Pinebook Pro won´t boot either from eMMC or microSD

[robieguarneros]

When you try to boot from emmc (no sd inserted) do you get any leds?
When you have no leds (except for red charge led, on side) it may be "hard locked"
OR no uboot may be findable, not likely here
You can try, not likely to solve, press and HOLD pwr button, 20-25 seconds
(with no "bad uboots connected, ie no SD card, or emmc disabled, wherever bad uboot is)
--edit--
Someone on the manjaro forum had to switch arch dtb/ use manjaro dtb to make arch install work

When I try to boot from eMMC with no sd inserted I do get the orange led and it just stays like that for hours(I am aware of the issue where it takes several seconds to boot) so I think its not hard locked.
When I try to boot with eMMC enabled and an sd inserted I get the same result(orange leds nothing happens).
Finally, when I try to boot with eMMC disabled and sd inserted, I get nothing at all, no leds, nothing. 

When I was installing arch, there was a part where I needed to do something with uboot, after doing that was when it stopped booting, that’s why I think the issue is uboot. I believed I messed uboot and now nothing can be found to boot. I just don’t know how to solve it. I’m thinking my only solution is to reflash the eMMC, however, I just ordered one from pine and don’t know how long it will take. 

Thanks!

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I would certainly keep the eMMC disabled until you get it working.  The eMMC is totally unnecessary to make it work with the SD card, and this is the minimum configuration.

Please do try the power long-press.  If it's currently on and locked (it does seem that way), then doing this will cause it to power off.  In that case, you can power it on, and it should boot.

I have no experience with etcher, but that is the recommended tool, and should get the job done.

Thanks, I guess Ill buy a new sd card and try it again. I just find it weird that disabling the eMMC seems like cutting the power of the PBP since I get not a single led on. I’ll keep the thread updated if I manage to get something done.

[wdt]

IIUR, you have installed arch to emmc?
If this is so, disable emmc, insert debian SD, press and hold pwr (20+ sec), try to start (1 sec press)
If this works, change arch pinebookpro dtb for manjaro dtb (on emmc of course)

BTW, for a hard power off, it is a 7-8 sec press of pwr, for reset it supposed to be 15 sec, this is not long enough
I think, because there is a battery, it remembers something that is wrong

[KC9UDX]

The only way that you won't be able to boot to a working SD card with the eMMC disabled is if you've flashed Uboot to SPI flash. You shouldn't be able to do that unwittingly, I don't think. But I'm not real familiar with these other linuces. Do keep trying as wdt suggests.

[wdt]

Actually, if you don't know the trick.......
Say you have a perfectly fine booting install on emmc
And then you make a mistake, put in something (SD card) for say a A64 (I have done this)
Opps,, it's dead......even with no SD card in, dead, dead, dead (no leds)
Well, you can (just a guess) take off back, press reset ,, OR
press power, at least 20 seconds,,(then regular 1s press to turn on),, IT'S ALIVE (in frankenstein voice)
FWIW (and BTW, I experiment, have had to do this perhaps 15 times by now)
Please note, bad uboot MUST be removed or disabled

[robieguarneros]

Actually, if you don't know the trick.......
Say you have a perfectly fine booting install on emmc
And then you make a mistake, put in something (SD card) for say a A64 (I have done this)
Opps,, it's dead......even with no SD card in, dead, dead, dead (no leds)
Well, you can (just a guess) take off back, press reset ,, OR
press power, at least 20 seconds,,(then regular 1s press to turn on),, IT'S ALIVE (in frankenstein voice)
FWIW (and BTW, I experiment, have had to do this perhaps 15 times by now)
Please note, bad uboot MUST be removed or disabled

Okay, I'll try this. I just have a question. My computer is not dead(no leds) if I only have the eMMC. The onlyl time it appears to be dead(no leds) is when I disable eMMC and insert an sd, thats when its dead. Would this pressing trick work if I have the eMMC disabled and just try with the sd??
Thanks for all the suggestions!

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The only way that you won't be able to boot to a working SD card with the eMMC disabled is if you've flashed Uboot to SPI flash.  You shouldn't be able to do that unwittingly, I don't think.  But I'm not real familiar with these other linuces.  Do keep trying as wdt suggests.

Thanks for your help though! I'll keep trying. As you say, I don't think I did anything to the SPI.

[KC9UDX]

Yes, everything works the same whether the eMMC is present/enabled or not. It really is ancillary to normal operation of the PBP. That's part of the beauty of this design. You could permanently use one without the eMMC in every way that you could otherwise use it. The eMMC just gives us the option of speed that SD cards don't currently have.

The one caveat is that you could potentially program the SPI flash to ignore the SD card. But I'm pretty sure you haven't, and so are you.

[wdt]

If there is a uboot on emmc, it will be the first found, all others (on SD) will be ignored
The uboot on emmc is trying to start, hence red led, but something is wrong
From the thread in manjaro forum (SPI uboot install, last 1/2) probably dtb
Somehow, this failed boot leaves pbp in a "bad" state which, because of battery, is retained
Without a serial terminal, to see uboot messages, it's hard to know exactly what is happening
It is possible that the SD card image is not right, bad card, bad burn, whatever
The SD image is mrfixit debian, is that correct?

[robieguarneros]

If there is a uboot on emmc, it will be the first found, all others (on SD) will be ignored
The uboot on emmc is trying to start, hence red led, but something is wrong
From the thread in manjaro forum (SPI uboot install, last 1/2) probably dtb
Somehow, this failed boot leaves pbp in a "bad" state which, because of battery, is retained
Without a serial terminal, to see uboot messages, it's hard to know exactly what is happening
It is possible that the SD card image is not right, bad card, bad burn, whatever
The SD image is mrfixit debian, is that correct?

Yeah, I’ve put mrfixit Debian, the one suggested on this thread. I just have one sd so I haven’t tried with another, everything is closed on weekends here so I haven’t been able to get another. As soon as I get one I’ll retry, maybe it is indeed a faulty sd.

[wdt]

How to tell if SD card image is OK?? If you have a linux box & card reader,, I have NO idea how to do this in win
Mount and check the 2 partitions (in a file manager), open some text files, in /etc,,, extlinux/extlinux.conf
If it all looks OK, probably is
Now the 1st 16 MB is a little harder,, use dd to "yank" them out, compare with md5sum,, like this
dd if=/dev/SD(sdb?,sdc?,whatever) of=16SD bs=1M count=16 (sorry sdb? might not be clear,, ONLY sdb OR sdc, not sdb1)
cd to image
xzcat pinebookpro-debian-desktop-mrfixit191226.img.xz |dd of=16img bs=1M count=16
mv 16img (to same directory where 16SD is)
md5sum 16SD 16img (and will display vertically lined up 1 above other, should be identical)

[KC9UDX]

Until you can get a new SD card, try a different image. Even try the NetBSD image I linked to. It should boot. I don't have a way right now to verify that the Debian image that I linked to is actually the right one anymore. Or try one of the other OSs in the wiki links. Android, ChromeOS, or something.

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Here's a silly question: Are you unarchiving the image before flashing it?

I'm not familiar with Etcher at all, and the documentation reads like nonsense to me. It looks like it was sloppily translated to English.