usb/eMMC/NVMe

See also the post I referenced, exactly the same issue as I'm experiencing.
https://forum.armbian.com/topic/14724-ro...-v44-does/

[LMM]

Yeah, I did all that: checked the filesystem, could mount it on another linux box. Flashed several images (debian, armbian focal with or without desktop) several times. There is one constant: as soon as it's 5.x kernel => no boot from usb/eMMC/NVMe

See also the post I referenced, exactly the same issue as I'm experiencing.
https://forum.armbian.com/topic/14724-ro...-v44-does/

Do you have an old Rockpro64 version ?

[MisterA]

Rockpro64 V2.1 2018-06-06