Unable to make a bootable microSD card
09-16-2022, 07:28 PM
(09-15-2022, 11:07 AM)commiecam Wrote: Personally, I would happily pay the extra cost to save the frustration of dealing with this current idiotic situation. The Pinebook Pro is a lovely little box, one deserving of better treatment than this current mess. As to Manjaro, my personal aim is to get away from KDE's bloatware
(09-15-2022, 01:21 PM)steeb Wrote: Anyway, first piece of advice for anyone getting a new Pinebook Pro: Flash Tow-Boot to the SPI then you can get busy.
Just got a PBP. All it does is flash the power led when trying to boot from SD. This really is an idiotic situation. Yeah I hear you... flash tow-boot to the SPI. How do I do that? If I find a tutorial, how do I know it was written for this "new batch" or if it only works on the old ones?
Next step is to toss this thing in the bottom of my closet and come back to it six months later... when I'm done being pissed at it.
In all seriousness.... having to jump through some kind of hoop before you can boot from a different device feels a lot like having to "root" or "jailbreak" your phone before being able to change it. It's not the same thing... but it accomplishes the same function - serving as a roadblock to running someone else's software. I didn't think that was supposed to be the philosophy behind these "open" devices.
The product page clearly states "Bootable microSD" but you can only get that if you perform the modifications necessary to enable it. In that case, they could say literally anything on the product page - if you do it yourself! False advertising.
They should have inserted a little slip of paper in the box with the "new batch" warning that the bootable microSD feature now only works after you follow the official tutorial at their website (with a QR code). The value of the amount of time I've wasted on this problem already exceeds the money I paid for the device.