Best OS for Testing PINE64 Bootup?

[zer0sig]

Howdy folks,
  I was one of the early kickstarter folks last year to order a 2GB PINE A64(+?), and received my board over a year ago. At the time, I didn't have a wired LAN to test it on, but had no luck getting it to boot with the Android or Linux versions I had tried. Have tried a couple of newer builds now that I have an ethernet LAN link handy so even if the HDMI doesn't fire up, I can ssh in, take a look, and run or modify it in a headless state.

I picked up one of those 2.5A CanaKit power adapters that are popular with RPi folks and have been mentioned on these forums somewhat, but I still have had no luck. The LED comes on as long as I don't try to cycle it quickly, but no HDMI and no network connectivity - so I figure it is not booting.

I'm not especially heartbroken about this, as I feel good supporting the project and I love my 14" Pinebook, but I'd really like to confirm whether this thing is faulty or whether I had just had poor luck with some less stable builds.

So is there any kind of consensus as to what image is the most likely to boot reliably on these boards? I have the PINE64 installer and have had reliable success on the Pinebook using the same MicroSD hardware that failed on the PINE standalone board.

Any suggestions would be helpful and I would be quite likely to try them.

I am considering looking into other PINE64 offerings but I'd really like to get this thing running first, or be able to fairly reliably write it off as DOA and move on.

Please advise.

[xalius]

I would just go with the Ubuntu minimal image first, see if you get an Ethernet link, hook up serial console and see what is in the boot log.

[pfeerick]

I would just go with the Ubuntu minimal image first, see if you get an Ethernet link, hook up serial console and see what is in the boot log.

I'd also particularly try one ayufan's minimal builds as I notice on the dmesg logs that on my pinebook that the CPU lockup happens occasionaly, but it seems to boot right past it, whereas the pine64 tended to get stuck there sometimes. It's worth a try

https://github.com/ayufan-pine64/linux-b...-74.img.xz

[zer0sig]

Thanks - will give these a shot.

[zer0sig]

Yay! the minimal xenial image that the PINE64 Loader uses works! ssh is successful!

No that I know it does that correctly, i will soon be trying out something else on it - maybe a current version of Android as I was kinda shooting for making this a home entertainment type box.