No video when booting from sd-card

[rakor]

Hey there,
when trying to boot my PineTab from sdcard I get no video output.
I put the sdcard in, boot by pressing the power-button for some seconds and wait. After some seconds the screen flashes for half a second white and then stays black.

I thought it would not even boot from the sdcard but I could boot the jumpdrive-image and install mobian on the internal storage. But the jumpdrive image gave me no videooutput too. From the PinePhone I know it should give some video-output.

The systems on the internal storage give me video-output, so the preinstalled ubports had video and mobian, installed ob internal storage, give me video-output too.

Is this know? Any hints?

[tophneal]

Did you get the Mobian image from here https://images.mobian-project.org/pinetab/nightly/ ? It may be more helpful to the dev to add this as an issue on its gitlab

[rakor]

Did you get the Mobian image from here https://images.mobian-project.org/pinetab/nightly/ ? It may be more helpful to the dev to add this as an issue on its gitlab

I had this image yes. But the same issue occured with Manjaro-Image or the jumpdrive, so I don't think it is mobian-specific.

[tophneal]

oh, that's not good. have you checked the video cable connections inside?

[rakor]

oh, that's not good. have you checked the video cable connections inside?

No. When running a system from the internal storage the video-output is working. Thats the strange thing about it. I only does not work when booting from sdcard. So it should not be a hardware-issue, maybe firmware?!

[tophneal]

No. When running a system from the internal storage the video-output is working. Thats the strange thing about it. I only does not work when booting from sdcard. So it should not be a hardware-issue, maybe firmware?!

I got you. Yea, that sounds like a firmware issue, but the several people in the chats that have Mobian booted/working makes me pause on questioning it immediately.

Are you using a single SD or several/a few?

[rakor]

No. When running a system from the internal storage the video-output is working. Thats the strange thing about it. I only does not work when booting from sdcard. So it should not be a hardware-issue, maybe firmware?!

I got you. Yea, that sounds like a firmware issue, but the several people in the chats that have Mobian booted/working makes me pause on questioning it immediately.

Are you using a single SD or several/a few?

I tried 3 different cards. Two SanDisk and one noName

the cards work on the pinephone

[tophneal]

I tried 3 different cards. Two SanDisk and one noName

the cards work on the pinephone

This makes me wonder if perhaps there is an issue with the SD reader/connection of the Tab itself

[rakor]

I tried 3 different cards. Two SanDisk and one noName

the cards work on the pinephone

This makes me wonder if perhaps there is an issue with the SD reader/connection of the Tab itself

Well first I thought this could be an sd-slot-problem. But I could flash mobian on the internal storage using the jumpdrive-image, bootet from sd-card (but without video-output). So I think sd-slot should be working... :/
I think I could not install a system on the internal storage if the sd-card would not have booted.

[BigShip]

I just unboxed my pinetab and tried the Manjaro alpha 2 image with the same effect. Ubports on emmc works fine, but no video when booting from the SD card. Downloading mobian now and I'll try another SD card as well

---

Okay, so I switched to mobian on a different SD card. First boot attempt, no video out. I plugged into power and tried to boot, no luck. Long pressing the power button for 10-15 seconds to force power it off, and then booting again worked.

Reflashing the working mobian SD card with manjaro resulted in the same non-booting issue.


I'm thinking this might be 2 problems here.

1. The occasional non-boot on mobian, fixable with a hard reboot. This is similar to some issues I've had with the PBP, where it seems to occasionally get in a weird power state.
   
2. It looks like there may be an issue with the Manjaro Alpha 2 image booting on Pinetab.