Pinebook Pro not Booting at All eMMC or MicroSD

[AstroCEO]

Hello,

I removed the eMMC attempting to do the u-boot installation.  However, it looks like nothing happened when I tried to do it because it didn't engage the microSD card at boot I guess.  However, I put the eMMC back on and it won't boot the regular Debian OS now at all?

Also, I can't get microSD to work as an alternative, although I have never once successfully used the microSD boot at this point.

Why won't it load?  Why does the power button blink green once, and then hold a orangish red color indefinitely?

Thanks, AstroCEO.

[AstroCEO]

Hello,

I removed the eMMC attempting to do the u-boot installation.  However, it looks like nothing happened when I tried to do it because it didn't engage the microSD card at boot I guess.  However, I put the eMMC back on and it won't boot the regular Debian OS now at all?

Also, I can't get microSD to work as an alternative, although I have never once successfully used the microSD boot at this point.

Why won't it load?  Why does the power button blink green once, and then hold a orangish red color indefinitely?

Thanks, AstroCEO.

Flipping the eMMC switch didn't seem to do anything, nor holding the reset button on the PCB.

[tophneal]

Hello,

I removed the eMMC attempting to do the u-boot installation.  However, it looks like nothing happened when I tried to do it because it didn't engage the microSD card at boot I guess.  However, I put the eMMC back on and it won't boot the regular Debian OS now at all?

Also, I can't get microSD to work as an alternative, although I have never once successfully used the microSD boot at this point.

Why won't it load?  Why does the power button blink green once, and then hold a orangish red color indefinitely?

Thanks, AstroCEO.

Can you give more details concerning how you were trying to install u-boot? Do you mean write it to the SPI? Or were you trying to write to your eMMC using the USB adapter?

Every PBP OS img so far has included a version of u-boot with it (otherwise they won't boot.) If your eMMC u-boot is faulty and enabled, you won't be able to boot to SD until you disable or remove the eMMC. After doing that, if your SD doesn't boot, you should look at the SD itsself, or verify you're writing the img to the SD correctly.

[AstroCEO]

Hello,

I removed the eMMC attempting to do the u-boot installation.  However, it looks like nothing happened when I tried to do it because it didn't engage the microSD card at boot I guess.  However, I put the eMMC back on and it won't boot the regular Debian OS now at all?

Also, I can't get microSD to work as an alternative, although I have never once successfully used the microSD boot at this point.

Why won't it load?  Why does the power button blink green once, and then hold a orangish red color indefinitely?

Thanks, AstroCEO.

Can you give more details concerning how you were trying to install u-boot? Do you mean write it to the SPI? Or were you trying to write to your eMMC using the USB adapter?

Every PBP OS img so far has included a version of u-boot with it (otherwise they won't boot.) If your eMMC u-boot is faulty and enabled, you won't be able to boot to SD until you disable or remove the eMMC. After doing that, if your SD doesn't boot, you should look at the SD itsself, or verify you're writing the img to the SD correctly.

I followed the directions on the wiki for installing U-boot via microSD card images by like afuyam or someone.  It said image a erase spi to microSD, remove the eMMC, and run the microSD.  Then, image a write to spi to microSD and run without eMMC again.  I did those steps but I never got the blinking green light it told me should have happened, so I assume it didn't work.

I have tried all combinations of the eMMC switch being off or on, the eMMC being in or out, and multiple different microSD images.  However, I know the integrity of my microSD images is perfectly fine.  That's definitely not the issue here.  I've been making images for years.

Thanks, AstroCEO.

[tophneal]

I followed the directions on the wiki for installing U-boot via microSD card images by like afuyam or someone.  It said image a erase spi to microSD, remove the eMMC, and run the microSD.  Then, image a write to spi to microSD and run without eMMC again.  I did those steps but I never got the blinking green light it told me should have happened, so I assume it didn't work.

I have tried all combinations of the eMMC switch being off or on, the eMMC being in or out, and multiple different microSD images.  However, I know the integrity of my microSD images is perfectly fine.  That's definitely not the issue here.  I've been making images for years.

Thanks, AstroCEO.

If you can share a link to the instructions you were trying to follow. I believe the underlying issue here is that you tried to use a u-boot writing tool that was made for another device.

