Board can't boot

[jwrz]

Hi, I prepared SD card according to your instruction (with problems becouse files from gdrive can't be wgeted but i did it manualy). When I try to boot my BPI M64 with this card I obtain black screen.. nothing happend. I repeat whole process but effect is still the same. Maybe you can publish image file with everything prepared?

[avafinger]

Black screen could mean three things:

a) You Monitor is not 1080p capable, so you will see a black screen.
To find out it is this problem, please, boot the board with SD card and wait for a minute or so and just type on keyboard: ubuntu and look at the ethernet if you see some activities. You must have a DHCP server to release an IP to the board. Default is DHCP.

b) HDMI to DVI, there are some information that need to get pass through it, depending on your converter you may find trouble.

c) SD card corrupted or you SDHC card reader sucks, try to get another SD card or use another SD card reader.

I will push a DTB for 720p that could help.

[jwrz]

Thank you for replay. I have new observations.
My monitor is capable of 1080p - when bpi is trying to boot, the monitor is showing text "1080p input." There is no HDMI-DVI adapters. I was trying to use 5 cards (GOODRAM 16GB SDHC toschiba 8G SDHC x2, SanDisk SD 4G x2) and 3 readers (3 laptops - diferent vendors too).

BPI try to boot a 3 or 4 times and turn off. While booting I saw white lines on screen, sometimes 4 tuxes.

[avafinger]

You should see 4 tuxes and then boot messages.
"... and turn off" is an indication your PSU is under specifications, you need 5v and ~2.5A.
The board i have comes with a barrel connector (DC input), are you using the barrel connector?

Try to boot without anything attached to the USB ports, just to see if it changes something.

After 3 or 4 attempts to boot without success your SD card may be corrupted, see: c. Check for SD card integrity

[jwrz]

I try Anker 60W 6x2.4A (USB) and lab power supply 10A (DC input) - I also checked it with oscilloscope (while booting) and it looks good.
I have two m64 boards - both have the same problem.
I checked SD integrity - you will not suprise, they are good.

Are there any logs created while booting, which I can check?

[avafinger]

Yes, you can grab the boot log with a TTL serial debug, please do so and then we can try to see what is going on with the board.

attach the complete boot log here or in gist if you prefer.

You did not answer:
"The board i have comes with a barrel connector (DC input), are you using the barrel connector?"

[jwrz]

OK, I will grab it later.
According to your question: ...lab power supply 10A (barrel connector - DC input)...

[jsoncylu]

I am also having the same issue after creating the SD card. I can't get any output via TTL using a baudrate of 115200. I am going to try using a different SD card reader.

[avafinger]

@setup: 115200 8-N-1

TX -> RX
RX -> TX
GND -> GND

[avafinger]

For those of you having trouble i would suggest using SanDisk Ultra 16 GB (or greater) 48 MB/s or 80 MB/s, i have several cards and have never run into trouble with Ultra. They are cheap, slow but works and save you time....

[jsoncylu]

Yes, I am using the one you suggested, and I used Ubuntu to format the card. I was using my laptop's built in SD card reader but that might be crappy.

[avafinger]

Does your board powers off also, or just black screen?

[jsoncylu]

I think just black screen. No tuxes. The LED stays red.

[avafinger]

Normal boot the LED stays red all the time, try the 720p DTB and see what happens.
Mind the the HDMI connector has some trouble, sometimes i have to press against the board and the image pops up on screen. But i see Ethernet activities when the board gets the IP.
Try to type the password: ubuntu after 30 / 50 secs and see if there is some eth0 activities.

[jwrz]

Hi, this is log file grabbed from serial port
log.txt

[avafinger]

Hmm, ok. The board dropped to a u-boot command line, for whatever reason it is sensing ENTER on serial console debug and drops to u-boot shell.
I can see by the log several ENTERs.
Usually it would drop to shell and you would be able to type commands, type in the command:
sunxi# run mmcboot [ENTER]

** Update: run mmcbootcmd

This will boot and load kernel as normal, but you have to find out why serial console (debug) gets [ENTER] if you don't have anything attached to serial console.
I sometimes get this situation on Pine64 but not with the ENTERs you have, and i just type: run mmcboot and tada!

If you can't type anything, try to reboot until it finally boots or try to boot without anything attached to USB with the TTL attached and without it.