Pine A64 Plus Fails to Boot

[dkryder]

well, i'll add my voice in whatever way necessary but i have no idea who to push on this matter.

[Luke]

dkryder, well longsleep is aware of this and so are a few key other people. And it seems that things are happening - lets wait an see how this pans out.

[pfeerick]

TinkerBear,  this is also for Pete, the problem is that the wall wart PSU(s) are not clean especially under load ( like the spikes which appear during bootup ).   ( yes, the DCIN could have been more robust with decoupling caps and inductors ).

Sorry Macrus, this does NOT apply to me... I am not, and have never run from a wall wart PSU, but from a 4A DC-DC PSU set at 5.25v, and have had zero issues with it on the pine64 (nor any other SoC board) until just recently. Plus as mentioned before the pine64 in question has its lithium battery connected... so there is no excuse for the PMIC to be dropping the ball. No change in power supply, leads, pine64 - only OS updates. The system is fine when it is running... it just fails to successfully reboot/boot at times. I do appreciate that filtering will help on cheap crap noisy power supplies, but not in this instance.

I would also like to suggest that a more standardised 2.1mm ID barrel connector be used. 3.5mm/1.35mm is reminiscent of the ones used on other boards which then use pathetic DC to USB leads with microscopic thin wire. Power supplies with 2.1mm connectors are more readily available, as are decent connectors, including some nice ones with screw terminals for your own wire

[MarkHaysHarris777]

TinkerBear,  this is also for Pete, the problem <snip>

Sorry Macrus, this does NOT apply to me... I am not, and have never run from a wall wart PSU, but from a 4A DC-DC PSU set at 5.25v,  <snip>

hi Pete,  look cloooser...   I did not say it applies to you, I said the response is also for you .

...  that means that I'm responding to two people at once, rather than just TinkerBear  (whether it applies to you is another colored horse)  <sorry for the confusion>  

Again, the problem is NOT the rating on the PSU;  its the bootup current spikes, and its also the fact that switching power supplies that are not properly filtered will cause problems for the PMIC;  and the PMIC axp803 is very sensitive. 

If there is even a small ripple in the DC-DC converter output the PMIC WILL shutdown. and the board will go dead.

TinkerBear's idea of a small cap added to the board itself is interesting (and may be easier, depending upon skills) but I chose to filter the DCIN so that the ripple is non-existent.  For other people as well,  this might apply more stringently if the user plans to install the pine board in an automobile or plans to use the SLA battery schema. 

[tommypine]

I also get hit by this issue.
I use the latest Armbian Desktop image, and if i boot up without HDMI connected booting correct is a game of luck.
I don't think it's only a power issue, cause why the pine isn't crashing when on heavy load?????
I get my LCD soon and then i will test it whith LCD booting.

[MarkHaysHarris777]

I also get hit by this issue.
I use the latest Armbian Desktop image, and if i boot up without HDMI connected booting correct is a game of luck.
I don't think it's only a power issue, cause why the pine isn't crashing when on heavy load?????
I get my LCD soon and then i will test it whith LCD booting.

The issue is with the PMIC.  The PMIC needs stable DCIN, and I suspect that with the hdmi plugged in the voltage levels are more stable.  The red-light on is not a software issue. The PMIC provides the voltage for the LED, as well the gpu.  If the red LED goes out the reason is the axp803 ( PMIC ).  Almost always this has been a power issue. The units with good PSU(s) to the euler bus (filtered) do not have this issue.

[pfeerick]

Again, the problem is NOT the rating on the PSU;  its the bootup current spikes, and its also the fact that switching power supplies that are not properly filtered will cause problems for the PMIC;  and the PMIC axp803 is very sensitive. 

If there is even a small ripple in the DC-DC converter output the PMIC WILL shutdown. and the board will go dead.

Since that is the case (which it will be 9 times out of 10 with this sort of random and inconsistent issue)... I'll remind you yet again that in my instance... this is with the lithium battery connected to the pine64! So are you suggesting that the PMIC is also unable to instantaneously switch between the external input and the battery input as it designed to? I'm more than happy to entertain that thought, but want to know if that is what you are suggesting, or you have missed that detail?

Do you think the HDMI being connected might simply be adding some extra capacitance and/or power, and helping smooth things out, be making the PMIC regulate slightly better since it has a bit more work to do?

And regardless of this discussion, of course powering the pine64 via the euler bus and a properly rated 'clean' power supply (ie. the international white raspberry pi power supply) is the prefered approach for those wishing to be happy pine64 users

[tommypine]

@MarkHaysHarris777, what red light are you talking about???

Today i also realised that my HDMI Monitor gets disturbed if the Pine get stuck whilst booting.
I even can't get in the service menu of the monitor until i pull out the HDMI cable.
Maybe there is a communication problem between monitor and pine at boot stage,
and if the monitor is absent the pine didn't recognise that and this communication problem seems to increase drastically.
Only my thougt after much testing on that.....

[pfeerick]

@MarkHaysHarris777, what red light are you talking about???

Not sure why Marcus brought that up, but I believe the power led is the red light he is referring to. He is indicating that the power LED is powered by the PMIC, as is the SoC and other support components. It's not a software controllable indicator, and is meant to indicate that the board is powered up... so if it goes out and the board is supposed to be running, then there is a power/hardware issue or the board has shut down for some reason. It is not an indicator of something bad... in this case red is good

[tommypine]

Got my Pine-LCD today.
Good news, with Armbian and only the LCD connected there is no problem at all.
It's booting reliable in a few seconds to the Desktop altough powered trough the lousy micro-usb port.
So there is something faulty with the HDMI driver part in my opinion.