Modem stopped working on BH
#1
Hi.

After a few weeks of usage with UBports, modem stopped working.
My suspicion is that it might have been broken by crust, since it doesn't work with other images either, and it was having issues for more than a week now (not starting after deep sleep). The other possibility is that it was faulty from the start, and it just died now.
I tried a factory test, and the modem test fails with a boot timeut.
Anyone else having these issues?
#2
That's scary. What have you tried so far? Have you tried removing the battery and waiting a few seconds?
#3
(07-13-2020, 07:15 AM)Subsentient Wrote: That's scary. What have you tried so far? Have you tried removing the battery and waiting a few seconds?
yes, tried that, tried a dozen different new and old PP images, tried another simcard, tried the HW modem switch.
The thing is is, the modem was having issues more and more often with every new update. It worked almost flawlessly between Dev OTA 65-67. After OTA68, it didn't wake up the modem from sleep anymore, and after OTA70, it stopped seeing the modem in a few seconds after bootup, without going to sleep or anything.
And now the modem doesn't work at all.
I guess I will have to buy a new mainboard, once they are in stock again.
#4
Hey so your situation with the modem suddenly becoming flaky and then stopping working all together sounds exactly like what I experienced. Modem test times out for me as well. I documented my issues and a workaround (atleast for modemmanager) in the thread at: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=9934

I'm curious if you run `screen /dev/ttyS2` can you still issue AT commands? In my situation the USB connections on my BH died completely but the serial /dev/ttyS* devices are still operable. Dmesg prints some stuff on boot related to USB drivers I assume that isn't very pretty as well..

I think this is a hardware issue because it just happened randomly for me (and multiple images show the same issue). Very curious if this issue has been resolved on CE / 1.2 (I hope). Also by the way - my issues happened without any testing on crust / deep sleep; however what I will note is I did (and well... still do) have a habit of pulling the battery out of my pinephone to restart it - which maybe contributed.. Confused  but then again most phones can handle this fine.. so this shouldn't break anything on the hardware-level from my perspective.
#5
(07-13-2020, 07:06 PM)mil Wrote: Hey so your situation with the modem suddenly becoming flaky and then stopping working all together sounds exactly like what I experienced. Modem test times out for me as well. I documented my issues and a workaround (atleast for modemmanager) in the thread at: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=9934

I'm curious if you run `screen /dev/ttyS2` can you still issue AT commands? In my situation the USB connections on my BH died completely but the serial /dev/ttyS* devices are still operable. Dmesg prints some stuff on boot related to USB drivers I assume that isn't very pretty as well..

I think this is a hardware issue because it just happened randomly for me (and multiple images show the same issue). Very curious if this issue has been resolved on CE / 1.2 (I hope). Also by the way - my issues happened without any testing on crust / deep sleep; however what I will note is I did (and well... still do) have a habit of pulling the battery out of my pinephone to restart it - which maybe contributed.. Confused  but then again most phones can handle this fine.. so this shouldn't break anything on the hardware-level from my perspective.
I've read some of the Quectel code that their engineers sent me. Judging from the quality that I've seen there and in some of their other documentation, it's entirely within reason that they have the modem's filesystem mounted read-write with no failsafes in case of corrupted configuration data. So, it is possible that removing the battery damaged the modem's firmware.
#6
(07-13-2020, 07:30 AM)afigegoznaet Wrote:
(07-13-2020, 07:15 AM)Subsentient Wrote: That's scary. What have you tried so far? Have you tried removing the battery and waiting a few seconds?
yes, tried that, tried a dozen different new and old PP images, tried another simcard, tried the HW modem switch.
The thing is is, the modem was having issues more and more often with every new update. It worked almost flawlessly between Dev OTA 65-67. After OTA68, it didn't wake up the modem from sleep anymore, and after OTA70, it stopped seeing the modem in a few seconds after bootup, without going to sleep or anything.
And now the modem doesn't work at all.
I guess I will have to buy a new mainboard, once they are in stock again.

What O.S. did this problem 'originate' on ?

Using 'Mobian' on my Brave Heart on a nightly release,  late last week, there was a problem with my phone seeing the modem,
 Then,  with a reboot it sometimes saw the modem, but sometimes it appeared to turn it off as it finished booting.. ?
but with the later releases that problem seems to have disappeared for me.
 That did have the power save enabled by default.
   After discovering that I turned off the power save...     also No problems with July 13th nightly release.  (Mobian)

>> OH  They do now have Brave Heart main boards in stock when I looked at the store earlier.. Just no version 1.2  C.E. boards.

GOOD LUCK

IF  ...  the problem was a result of the modem firmware being corrupted,  That is completely out of Pines control.
#7
(07-13-2020, 10:24 PM)bcnaz Wrote:
(07-13-2020, 07:30 AM)afigegoznaet Wrote:
(07-13-2020, 07:15 AM)Subsentient Wrote: That's scary. What have you tried so far? Have you tried removing the battery and waiting a few seconds?
yes, tried that, tried a dozen different new and old PP images, tried another simcard, tried the HW modem switch.
The thing is is, the modem was having issues more and more often with every new update. It worked almost flawlessly between Dev OTA 65-67. After OTA68, it didn't wake up the modem from sleep anymore, and after OTA70, it stopped seeing the modem in a few seconds after bootup, without going to sleep or anything.
And now the modem doesn't work at all.
I guess I will have to buy a new mainboard, once they are in stock again.

What O.S. did this problem 'originate' on ?

Using 'Mobian' on my Brave Heart on a nightly release,  late last week, there was a problem with my phone seeing the modem,
 Then,  with a reboot it sometimes saw the modem, but sometimes it appeared to turn it off as it finished booting.. ?
but with the later releases that problem seems to have disappeared for me.
 That did have the power save enabled by default.
   After discovering that I turned off the power save...     also No problems with July 13th nightly release.  (Mobian)

>> OH  They do now have Brave Heart main boards in stock when I looked at the store earlier.. Just no version 1.2  C.E. boards.

GOOD LUCK

IF  ...  the problem was a result of the modem firmware being corrupted,  That is completely out of Pines control.

The problem originated in UBports.
The mainboards are not in stock, if you click on it, it will show a red "out of stock".
I don't think it makes much sense to purchase another BH mainboard anyway.
#8
Not sure what happened, but today the modem started working again.
I did nothing to reenable it, except maybe for trying to see if the modem is properly soldered.
Maybe it wasn't
#9
And it stopped working again.
I'm almost sure it's a HW issue now.
#10
(07-13-2020, 07:06 PM)mil Wrote: Hey so your situation with the modem suddenly becoming flaky and then stopping working all together sounds exactly like what I experienced. Modem test times out for me as well. I documented my issues and a workaround (atleast for modemmanager) in the thread at: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=9934

I'm curious if you run `screen /dev/ttyS2` can you still issue AT commands? In my situation the USB connections on my BH died completely but the serial /dev/ttyS* devices are still operable. Dmesg prints some stuff on boot related to USB drivers I assume that isn't very pretty as well..

I think this is a hardware issue because it just happened randomly for me (and multiple images show the same issue). Very curious if this issue has been resolved on CE / 1.2 (I hope). Also by the way - my issues happened without any testing on crust / deep sleep; however what I will note is I did (and well... still do) have a habit of pulling the battery out of my pinephone to restart it - which maybe contributed.. Confused  but then again most phones can handle this fine.. so this shouldn't break anything on the hardware-level from my perspective.
I don't know what "screen" is, but I think it's the same for me.
At least I see the /dev/ttyS* devices, and the dmesg USB errors.


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