red charge light goes out

[KC9UDX]

Code:

https://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/bullseye/main/installer-arm64/current/images/u-boot/pinebook-pro-rk3399.img.gz

That is the link I found for a bootable image.  I can't even verify that it works right now but it's wortha try.

Anything else is not likely to be bootable unless you prep it yourself.

If that doesn't work, please do try the NetBSD image I linked to above, just to determine if the machine will boot.

[gilwood]

Thank you for your quick response. I was able to follow the link until I got to the uboot folder, which had been removed. I will try to search around to find another bootable image.

[KC9UDX]

That link still seems valid from here.

Also this is the link for NetBSD, which I find to be very reliable, albeit I haven't tried it recently.  But I expect it works.

Code:

https://nycdn.netbsd.org/pub/arm/NetBSD-9.3-release/NetBSD-9-aarch64--pinebook-pro.img.gz

[gilwood]

These images when downloaded and unzipped are very small, ~30mb. Most images I have installed on my raspberry pi or pinephone were 2-3 gb. Am I missing something?

[KC9UDX]

Not that I'm aware of.  I thought the NetBSD one was around 1Gb but apparently not.  Did either work?

I just opened the NetBSD file and indeed it should be 1,205,796,864 bytes, or approximately 1.1Gb. It is 293,999,135 bytes in its original, compressed form.

[gilwood]

HOORAY! my pine booted. Could not find the bootable Debian. Went back to basics and visited the Mobian site. Went to downloads page and selected Pinebook Pro from the Device Option menu. Dropped down to the XFCE Desktop and clicked on download. Then selected image button and it took me to Manjaro-ARM-xfce-pbpro-23.02.img.xz. After the download was complete, installed the image to a SD card using Etcher. I then held down the start button on the PBP for over 30 seconds, inserted the SD card, hit the start button and was greeted with a device on LED. The pinebook booted into Manjaro and following setup and a reboot I am up and running. Would also like to point out that after the PBP came up the battery started charging and is now up to 90%. I selected to charge using the USB-C as suggested by others in the forum.
Thanks to all the help from others in the forum.

[KC9UDX]

I highly recommend keeping that SD card as an emergency boot source, and setting up another one (or an eMMC) for normal use.

[gilwood]

My next effort will be to install the NVME board and make that the bootable drive. That should allow the SSD to be a backup.

[trillobite]

My next effort will be to install the NVME board and make that the bootable drive. That should allow the SSD to be a backup.

With experience using the Pinebook Pro, if you are looking for reliability and can handle a bit less performance, I would consider making the emmc as your bootable, and keep the nvme as your data drive. If anything happens to the OS (and... it does), you can more easily wipe the emmc and reflash without dealing with backing up data.

If you go the emmc route, don't forget to order the pine64 emmc reader, it makes flashing painless!

I use my pinebook pro as a daily driver, and I have had to reflash more than once.

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edit: I just re-read your post, do you mean you intend to use the emmc as your backup? If so, let me know how that goes!

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Just got my PBP yesterday. It doesn't seem to matter whether I use the barrel charger or usb the red light goes out after being on for 1-2 hours. If the battery is not charged completely and I have power supplied to the unit should it boot? Press the start button and will not turn on. Any ideas on issues? Any help is appreciated. Thanks

Also, just curious... the first time this happened and the light went out, did you have lots of peripherals connected? I was having tons of charging issues, when I was running a wifi adapter, keyboard, and mouse. The Pinebook seems to only be able to intake 5v 3A, which is the main reason for the docking deck. The docking deck can connect to a PD charger, power all of your peripherals individually without straining the pinebook charging circuit.

[gilwood]

No peripherals. Just the PBP which I could not boot. Thinking of using a USB mouse and disabling the trackpad if I am using the keyboard. There is no palm rejection on the trackpad. This might cause false keystrokes.