PBP not powering up (anymore)

[Criena]

Hi there,

after waiting for such a loooong time, I finally got my PBP on Friday.

Over the weekend I played around a little bit with Manjaro and then wanted to try a different OS. After repartitioning the eMMC, I accidentally pressed the false delete key (i.e. the power button) and the system shut down. Since then I can't get the PBP powering up anymore. Neither a USB stick (the one I used for the interrupted installation) nor an SD card with the Manjaro KDE image does the job.

I don't really understand what's wrong since at least the SD card should do the trick. A hardware failure just in that unfortunate moment would be a big coincidence. But what else could it be and most importantly: how can I get it fixed?


Anyone got a lifesaving clue?

Thanks!
Criena

Can you share the OS dsitro image you were trying to flash when you accidentally powered off the device? This is give us a better understanding on what the uboot is trying to do.

Also the last option would be to enable uart and get uart logs, this will need uart cable used for pinebookpro.

As everyone have already advised you about booting from SD card then you might have to try a different sd card. You should try all the major os images like debian from mrfixit should definitely work as it is using bsp uboot. 

Try different sd card and report back.

Good luck.

Hi,

the image I wanted to install was NixOS. I created an image from https://github.com/samueldr/wip-pinebook-pro, put it on a USB stick, booted, repartitioned the eMMC and then accidentally powered off the machine. Nothing from NixOS is on the eMMC yet. I'm pretty sure I dd'ed the eMMC's first few MB, so I guess the eMMC is totally blank.

I tried to boot from the USB stick again (which worked before), I put the official Manjaro on an SD card, I tried mrfixit's Debian image on the same SD card and also a different one. I disabled the eMMC (via switch 24) and now also removed it. Nothing has any positive effect.

What I did recognise is, that using an SD card, the power LED flashes green for a millisecond. Whereas using a USB stick, the power LED stays dark and also the USB stick itself doesn't get any power. My conclusion is, that the USB stick only works indirectly via uboot running from eMMC or SD card. That's good to know, but doesn't help me solve the problem.

[spikerguy]

Hi there,

after waiting for such a loooong time, I finally got my PBP on Friday.

Over the weekend I played around a little bit with Manjaro and then wanted to try a different OS. After repartitioning the eMMC, I accidentally pressed the false delete key (i.e. the power button) and the system shut down. Since then I can't get the PBP powering up anymore. Neither a USB stick (the one I used for the interrupted installation) nor an SD card with the Manjaro KDE image does the job.

I don't really understand what's wrong since at least the SD card should do the trick. A hardware failure just in that unfortunate moment would be a big coincidence. But what else could it be and most importantly: how can I get it fixed?


Anyone got a lifesaving clue?

Thanks!
Criena

Can you share the OS dsitro image you were trying to flash when you accidentally powered off the device? This is give us a better understanding on what the uboot is trying to do.

Also the last option would be to enable uart and get uart logs, this will need uart cable used for pinebookpro.

As everyone have already advised you about booting from SD card then you might have to try a different sd card. You should try all the major os images like debian from mrfixit should definitely work as it is using bsp uboot. 

Try different sd card and report back.

Good luck.

Hi,

the image I wanted to install was NixOS. I created an image from https://github.com/samueldr/wip-pinebook-pro, put it on a USB stick, booted, repartitioned the eMMC and then accidentally powered off the machine. Nothing from NixOS is on the eMMC yet. I'm pretty sure I dd'ed the eMMC's first few MB, so I guess the eMMC is totally blank.

I tried to boot from the USB stick again (which worked before), I put the official Manjaro on an SD card, I tried mrfixit's Debian image on the same SD card and also a different one. I disabled the eMMC (via switch 24) and now also removed it. Nothing has any positive effect.

What I did recognise is, that using an SD card, the power LED flashes green for a millisecond. Whereas using a USB stick, the power LED stays dark and also the USB stick itself doesn't get any power. My conclusion is, that the USB stick only works indirectly via uboot running from eMMC or SD card. That's good to know, but doesn't help me solve the problem.

Ok, So I think you should try to flash the emmc directly. You will need emmc to us connector.

• Remove the emmc from the board.
  
• Connect Emmc to the USB adaptor.
  
• Connect USB Adaptor to your regular pc/laptop.
  
• Flash Manjaro SD Card Image to it using Etcher or Debian Mr. Fixits image. (Depends on your choice).
  
• Put emmc back to the PBP Board and enable the switch and boot it.
  
  
• It should work fine this way. 
  

This is the last resort for knowing if the system is fine as you mentioned that you cannot boot from sd card even when the emmc is removed.

Sample image of eMMC to USB adaptor.

[xmixahlx]

with the emmc turned off you should be able to boot from an sdcard with its own uboot.

try another sdcard, preferably new.

[Criena]

Alright, first of all: it's working now! Hallelujah!

I tried today with a third SD card and still had no luck. So I was thinking that it is quite improbable that all three cards are damaged. Assuming that the PBP is not broken, what could the problem be? The laptop I used to write the images to the SD cards has no card reader. I didn't see that as an issue since I have an SD-to-USB adapter, which I used. Ruling out all possibilities, I grabbed a really old laptop that does have an integrated card reader and put mrfixit's Debian image on it (had to put grml on a USB stick first since that very old laptop is actually decommissioned already).
So I put the SD card in the PBP and - it still didn't work. The green light lit up for a millisecond and that's it. Mmh, so what now? I removed the power cord (USB-C), disconnected the bypass cable, attached the battery again. And then it worked!

I didn't have the time to check what the actual issue was. Could be that the SD2USB adapter writes the image incompletely or wrongly or the PBP didn't power up properly without the battery attached, no idea. But it's working now!

Thank you everyone for your help and support! It's always an amazing experience to see how people help each other. Thanks again!

[golly]

Almost the exact thing is happening to me.

First, I dropped my PBP, breaking off the inside corner plastic pieces, but it still powered on and booted (corner of the screen that hit the concrete first is now dark - very sad-face...).

Then I erased the eMMC (sudo dd blahblahblah).  Powered off, and now I cannot power it back on.

I've tried my old MicroSD card that I booted from when I erased the eMMC.  Nope, won't boot.

I've pulled the back cover off and disabled the eMMC, pressed reset, still nothing.

I've even unplugged the battery and connected the bypass cable, still nothing.

Help??

BTW, I love my PBP - got it last Christmas before the ANSI keyboard was available.

MrFixIt's image boots just fine.  I think I can get back to "normal" from here.

Thank you!