[AstroCEO]

I followed the directions on the wiki for installing U-boot via microSD card images by like afuyam or someone.  It said image a erase spi to microSD, remove the eMMC, and run the microSD.  Then, image a write to spi to microSD and run without eMMC again.  I did those steps but I never got the blinking green light it told me should have happened, so I assume it didn't work.

I have tried all combinations of the eMMC switch being off or on, the eMMC being in or out, and multiple different microSD images.  However, I know the integrity of my microSD images is perfectly fine.  That's definitely not the issue here.  I've been making images for years.

Thanks, AstroCEO.

If you can share a link to the instructions you were trying to follow. I believe the underlying issue here is that you tried to use a u-boot writing tool that was made for another device.

@tophneal These are the steps I was following.  https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/NOOB#F..._SPI_Flash

[tophneal]

@tophneal These are the steps I was following.  https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/NOOB#F..._SPI_Flash

It appears that's a relatively new u-boot option from ayufan for the PBP. I haven't heard of any other users trying this u-boot, so I'm not sure what might be going wrong. If you decide to try again, log everything and try opening an issue on ayufan's github. Just in case, I'm going to tag @ayufan here so he can let us potentially bring us up to speed on this new u-boot fwriting image of his.

It might be easier to try using this u-boot instead: https://github.com/pcm720/rockchip-u-boot/releases
It's not mainline like the one from ayufan's repo, but it has boot support for USB (and NVMe when written to SPI) and since it's BSP you will have the ability to use s3 sleep in mainline distros.

[AstroCEO]

@tophneal These are the steps I was following.  https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/NOOB#F..._SPI_Flash

It appears that's a relatively new u-boot option from ayufan for the PBP. I haven't heard of any other users trying this u-boot, so I'm not sure what might be going wrong. If you decide to try again, log everything and try opening an issue on ayufan's github. Just in case, I'm going to tag @ayufan here so he can let us potentially bring us up to speed on this new u-boot fwriting image of his.

It might be easier to try using this u-boot instead: https://github.com/pcm720/rockchip-u-boot/releases
It's not mainline like the one from ayufan's repo, but it has boot support for USB (and NVMe when written to SPI) and since it's BSP you will have the ability to use s3 sleep in mainline distros.

I have seen Mr. Fixit's version of this.  Which would probably be useful since I want to operate a bootable NVMe.  I am not sure of how to install it though since there are three .IMG files.

Code:

# dd if=idbloader.img of=<eMMC/microSD> bs=32k seek=1 conv=fsync

Code:

# dd if=u-boot.img of=<eMMC/microSD> bs=64k seek=128 conv=fsync

Code:

# dd if=trust.img of=<eMMC/microSD> bs=64k seek=192 conv=fsync

Like how do I write all three of these to a microSD card?  I would assume each would overwrite the other?

Am I supposed to load the .IMG for each of these to an microSD, then load it, and overwrite to the next in order?

[tophneal]

Take look on the PBP wiki page. There’s a paragraph concerning using the NVME as your boot drive. I would suggest using pcm720s uboot, there is an image for SPI.

To answer your question about the 3 uboot images, those would be written to specific areas of the emmc. Those lines from the update script show where they need to go on the emmc. from what i'm understanding of what you're trying to to do pcm720s SPI uboot img will suit you better for booting from NVMe.

[wdt]

Perhaps it is more understandable with "more rational" numbers
idbloader is < 4M bs=512 seek=64 (ie,, 64 sectors from start of SD card)
uboot is often 4M size (or less),,bs=1M seek=8 (ie, from 8M->12M)
ATF/trust is often 4M (or less),,bs=1m seek=12 (ie,,from 12->16M)
user partitions start at 16M,, 32768 sectors, check with fdisk to see
The locations of idbloader, uboot, ATF(arm trusted firmware)
are "baked into" the bootrom
ATF does not seem to change very much, idbloader is very low-level initialization
uboot is either some version of rockchips BSP or mainline, both a bit immature
--edit--
Rarely, uboot and ATF are catted together,, uboot padded so ATF is in right place
This will be an image ~6.5M or more (up to 8M, last 1.5M zeros)
If this is happening, at 4M will be signature, "magic" for ATF,,, "BL3X" but hex of course
Not at all common