05-26-2016, 12:41 PM
Been horsing around with my Pine64 for about a week. Spent several hours on it at home and a few at work too. After getting an image to finally boot fully, I worked backwards and determined what some of my problems were.
CLIFF NOTES
1) HDMI Display: It was only after my 4th or 5th trip to these forums that I realized that you have to have a 1080p (or better maybe?) display. My TV at home is old and only does 720. You may occasionally see digital garbage on the screen but you will never see a proper image, like that white Pine A64 screen you have been waiting for
2) The power supply thing has been beat to death, and my hang up ended up being the cable. I went to the store and specifically bought a larger gauge cable they said was better for charging, high power etc. In actuality, it was worse. If you think your power supply should be up to snuff, start swapping the charging cable. The one that eventually worked for me is the one that came with my old Samsung S2 five or so years ago.
3) If you are really stuck on the power supply, go to the Dollar Tree and buy a $3-$5 USB battery booster (backup? whatever) that they make for plugging into a cell phone. A battery has the ability to provide the necessary current (even for a short time) that many power supplies do not have. I ran the board a good 30 minutes off one of these and it wasn't even fully charged.
So... symptoms...
The majority of my time was wasted at home with the insufficient display. I am confident that at least one of my configurations would have booted early on if I had the proper display. What you will most likely see is your red light coming on and staying on as if the board is properly powered and working. On the 720 monitor, 99.9% of the time I just saw a black screen. I kept trudging along because of that .1% of the time when the screen showed digital garbage, as if it was trying to boot the display or something. It was mostly green blotches like you see when your satellite starts to go out in bad weather.
After getting past that and bringing the board to work with a shiny new 1080p monitor, every attempt at least brought me as far as the Pine A64 screen (when using RemixOS), or to the Allwinner Powered by Android screen (when using the Android 5.1 image). Sometimes, the board would shut off (red LED and all) after a few seconds, others it would just hang. These could both be signs of insufficient power. During my week of frustration, I went to the store and bought a dual 2.1A power supply made for charging old Ipads. The discount electronic store still had these despite the fact that it comes with the old 30 pin connector. It has USB of course, so I just tossed the iphone wire and used the "supposedly" beefy wire I bought at the same time. My first hint that my problem could have been either of these items was when it took twice as long to charge my blackberry with this combo than it does with my old Huawei android phone charger. If you bought new equipment to play with this, test it out with your devices and see how long it takes to charge your phone, tablet or whatever.
Day two at work I decided to bring the battery booster thingy. I continued to use it with my 'new' wire, and the board would stay powered instead of shutting off after 10-20 seconds. However it would hang at either of the splash screens mentioned above or get to a blank white screen on Remix. Once it started writing the word remix (which is what its supposed to do if you haven't seen it go that far yet) and then died during that. I read somewhere that if you are flat out stuck, load a Linux distro on to the SD card and try that. I downloaded Debian (the first one in the Wiki download page I think) and rather than a splash screen, it goes right to a running stream of text like Linux often does during boot. It shut off once during this and permanently froze a second time.
It was at this point that I went out to my car and grabbed my old samsung wire for something different. Using this and the battery, the board booted up on first attempt. It did stop during boot at the same point in the stream of text, but them went on to a black screen and finally the login screen. After successfully playing around in Debian, I fetched my other SD card with Remix on it and popped it in. This also loaded first attempt. From there I worked backwards and swapped out the battery for the ipad charger I bought. Success there as well.
The moral of the story is that any one little thing can make these boards grind to a halt. I think the things you want to look for in order are the red light staying on rather than shutting off, then make sure at least you see the corresponding splash screen for the OS you chose. This should come up on screen within 2-3 seconds. If it does not, either your write to the card is wrong somehow or possibly you need to play with another TV or monitor.
Hoe this gives a couple of extra hints that I didn't see elsewhere.
CLIFF NOTES
1) HDMI Display: It was only after my 4th or 5th trip to these forums that I realized that you have to have a 1080p (or better maybe?) display. My TV at home is old and only does 720. You may occasionally see digital garbage on the screen but you will never see a proper image, like that white Pine A64 screen you have been waiting for
2) The power supply thing has been beat to death, and my hang up ended up being the cable. I went to the store and specifically bought a larger gauge cable they said was better for charging, high power etc. In actuality, it was worse. If you think your power supply should be up to snuff, start swapping the charging cable. The one that eventually worked for me is the one that came with my old Samsung S2 five or so years ago.
3) If you are really stuck on the power supply, go to the Dollar Tree and buy a $3-$5 USB battery booster (backup? whatever) that they make for plugging into a cell phone. A battery has the ability to provide the necessary current (even for a short time) that many power supplies do not have. I ran the board a good 30 minutes off one of these and it wasn't even fully charged.
So... symptoms...
The majority of my time was wasted at home with the insufficient display. I am confident that at least one of my configurations would have booted early on if I had the proper display. What you will most likely see is your red light coming on and staying on as if the board is properly powered and working. On the 720 monitor, 99.9% of the time I just saw a black screen. I kept trudging along because of that .1% of the time when the screen showed digital garbage, as if it was trying to boot the display or something. It was mostly green blotches like you see when your satellite starts to go out in bad weather.
After getting past that and bringing the board to work with a shiny new 1080p monitor, every attempt at least brought me as far as the Pine A64 screen (when using RemixOS), or to the Allwinner Powered by Android screen (when using the Android 5.1 image). Sometimes, the board would shut off (red LED and all) after a few seconds, others it would just hang. These could both be signs of insufficient power. During my week of frustration, I went to the store and bought a dual 2.1A power supply made for charging old Ipads. The discount electronic store still had these despite the fact that it comes with the old 30 pin connector. It has USB of course, so I just tossed the iphone wire and used the "supposedly" beefy wire I bought at the same time. My first hint that my problem could have been either of these items was when it took twice as long to charge my blackberry with this combo than it does with my old Huawei android phone charger. If you bought new equipment to play with this, test it out with your devices and see how long it takes to charge your phone, tablet or whatever.
Day two at work I decided to bring the battery booster thingy. I continued to use it with my 'new' wire, and the board would stay powered instead of shutting off after 10-20 seconds. However it would hang at either of the splash screens mentioned above or get to a blank white screen on Remix. Once it started writing the word remix (which is what its supposed to do if you haven't seen it go that far yet) and then died during that. I read somewhere that if you are flat out stuck, load a Linux distro on to the SD card and try that. I downloaded Debian (the first one in the Wiki download page I think) and rather than a splash screen, it goes right to a running stream of text like Linux often does during boot. It shut off once during this and permanently froze a second time.
It was at this point that I went out to my car and grabbed my old samsung wire for something different. Using this and the battery, the board booted up on first attempt. It did stop during boot at the same point in the stream of text, but them went on to a black screen and finally the login screen. After successfully playing around in Debian, I fetched my other SD card with Remix on it and popped it in. This also loaded first attempt. From there I worked backwards and swapped out the battery for the ipad charger I bought. Success there as well.
The moral of the story is that any one little thing can make these boards grind to a halt. I think the things you want to look for in order are the red light staying on rather than shutting off, then make sure at least you see the corresponding splash screen for the OS you chose. This should come up on screen within 2-3 seconds. If it does not, either your write to the card is wrong somehow or possibly you need to play with another TV or monitor.
Hoe this gives a couple of extra hints that I didn't see elsewhere.
