Being called an "Adept"

[commiecam]

Thanks to whoever increased my rank to Adept, but I think you might be mistaken,, To those who have read my posts, and everyone else as well,  I used to patch program in Fortran 4 and 77 and plain "C".  I have lots of general engineering knowledge but absolutely none of the skills needed to develop firmware for Pine64 devices.  Please consider my rants to be questions about reliability and ease of use-- basic design and engineering concerns.  My only software concerns revolve around Pine64's apparent unwillingness to provide, out of the box a, basic and reliable boot firmware for each of their devices so that those of us who are less adept at machine language will have a reliable starting point at which to aim our porting efforts. As an example, the mess that Manjaro has made of the uboot which is a part of the system supplied on the Pinebook Pro and which is making a nightmare for those of us who want to run literally anything else.  I'm simply not adept enough to get that deep into hardware.  Please call me a rank amateur, a simpleton, even a crank if you  wish, but fix this problem!

[barray]

Thanks to whoever increased my rank to Adept, but I think you might be mistaken

I think it is an automated process based on either/both time and reputation.

My only software concerns revolve around Pine64's apparent unwillingness to provide, out of the box a, basic and reliable boot firmware for each of their devices so that those of us who are less adept at machine language will have a reliable starting point at which to aim our porting efforts. As an example, the mess that Manjaro has made of the uboot which is a part of the system supplied on the Pinebook Pro and which is making a nightmare for those of us who want to run literally anything else.

This seems worthy of its own post. I have heard many people complain about this uboot issue.

[tophneal]

i will confirm the titles are preset, and based on reputation/activity on the forums. but i like your humility, sooooo....

wish granted.

[KC9UDX]

We've had a few posts about the U-boot issue, but nothing concise. Other than a few of us with anecdotal experiences, I don't think we really know for sure that the U-boot coming with Manjaru on the latest batch of Pinebooks Pro is the problem.

I do share your stance on the unfriendliness of the problem. But I think a good solution would simply be clear instructions on how to replace the offending stock U-boot.

I think a bigger problem was finding out that U-boot on the eMMC passing off to U-boot on SD cards masks the fact that the SD card might not actually boot without U-boot on the eMMC ceding control. But I'm not sure what could be done about that.

[vincele]

I think a bigger problem was finding out that U-boot on the eMMC passing off to U-boot on SD cards masks the fact that the SD card might not actually boot without U-boot on the eMMC ceding control.  But I'm not sure what could be done about that.

Yeah, compound that with soldered emmc and you get a (soft)brickable platform :facepalm: