Help - PineBook Pro won't boot!
#1
Just over a week into ownership my lovely new PineBook Pro seems to have given up the ghost! When powering on, I am presented with an awful coil whine from the machine and a blank display (with backlight turned on). I've attempted disconnecting the battery and resetting using the switch on the device but to no avail! The whine seems to stop when I disconnect the display though! Any suggestions? Really disappointed that an otherwise brilliant machine seems dead to the world now!

For reference, this is the sound...
https://youtu.be/QexeIoJv6Hw
#2
(11-13-2019, 02:20 PM)ThisGeekTweets Wrote: Just over a week into ownership my lovely new PineBook Pro seems to have given up the ghost! When powering on, I am presented with an awful coil whine from the machine and a blank display (with backlight turned on). I've attempted disconnecting the battery and resetting using the switch on the device but to no avail! The whine seems to stop when I disconnect the display though! Any suggestions? Really disappointed that an otherwise brilliant machine seems dead to the world now!

For reference, this is the sound...
https://youtu.be/QexeIoJv6Hw

I'm in the same boat... less than a week in, black screen, whine, no output.

I noticed that the keyboard caps lock was working so I went ahead and connected a serial console, which shows my OS booting, to a broken boot because of my fault (bad fstab entry which I'm 99.9% sure is unrelated) but I can't interact either by serial or direct, not sure why, but looks like the GPU is broken to me Sad
#3
(11-19-2019, 02:46 PM)iMartyn Wrote:
(11-13-2019, 02:20 PM)ThisGeekTweets Wrote: Just over a week into ownership my lovely new PineBook Pro seems to have given up the ghost! When powering on, I am presented with an awful coil whine from the machine and a blank display (with backlight turned on). I've attempted disconnecting the battery and resetting using the switch on the device but to no avail! The whine seems to stop when I disconnect the display though! Any suggestions? Really disappointed that an otherwise brilliant machine seems dead to the world now!

For reference, this is the sound...
https://youtu.be/QexeIoJv6Hw

I'm in the same boat... less than a week in, black screen, whine, no output.

I noticed that the keyboard caps lock was working so I went ahead and connected a serial console, which shows my OS booting, to a broken boot because of my fault (bad fstab entry which I'm 99.9% sure is unrelated) but I can't interact either by serial or direct, not sure why, but looks like the GPU is broken to me Sad

Well colour me surprised!

My issue was indeed the fstab.  I figured out my terminal program (windows bleh, termite is not the most obvious app) wasn't sending the newlines so I could then use the serial console to log in.  This leads me to the extremely interesting discovery : The text console on the internal display is not initialised until after pivot from the ramdisk!


I feel this is a fairly major bug as many things can get in the way of a successful boot before switching root.  I'm glad I know how to use sed on a serial console (vim and serial consoles really don't mix lol) and I'm back up and running but wow... serial console only before the Open Sesame screen folks, if you don't get that screen, you gotta go serial!
#4
(11-13-2019, 02:20 PM)ThisGeekTweets Wrote: Just over a week into ownership my lovely new PineBook Pro seems to have given up the ghost! When powering on, I am presented with an awful coil whine from the machine and a blank display (with backlight turned on). I've attempted disconnecting the battery and resetting using the switch on the device but to no avail! The whine seems to stop when I disconnect the display though! Any suggestions? Really disappointed that an otherwise brilliant machine seems dead to the world now!

For reference, this is the sound...
https://youtu.be/QexeIoJv6Hw


I would try booting from a sdcard first, then maybe open the bottom and see if the emmc module is properly seated. Please report back Smile
Come have a chat in the Pine IRC channel >>
#5
(11-19-2019, 03:03 PM)iMartyn Wrote: I feel this is a fairly major bug as many things can get in the way of a successful boot before switching root.  I'm glad I know how to use sed on a serial console (vim and serial consoles really don't mix lol) and I'm back up and running but wow... serial console only before the Open Sesame screen folks, if you don't get that screen, you gotta go serial!

I go through the same pain. A serial console cable should have been included with the Pinebook Pro by default :-).

This surprising behavior should have been better communicated in advance so I could and would have ordered a serial console cable together with my Pinebook Pro. My motivation for ordering a serial console cable as a separate order goes close to zero as I don't want to pay more for shipping than the actual product.
#6
(11-20-2019, 12:24 PM)Der Geist der Maschine Wrote: I go through the same pain. A serial console cable should have been included with the Pinebook Pro by default :-).

This surprising behavior should have been better communicated in advance so I could and would have ordered a serial console cable together with my Pinebook Pro. My motivation for ordering a serial console cable as a separate order goes close to zero as I don't want to pay more for shipping than the actual product.

There are reports of issues with using the serial console cable from the Pine64 store with the PBP.

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=7746&page=2

https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOS_on_ARM/PIN...al_console


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