DOA Pine64 ?

[rahlquist]

After much frustration, I've finally achieved some success this evening. Some.

I was hooking my Pine to a monitor using an HDMI adapter. This seems like a HUGE no-no. My card works and I've flashed several OSes with success. Mine still dies when I plug in the network.

In the end, I just sort of think it wasn't super smart to have NO way to get clues as to how your Pine is doing along the process. 

Accessing the SD card? Who knows!
Booting? Hard to say!

It sort of reminds me of early PC days when you listened for beep POST codes to let you know what was going on...and that's sort of my point. Back then they at least had that those things to help you figure out what was going on. I appreciate the idea of making a $15 main board, but I definitely would have paid another buck or two to not have this much hassle just trying to get a first boot. It certainly doesn't make me trust it.

Your argument about not knowing what happens during boot is ridiculous. It's your own lack of research and knowledge limiting you on that. $3-5 part and free software and you can see far more than a BIOS post could ever tell you. Take a look at my mini guide http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=934  look at the bootlog at the end of the first post. All that data comes at your real time. 

Again this was a failure of marketing, they made the board sound like it works out of box like a FireTV or Roku and attracted a crowd that is not used to dealing with SBC.