DOA Pine64 ?

[pine.tree]

I would wake a video of you testing the card, burning it to "Startup" mode, powering it on with a good adapter, and into your monitor. I got my Pine yesterday and I had no issues with an iPad plug with an Xbox one controller cord.

[Kube123]

If you did not see video on Tv try to switch to another Tv or monitor make sure tv supported 1080.
If your xd card burn without error you are fine otherwise repeat burn again until you reach an end no more error. 
If you see Red LED all the time your Psu just fine, if Psu less than 1.0A volt drop to 4.8V CPUs shutdown their supply power immediately , recommended 2.5A from phone charger (Samsung, iPad mine had no problems booting pine64+)
Succesed boot in Android 5.1.1, Linux, but not Remix OS with 2G Ram board.
Hope that will help you with your new Pine64.


Ps, I don't think the Pine64 DOA just because the software or firmware of Allwinner chip wasn't fully supported enough.

[atanguay]

Thanks for the suggestion S4BRE...card is just fine. Practically new.

[sfltrack]

How do I return exchange a bad board?  I have tried 4 power supplies and three cables and all I get is a red light.

[rahlquist]

How do I return exchange a bad board?  I have tried 4 power supplies and three cables and all I get is a red light.

Red light indicates power on. Thats all. 

What OS's have you tried? What Displays? Unlike a PC without an OS on the Microsd these do nothing at all, there is no bios or post.

[atanguay]

After much frustration, I've finally achieved some success this evening. Some.

I was hooking my Pine to a monitor using an HDMI adapter. This seems like a HUGE no-no. My card works and I've flashed several OSes with success. Mine still dies when I plug in the network.

In the end, I just sort of think it wasn't super smart to have NO way to get clues as to how your Pine is doing along the process. 

Accessing the SD card? Who knows!
Booting? Hard to say!

It sort of reminds me of early PC days when you listened for beep POST codes to let you know what was going on...and that's sort of my point. Back then they at least had that those things to help you figure out what was going on. I appreciate the idea of making a $15 main board, but I definitely would have paid another buck or two to not have this much hassle just trying to get a first boot. It certainly doesn't make me trust it.

[pine.tree]

You can easily get a USB serial adapter and use that to give a status on your Pine booting up. Costs less than $5 shipped from certain marketplaces. That would give you a full overview of exactly what the Pine is doing.

[tkaiser]

You can easily get a USB serial adapter and use that to give a status on your Pine booting up.

Are you kidding? This is your advice to solve the 'My Pine64 is DOA' problem? Seriously? Oordering a serial adapter somewhere, waiting at least 3 weeks for shipment or paying the same price as the board, learning about baud rates and the like just to realize what's wrong?

• This board needs DOCUMENTATION. A quickstart guide that tells the problems users are running into. And not these weird unstructured walls of text the Pine64 folks think would by enough being copy&paste from forum to Wiki (but maybe they simply don't care and love to get DOA returns over and over again)
  
• Replace crappy Micro USB with a sane barrel plug since Micro USB to power anything that needs more than 100mA is always wrong or just insane. At least add a barrel plug and mark it '5V ONLY' in big letters on the PCB
  
• Put a programmable LED on the board and not just a connector. This way the board/bootloader can provide user feedback
  
• Use SPI flash to store a basic bootloader: https://linux-sunxi.org/Pine64#SPI_NOR_Flash
  
• Again DOCUMENTATION/COMMUNICATION. Communicate clearly the state of software development. Until a few days ago 1080p has been the only working HDMI resolution. By refusing to tell users this limitation the Pine64 folks managed to get 8 out of 10 boards returned as DOA flawlessly working (just not with the display the backer in question tried it)
  

[rahlquist]

After much frustration, I've finally achieved some success this evening. Some.

I was hooking my Pine to a monitor using an HDMI adapter. This seems like a HUGE no-no. My card works and I've flashed several OSes with success. Mine still dies when I plug in the network.

In the end, I just sort of think it wasn't super smart to have NO way to get clues as to how your Pine is doing along the process. 

Accessing the SD card? Who knows!
Booting? Hard to say!

It sort of reminds me of early PC days when you listened for beep POST codes to let you know what was going on...and that's sort of my point. Back then they at least had that those things to help you figure out what was going on. I appreciate the idea of making a $15 main board, but I definitely would have paid another buck or two to not have this much hassle just trying to get a first boot. It certainly doesn't make me trust it.

Your argument about not knowing what happens during boot is ridiculous. It's your own lack of research and knowledge limiting you on that. $3-5 part and free software and you can see far more than a BIOS post could ever tell you. Take a look at my mini guide http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=934  look at the bootlog at the end of the first post. All that data comes at your real time. 

Again this was a failure of marketing, they made the board sound like it works out of box like a FireTV or Roku and attracted a crowd that is not used to dealing with SBC.

[Waunaplay]

Anyone had any luck with the HDMI issue? I just sold a my Dell 23" monitor because it only had DVI and I could not get a HDMI to DVI to work. I bought a new 22" LED monitor that had HDMI and 1080p res. I know the board works, but only on the TV In my living room. Not where I need this, so it's not helpful. Wondering what others have found. What displays are you using?