Device Unable To Read MicroSD Card
#1
I have a Pine Phone that isn't usable.  The MicroSD card reader isn't working and I messed up MANJARO that came preinstalled so now, when I turn on the phone, it's stuck at the loading screen (the K with the gear) and nothing else happens.

Anyone know how to get into this thing? 

At my disposal I have: an HP laptop running Windows 11, a Nokia N900 (with an generally unusable microUSB port) running Maemo, the Pine Phone keyboard (last I tried it wasn't being recognized by the phone because I've not applied a shim to the keyboard so it makes better contact with POGO pins), two MicroSD cards.  Any suggestions are appreciated. 

My current thought: use SSH to get into the device and flash eMMC with a different OS. Windows 11 has a built in SSH protocol.  Is this possible?
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#2
(11-30-2022, 07:39 AM)_radv_ Wrote: I have a Pine Phone that isn't usable.  The MicroSD card reader isn't working and I messed up MANJARO that came preinstalled so now, when I turn on the phone, it's stuck at the loading screen (the K with the gear) and nothing else happens.

Anyone know how to get into this thing? 

At my disposal I have: an HP laptop running Windows 11, a Nokia N900 (with an generally unusable microUSB port) running Maemo, the Pine Phone keyboard (last I tried it wasn't being recognized by the phone because I've not applied a shim to the keyboard so it makes better contact with POGO pins), two MicroSD cards.  Any suggestions are appreciated. 

My current thought: use SSH to get into the device and flash eMMC with a different OS. Windows 11 has a built in SSH protocol.  Is this possible?

Serial cable and FEL mode (https://linux-sunxi.org/FEL#Through_serial_console) probably the only chance there. The system (and SSH) might not be started at that early stage but you might try (probably requires USB networking instead of WiFi, however). If you get it in a working state again I would suggest you to put Tow-Boot on the eMMC, which includes an USB Mass Storage mode.
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#3
(11-30-2022, 08:03 AM)fxc Wrote:
(11-30-2022, 07:39 AM)_radv_ Wrote: I have a Pine Phone that isn't usable.  The MicroSD card reader isn't working and I messed up MANJARO that came preinstalled so now, when I turn on the phone, it's stuck at the loading screen (the K with the gear) and nothing else happens.

Anyone know how to get into this thing? 

At my disposal I have: an HP laptop running Windows 11, a Nokia N900 (with an generally unusable microUSB port) running Maemo, the Pine Phone keyboard (last I tried it wasn't being recognized by the phone because I've not applied a shim to the keyboard so it makes better contact with POGO pins), two MicroSD cards.  Any suggestions are appreciated. 

My current thought: use SSH to get into the device and flash eMMC with a different OS. Windows 11 has a built in SSH protocol.  Is this possible?

Serial cable and FEL mode (https://linux-sunxi.org/FEL#Through_serial_console) probably the only chance there. The system (and SSH) might not be started at that early stage but you might try (probably requires USB networking instead of WiFi, however). If you get it in a working state again I would suggest you to put Tow-Boot on the eMMC, which includes an USB Mass Storage mode.

Maybe your microSD card detect switch is broken. Check this out: https://blog.pineph.one/2021/05/damaged-...ocket.html
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#4
@mark1250, I'm not getting any response from the phone that it recognizes the SD card. What I read suggests the phone would hang with the SD card's image and show a red light. Mine just skips the SD card and tries to boot from the eMMC. Also, last I was able to check, when I executed lsblk and fdisk -l the card didn't showing up, at all. The results list only mmcblk2 and zram partitions. There should be mmcblk0. Having noted that, I might still try the modified JumpDrive image in the blog post you suggested.

Nah, that modified JumpDrive image didn't work. The phone still boots to a K and a gear.
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#5
(11-30-2022, 10:10 AM)_radv_ Wrote: @mark1250, I'm not getting any response from the phone that it recognizes the SD card.  What I read suggests the phone would hang with the SD card's image and show a red light.  Mine just skips the SD card and tries to boot from the eMMC.  Also, last I was able to check, when I executed lsblk and fdisk -l the card didn't showing up, at all.  The results list only mmcblk2 and zram partitions.  There should be mmcblk0.  Having noted that, I might still try the modified JumpDrive image in the blog post you suggested.

Nah, that modified JumpDrive image didn't work.  The phone still boots to a K and a gear.

Make sure you put the microSD card in the top slot and all the way in and not in the micro SIM slot. You can also check the microSD card reader slot for broken pins by looking with a flashlight from the side.
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#6
Looks like 8 "pins".  Does that sound right, @fxc?  They don't appear broken. They look straight...but more then a few time I've looked at the MicroSD card + SIM card slot and thought that it was a little crooked and I've thought a few POGO pins are different hights....very good chance it's the light...or my eyes...I haven't been seeing too well lately.
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#7
So, I ran Window's DiskPart utility on the MicroSD card. It seemed to have cleaned something because I flashed the "pine64-pinephone-plamo-beta-factorytest" image, inserted the card into the Pine Phone and got a new result. It booted to a screen that sais:
"postmarketOS
initramfs-extra not found
https://postmarketos.org/troubleshooting"
Hurray!
I powered off the device
...but then... a few minutes later when I turned the device on again it booted straight to the K and gear logo as if the SD card wasn't there again...I don't get it. This is similar to what happened the one time I got Maemo-Leste to boot a couple weeks ago. It booted once, but only once from the MicroSD card.
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#8
I've tried it a few times, now, and it's not repeatable. It seems as if I can boot an image from the SD card only once. What would cause this?
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#9
(12-06-2022, 10:20 AM)_radv_ Wrote: I've tried it a few times, now, and it's not repeatable.  It seems as if I can boot an image from the SD card only once.  What would cause this?

It becomes hard to track what the current state of your issue is, as it is getting mixed in multiple threads. The factory image is super outdated. As the card can occasionally boot it is making a hardware issue less likely.

I would suggest that you flash Jumpdrive to the microSD card using Etcher (please don't try to use other tools on Windows) and to see if you get that to boot consistently, https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Ju...one.img.xz
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#10
Your timing's good, @fxc.  I reformatted a MicroSD card using a more through process and was currently trying to decide what image to flash to it this time.  I'll use your suggestion.
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