07-01-2016, 11:20 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-01-2016, 11:22 PM by MarkHaysHarris777.)
I was finally able to catch the PineA64 hdmi in the act... (its taken me four weeks to get it to fail !)
... I finally got it to fail so I could watch it, using lennyraposo's base img. (the xfce img does not fail, nor does the mate img fail; because the timing for how the PineA64 negotiates with the hdmi is different)
The new base img (lenny's site) has a timing issue where it fairly reliably will not negotiate a connection with the hdmi and the PineA64 goes into an infinite loop... black screen, red light, and nothing... sound familiar ?? but, its NOT nothing... its looping like crazy forever (which you can't see unless you have a serial cable attached to the exp header so that you can watch it) ! It spits out a gazillion tables of hex digits and other debugging data and then pauses for 15-20 seconds, then repeats over and over forever. black screen, red light... and nothing ... the board is NOT dead !
The solution is timing... resetting the display monitor (input source select) and then pressing the reset button on the PineA64 board will cause the hdmi monitor to synch up with the pine and the machine will bootup. Of course, the base img was designed to run headless, so it boots into a cli signon / and the user may also signon to the serial console as well.
I noticed one more interesting phenomenon with the base img / and that is that the hdmi is not the only looping culprit that results in a black screen , red light... and nothing... and that is the blue tooth module. It from time to time picks up stray signals and tries desperately to lock onto them... the blue tooth module driver loops infinitely preventing the machine from booting up. Again, you can see this happen with a serial cable attached to the exp header pins during the bootup.
Allwinner needs to fix the hdmi issue asap. There needs to be an open driver for the video; no blobs. The hdmi video has the potential for killing this whole project. We need to be able to configure the hdmi_group, as well the hdmi resolution (whatever that is) with appropriate overscan as needed. Without a video driver the hdmi is hit or miss...
If anyone is interested in seeing the output from the loop, I can provide it. If you need detailed instructions for reproducing this loop, let me know. oh, by the by, this loop can be reproduced almost reliably by booting the base img wihtout the hdmi plugged in and with a serial cable attached to the exp header. It will looop almost every time and the developer can see what is going on.
I suspect that the other OSes are experiencing a very similar phenomenon. Again, the board is NOT dead... its just not useful in an infinite looping state !
marcus
... I finally got it to fail so I could watch it, using lennyraposo's base img. (the xfce img does not fail, nor does the mate img fail; because the timing for how the PineA64 negotiates with the hdmi is different)
The new base img (lenny's site) has a timing issue where it fairly reliably will not negotiate a connection with the hdmi and the PineA64 goes into an infinite loop... black screen, red light, and nothing... sound familiar ?? but, its NOT nothing... its looping like crazy forever (which you can't see unless you have a serial cable attached to the exp header so that you can watch it) ! It spits out a gazillion tables of hex digits and other debugging data and then pauses for 15-20 seconds, then repeats over and over forever. black screen, red light... and nothing ... the board is NOT dead !
The solution is timing... resetting the display monitor (input source select) and then pressing the reset button on the PineA64 board will cause the hdmi monitor to synch up with the pine and the machine will bootup. Of course, the base img was designed to run headless, so it boots into a cli signon / and the user may also signon to the serial console as well.
I noticed one more interesting phenomenon with the base img / and that is that the hdmi is not the only looping culprit that results in a black screen , red light... and nothing... and that is the blue tooth module. It from time to time picks up stray signals and tries desperately to lock onto them... the blue tooth module driver loops infinitely preventing the machine from booting up. Again, you can see this happen with a serial cable attached to the exp header pins during the bootup.
Allwinner needs to fix the hdmi issue asap. There needs to be an open driver for the video; no blobs. The hdmi video has the potential for killing this whole project. We need to be able to configure the hdmi_group, as well the hdmi resolution (whatever that is) with appropriate overscan as needed. Without a video driver the hdmi is hit or miss...
If anyone is interested in seeing the output from the loop, I can provide it. If you need detailed instructions for reproducing this loop, let me know. oh, by the by, this loop can be reproduced almost reliably by booting the base img wihtout the hdmi plugged in and with a serial cable attached to the exp header. It will looop almost every time and the developer can see what is going on.
I suspect that the other OSes are experiencing a very similar phenomenon. Again, the board is NOT dead... its just not useful in an infinite looping state !
marcus