Maskrom: How to tell what's on the SD card?

[zogkarndon]

I managed to corrupt my EMMC, and am trying to boot from SD.

I've flashed an image onto a 16 GB SD card.

I've set up the debug adapter, and positioned the switch to the left (labeled Maskrom/SD).

However, when I boot, the serial console always shows that it's trying to boot from MMC.

If I interrupt the boot process, I end up at the maskrom console.

How can I check the status of the SD card from the maskrom console?   

Alternatively, how can I force booting from the SD card (from the maskrom console)?

[tllim]

I managed to corrupt my EMMC, and am trying to boot from SD.

I've flashed an image onto a 16 GB SD card.

I've set up the debug adapter, and positioned the switch to the left (labeled Maskrom/SD).

However, when I boot, the serial console always shows that it's trying to boot from MMC.

If I interrupt the boot process, I end up at the maskrom console.

How can I check the status of the SD card from the maskrom console?   

Alternatively, how can I force booting from the SD card (from the maskrom console)?

The is a switch on the PineTab2 UART dongle to disable SPI/EMMc boot and skip to SD Boot.

https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/File:PineTa...UARTv2.jpg

[zogkarndon]

The is a switch on the PineTab2 UART dongle to disable SPI/EMMc boot and skip to SD Boot.

https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/File:PineTa...UARTv2.jpg

Yeah, I double checked that; the switch is set to SD boot, but the PineTab2 tries to boot from eMMC anyway.

(Actually, I tried booting twice - once with the switch to the left, and once with the switch to the right.   Same results either way.)

[Pavlos1]

Since you're able to force it into maskrom mode, you could try erasing the eMMC with rkdeveloptool: https://opensource.rock-chips.com/wiki_Rkdeveloptool

That way you can be sure that it cannot boot from eMMC.

[zogkarndon]

Could you go into more detail about how to get the rkdeveloptool image over to the PineTab2?   Or do I run rkdeveloptool on my Linux laptop, and if so, what do I need to do on my PineTab2?

[Pavlos1]

rkdeveloptool runs on your Linux laptop, which you connect to the PineTab via a USB (A-C or C-C) cable. (This is not the UART adapter cable.)

You can use `./rkdeveloptool ld` to check whether it can talk to your PineTab. For this to work it needs to be in MaskROM mode, which I'm guessing you achieved by interrupting the boot process with your UART adapter.

From there you're on your own because I don't own any rockchip hardware, however you can read the "Erase eMMC" section here: https://wiki.radxa.com/Rock5/install/usb-install-emmc

There's also an "erase flash" command (`./rkdeveloptool ef`) but I'm not sure that it does what I think it does..

[zogkarndon]

rkdeveloptool runs on your Linux laptop, which you connect to the PineTab via a USB (A-C or C-C) cable. (This is not the UART adapter cable.)

You can use `./rkdeveloptool ld` to check whether it can talk to your PineTab. For this to work it needs to be in MaskROM mode, which I'm guessing you achieved by interrupting the boot process with your UART adapter.

From there you're on your own because I don't own any rockchip hardware, however you can read the "Erase eMMC" section here: https://wiki.radxa.com/Rock5/install/usb-install-emmc

There's also an "erase flash" command (`./rkdeveloptool ef`) but I'm not sure that it does what I think it does..

I built rkdeveloptool, but when I connect the PineTab's upper USB port to my laptop, neither lsusb nor rkdeveloptool show a device.

I also tried connecting to the upper port of the UART adapter, with the same results.

[Pavlos1]

When you interrupt the boot process, are you sure you're not in a U-Boot console? I ask because I can't find any information online about the capabilities of the MaskROM console.

In any case you should be able to type "help" into whatever console it's dropped you into to get more information.

The "standard" way of getting into MaskROM mode is to short the eMMC clock pin, but I don't know how difficult it is to do that on the PineTab.