PineBook Pro dead
#1
Hello,

I've been using the PineBook almost daily since it arrived in April, and I used
to shutdown it every day, since the standby isn't really a standby, the battery
drained too fast.

But since 4 days the PineBook won't startup anymore. The green LED turns on,
but nothing else happens. Since 2 days, even the green LED wön't turn on
anymore, until one time today.

What I've tried so far:

- press the reset and recovery button
- press the on-button for 10+ seconds (this made the green LED turn on again, but only once)
- disable the eMMC
- disconnect the battery and connect the bypass cables

Is there anything left I could try?
  Reply
#2
was the battery drained to 0% before it started refusing to boot? i presume from the steps you listed, you're attempting boots from emmc and sd?
  Reply
#3
First, the LED not turning on is not necessarily an indication of not powering on. The power LED is turned on by software; and if the software fails, the LED does not light. A better indication of power, without opening up the device, or measuring voltage, is by feeling the bottom cover near the CPU and seeing if it's warm or hot. Disabling the eMMC, unless you have a known good bootable micro-SD card inserted, will not make troubleshooting easier.

If the battery was fully drained (it sound like that might be what's happened to you), you may need to charge by USB-C. I'm not sure why this would be, but it is widely reported.

I recommend putting the bypass cables back for now; for connecting them incorrectly will cause much more trouble.

10 seconds is probably not enough to totally power off the PBP if it is crashed. I think 20 seconds is the normal recommendation.
:wq



[ SRA accepts you ]
  Reply
#4
Now, about 1,5 years later, I haven't managed to get the PineBook back to work again. I borrowed the sd-card from the PinePhone, but I can't get to the point where it would start to boot. Are there testpads on the mainboard where I could measure something? It takes some time before I can afford a new PineBook.
  Reply
#5
PinePhone? not pinePhonePro?
PP is based on A64, a different cpu and with a different uboot, contents and load location
I can tell you, from experience, when you put in a A64 sd, it will appear to be dead there-ever after
You have to remove A64 media and do a hard reset (or disconnect power(battery) for 1+ days)
hard reset,,, from internal button OR hold pwr key down for 20+ seconds
I have had to do this perhaps a dozen times (long pwr press)
1st try a hard shutdown, pwr press 7 seconds
then try start (1+s press)
then hard reset and start
(there must be a good media inserted, without uboot you will see no leds and obviously no boot)
maybe your emmc is still good????..... but you may have to remove it and hard reset again
with good SD inserted,,,,,, depends what is on emmc
  Reply
#6
(11-03-2022, 01:33 PM)ottahe Wrote: Now, about 1,5 years later, I haven't managed to get the PineBook back to work again. I borrowed the sd-card from the PinePhone, but I can't get to the point where it would start to boot. Are there testpads on the mainboard where I could measure something? It takes some time before I can afford a new PineBook.

I had this same problem and got it to boot armbian from SD, after writing the iso to it with etcher. I dont know if the Pinephone OS is supposed to boot on PBP.
  Reply
#7
New year again and finally a success. I created a new sdcard with armbian and could boot from it. The eMMC was not visible in the lsblk output.
I opened the case and was looking for eMMC switch when I noticed that the eMMC was loose. I pressed on it until it locked. After that, I could
see it in lsblk. After removing the sdcard, I turned it on and saw the green led, but it wouldn't boot from eMMC. Back with the sdcard, I could mount
the 2 partitions on the eMMC and it looks normal (uboot and linux). For now, I'll be using it with the sdcard and decide later, what to do with the eMMC.


Attached Files Thumbnail(s)
   
  Reply
#8
(01-15-2023, 12:29 PM)ottahe Wrote: New year again and finally a success. I created a new sdcard with armbian and could boot from it. The eMMC was not visible in the lsblk output.
I opened the case and was looking for eMMC switch when I noticed that the eMMC was loose. I pressed on it until it locked. After that, I could
see it in lsblk. After removing the sdcard, I turned it on and saw the green led, but it wouldn't boot from eMMC. Back with the sdcard, I could mount
the 2 partitions on the eMMC and it looks normal (uboot and linux). For now, I'll be using it with the sdcard and decide later, what to do with the eMMC.

You'll need to take the bottom cover off, turn the eMMC switch off, boot with the micro-sd card, then turn the eMMC back on, and re-bind it.  Then you can zero it and put everything back together.

Before taking the bottom cover off, open the lid and leave the monitor half hanging over the edge of a table.  The case is incredibly fragile with the bottom removed.
:wq



[ SRA accepts you ]
  Reply
#9
Since mid 2021 I would assume previous wifi and manjaro?
Do a fsck on the 2 emmc partitions, do it more than once (and maybe with -f,,,force)
examine extlinux.conf (on boot partition) and fstab (on /) to see if they seem about right
blkid for uuid's
  Reply
#10
(01-17-2023, 05:24 AM)wdt Wrote: Since mid 2021 I would assume previous wifi and manjaro?
Do a fsck on the 2 emmc partitions, do it more than once (and maybe with -f,,,force)
examine extlinux.conf (on boot partition) and fstab (on /) to see if they seem about right
blkid for uuid's
The boot partition had the dirty bit set, the root partition was ok.

There was no blkid in the extlinux.conf or fstab, only labels. The LABEL=ROOT_MNJRO_MNJRO
was wrong, I changed it to LABEL=ROOT_MNJRO, after that the old Manjaro came up.

LABEL Manjaro ARM
KERNEL /Image
FDT /dtbs/rockchip/rk3399-pinebook-pro.dtb
APPEND initrd=/initramfs-linux.img console=tty1 console=ttyS2,1500000 root=LABEL=ROOT_MNJRO_MNJRO rw rootwait video=eDP-1:1920x1080@60 video=HDMI-A-1:1920x1080@60 bootsplash.bootfile=bootsplash-themes/manjaro/bootsplash

I will replace the Manjaro with something newer. Thanks for the hints.
  Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Pinebook Pro on Debian 12 Power Issue u974615 1 234 03-13-2024, 10:46 AM
Last Post: u974615
  Pinebook Pro Source for Trackpad Flex / Ribbon Cable rankharris 1 180 02-17-2024, 07:06 PM
Last Post: tllim
  HDMI or VGA From Pinebook Pro via Pinebook Pro Docking Deck? segaloco 0 152 02-13-2024, 10:43 PM
Last Post: segaloco
  Pinebook Pro charging issues tomekdev 1 527 01-05-2024, 08:40 PM
Last Post: tomekdev
  Replacement battery for PineBook Pro DrYak 3 958 11-07-2023, 10:09 AM
Last Post: DrYak
  Pinebook Pro Revised Keyboard Firmware jackhumbert 73 127,117 09-13-2023, 03:43 AM
Last Post: k3dAR
  Pinebook Pro malfunctioned hardware samtux 10 4,144 12-27-2022, 03:31 PM
Last Post: samtux
  PineBook Pro revision 2.2: Wishlist for the hardware issue fixes dsimic 115 131,823 11-30-2022, 04:28 PM
Last Post: KC9UDX
  Decent Pinebook Pro barrel PSU / Charger petaramesh 3 1,764 10-21-2022, 07:57 AM
Last Post: dachalife
  Dead, dead, dead! vgivanovic 6 4,117 08-27-2022, 02:00 PM
Last Post: vgivanovic

Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)