10-04-2020, 12:08 PM
Hello friends,
I realize this is my first post, but reading this forum has been extremely helpful in addressing issues with my Pinebook Pro (ANSI) so I thought I should write my experiences here to help others. Let me first say that I genuinely support what Pine64 is doing, I bought my Pinebook Pro to mess around with Linux on ARM, I bought it to tinker. I'm a technologist and developer so I didn't have concerns about getting a product that I would need to support myself.
Before I go on, here is the TLDR; I have a Pinebook Pro that I'm giving away in Seattle for parts. Here are some key things I learned.
1. If you need to return your Pinebook from the US, you must ship it to Hong Kong. The least expensive way I found to do this was $125
2. There can be issues from the factory. Watch this video from LinuxTechShow
a. No boot? - There is a switch on the system board to disables the eMMC
b. No WiFi? - There is a key combination to disable the WiFi card for privacy. Press PineButton+F11 then REBOOT
b. No sound through the headphone port? -There is a switch on the system board to send serial out through the headphone jack
3. Get an external Keyboard/Mouse. From day one you will need to update the firmware for the keyboard and trackpad
a. If the firmware update says "no device found" try connecting to power with the barrel type power adapter.
4. Installing a new OS to the eMMC (without taking apart your Pinebook) means booting from USB/SD then running scripts to install the OS of your choice. Watch this YouTube video from LivingLinux before you try to install.
My Pinebook Pro is dead, as in will not turn on, and the case next to the display has melted for some reason. The unit is less than a week old. Yesterday I finally managed to get my keyboard/trackpad working and install Manjaro with XFCE. I was so happy after figuring out that using the barrel connector seemed to energize something in the USB bus so the keyboard and trackpad could be recognized by the firmware update utility. KDE with Plasma was a bit to flashy for my taste, so I learned how to install to the eMMC and got XFCE up and running. Everything looked great. I had rescued my Pinebook Pro. Then I left it plugged in with the lid closed to charge up the battery over night.
When I opened up the Pinebook it wouldn't wake from sleep. So I disconnected power, let it sit, then reconnected and I got the power light to go red, the flash green, then it went out. I disassembled the unit and disconnected the battery, connected the jumpers then powered off the barrel connector, same issue. Then I found this post talking about uBoot issues and since I had just updated the operating system I thought that could be the issue. I disconnected the power jumpers, reconnected the battery and tried to boot off the SD card. The power LED went from red to green and stayed green but there was nothing on the display. On battery power only, I grabbed my USB-C monitor (which also supplies power) and plugged it in to check for video. Nothing, but I did smell burning electronics, the pixies were trying to escape. Looking at the base of the display by the system board the plastics were warping. I unplugged everything, quickly flipped over the unit, removed the 10 screws and disconnected the battery. At this point I'm calling the unit dead. I'm not sure what happened, my theory is there was a power fault in the USB circuit somewhere, that was made stable when using the barrel connector power supply and eventually just degraded to a short. No idea.
Long story short, I have a dead Pinebook Pro here in Seattle and it will cost $125 to ship it back to China, and I'm not willing to pay that. So, if anyone in the community is here in Seattle and would like this unit for parts or to try and resurrect it, I'm happy to give it to you. I want this community to thrive, and I'm not willing to put more money into this right now. I also have the NVME adapter, new, uninstalled if anyone local wants it.
I hope the Pine64 crew can get back to the factory and improve their quality issues. This project has a ton of promise.
I realize this is my first post, but reading this forum has been extremely helpful in addressing issues with my Pinebook Pro (ANSI) so I thought I should write my experiences here to help others. Let me first say that I genuinely support what Pine64 is doing, I bought my Pinebook Pro to mess around with Linux on ARM, I bought it to tinker. I'm a technologist and developer so I didn't have concerns about getting a product that I would need to support myself.
Before I go on, here is the TLDR; I have a Pinebook Pro that I'm giving away in Seattle for parts. Here are some key things I learned.
1. If you need to return your Pinebook from the US, you must ship it to Hong Kong. The least expensive way I found to do this was $125
2. There can be issues from the factory. Watch this video from LinuxTechShow
a. No boot? - There is a switch on the system board to disables the eMMC
b. No WiFi? - There is a key combination to disable the WiFi card for privacy. Press PineButton+F11 then REBOOT
b. No sound through the headphone port? -There is a switch on the system board to send serial out through the headphone jack
3. Get an external Keyboard/Mouse. From day one you will need to update the firmware for the keyboard and trackpad
a. If the firmware update says "no device found" try connecting to power with the barrel type power adapter.
4. Installing a new OS to the eMMC (without taking apart your Pinebook) means booting from USB/SD then running scripts to install the OS of your choice. Watch this YouTube video from LivingLinux before you try to install.
My Pinebook Pro is dead, as in will not turn on, and the case next to the display has melted for some reason. The unit is less than a week old. Yesterday I finally managed to get my keyboard/trackpad working and install Manjaro with XFCE. I was so happy after figuring out that using the barrel connector seemed to energize something in the USB bus so the keyboard and trackpad could be recognized by the firmware update utility. KDE with Plasma was a bit to flashy for my taste, so I learned how to install to the eMMC and got XFCE up and running. Everything looked great. I had rescued my Pinebook Pro. Then I left it plugged in with the lid closed to charge up the battery over night.
When I opened up the Pinebook it wouldn't wake from sleep. So I disconnected power, let it sit, then reconnected and I got the power light to go red, the flash green, then it went out. I disassembled the unit and disconnected the battery, connected the jumpers then powered off the barrel connector, same issue. Then I found this post talking about uBoot issues and since I had just updated the operating system I thought that could be the issue. I disconnected the power jumpers, reconnected the battery and tried to boot off the SD card. The power LED went from red to green and stayed green but there was nothing on the display. On battery power only, I grabbed my USB-C monitor (which also supplies power) and plugged it in to check for video. Nothing, but I did smell burning electronics, the pixies were trying to escape. Looking at the base of the display by the system board the plastics were warping. I unplugged everything, quickly flipped over the unit, removed the 10 screws and disconnected the battery. At this point I'm calling the unit dead. I'm not sure what happened, my theory is there was a power fault in the USB circuit somewhere, that was made stable when using the barrel connector power supply and eventually just degraded to a short. No idea.
Long story short, I have a dead Pinebook Pro here in Seattle and it will cost $125 to ship it back to China, and I'm not willing to pay that. So, if anyone in the community is here in Seattle and would like this unit for parts or to try and resurrect it, I'm happy to give it to you. I want this community to thrive, and I'm not willing to put more money into this right now. I also have the NVME adapter, new, uninstalled if anyone local wants it.
I hope the Pine64 crew can get back to the factory and improve their quality issues. This project has a ton of promise.