Occasionally won't boot

[MarkHaysHarris777]

My Pine A64+ (2GB RAM) is experiencing issues:<snip> 

After experiencing this and hearing the stories of others, I have come to the conclusion that the initial product offering (2016) had an unreliable production line.  I have seen this before with other electronics manufacturers.  Either they get quality under control soon enough or they eventually get abandoned by the market.

My board is heading for the responsibly-recycling center.  Lesson learned.

My initial boards run 24-7-365 since last November !   ... no hits, no runs, no errors;

... I would try a recent image on a good SD card ;  your board will be just fine.

My Pine64 board ran "24-7-365" for 10 months before the first symptoms.  I have re-installed with 3 new cards from 2 different manufacturers (SanDisk, PNY).  I have been using the same power adapter that I use with my Raspberry Pi 2 (CanaKit 5V 2.5A).  Swapped Pine64 and Pi power adapters.  Same Pine64 symptoms appeared (problem did not move).  Both are plugged into the same UPS.  Swapped UPS sockets with Pi.  Same Pine64 symptoms appeared (problem did not move).  It's the board.  It's either a slow-failing lemon or  there was a 2016 assembly-line issue (hopefully fixed).

The Raspberry Pi 2 is on its 3rd year.  Either they have consistently good quality or I had good luck with this particular Pi.  I'd bet on the former.

Based on my experience with these boards ( and the cards you mention ) that its a bad SD card ( or a corrupted image ) or its the power connector!

The 5v 2.5A PSU should be fine;  however, I would like you to power it via the euler bus.  The micro usb connectors are defective on these boards, and constrain clean power (current) to the board;  please power the board via euler bus and retry:   pin(2 or 4   +5v)   pin(6 ground).   Use female standard header connectors solder & crimp to the wires ( of course, remove the micro usb plug ).

Also,  try a recent image, and debug with a serial adapter cable.  Any  cp2102, pl2303, ch340g  adapter will work:  usb to ttl serial bridge adapter.  The other end (usb) is plugged into your pc or mac;   run a terminal emulation program like minicom , cu , or screen;  you can watch the bootup messages from uboot, as well logon to the console when you get the login prompt.

It would be interesting to see where the boot-up is hanging;  you can only see this with a serial adapter plugged in.  

Again, I doubt very seriously that the board is the problem;  almost always ( 99.99% ) the trouble is in the power supply ( or connector ) or in the SD card...

btw;  we recommend Samsung Class 10 Evo Plus 32G cards.   not PNY, not SANDISK, not Kingston;   Also, use  f3  for linux and test the card BEFORE you burn an image to it....