Is my A20-OLinuXino-MICRO dead?

[KeesB]

About 5 years ago I bought a A20-OLinuXino-MICRO. Now it suddenly stopped working.

This is what I've tried so far. If I put the micro SD card from the board in the reader of my computer, nothing happens. I can't read or write. Suspicious. So I bought a new 8 Gb sd card class 4. Probably not the best choice, but is should work (slow).
I've downloaded the Debian Jessie image and copied it on the micro SD card. No error messages.
After inserting the new sd card in the board and connect it to power, nothing happens. A red led light up but no output to the screen.

The board has 2 layers. One layer is for a hard disk from a laptop.
With the old sd card, nothing happened (no output), but the HD runs and a green led next to the read led, lights up.
With the new sd card even the HD doesn't run and the screen led, doesn't doen't turn on.
Nothing changes if I disconnect the HD.

What to do? Is it worth buying another 4 (or 8 Gb class 10) micro sd card? Or is my board dead?
I don't know very much about hardware.

Greetings,
Kees

[LubOlimex]

About the issue, probably the card got corrupted as you suspected. You need to re-write the card with Linux image and using suitable software. I would suggest the free version of BalenaEtcher, you can find it here: https://www.balena.io/etcher/

The image is also important, try with Jessie release #18 image since your are familiar with that image, archive with it can be downloaded either as torrent or from the FTP, check which one is faster, download the archive, extract it and test with it:

ftp://staging.olimex.com/Allwinner_Images/A20-OLinuXino-MICRO/Debian/sd/A20_OLinuxino_Micro_debian_Jessie_34_103_2G_eMMC_release_18.zip
https://www.olimex.com/wiki/images/4/45/A20_OLinuxino_Micro_debian_Jessie_34_103_2G_eMMC_release_18.torrent

If the issues remain, try the latest Ubuntu Bionic image, again download the archive, extract it and prepare the card with BalenaEtcher:

ftp://staging.olimex.com/Allwinner_Images/A20-OLinuXino/1.latest_mainline_images/bionic/images/
ftp://staging.olimex.com/Allwinner_Images/A20-OLinuXino/1.latest_mainline_images/bionic/images/Armbian_5.92.1_Olinuxino-a20_Ubuntu_bionic_next_5.2.5_desktop.7z

Let me know the results. I am interested in information received over the serial port when attempting to boot and also of the status of the LEDs (which LED turns on, whether it blinks, whether it stays on, etc).

Also let me know the following:

What screen do you have - LCD connected on the LCD_CON or something on the HDMI connector?

What means "HD" runs? Is it the HDMI video? Is it the hard disk?

[KeesB]

Thank you for your answer.

A week ago I downloaded the torrent A20_OLinuxino_Micro_debian_Jessie_34_103_2G_eMMC_release_18.torrent. I got an ISO image (not a *.img). I've copied that image with Win32DiskImage to the 8 Gb micro SD card. This did not work. Only the red led (next to the power plug) turned on and the screen says 'no signal'.

Today I've downloaded ftp://staging.olimex.com/Allwinner_Images/A20-OLinuXino-MICRO/Debian/sd/A20_OLinuxino_Micro_debian_Jessie_34_103_2G_eMMC_release_18.zip. So from your link.
After unzipping I got a *.IMG. I've burned the IMG with balenaEtcher to the same 8 Gb sd card. It took a lot longer, but booting with this image succeeded. The screen shows the boot process. So problem fixed. Many, many thanks!

With the HD in my original question I meant a hard disk. It's a old harddisk from a laptop.

I have another question:
The sd card is a class 4 micro sd card. I can't see much difference in boot time compared to a class 10 4 Gb sd card. Do you expect that the board is a lot faster with a 8 Gb class 10 sd card?

I use the board mainly for Samba and Bugzilla (Apache, MySql). The SATA harddisk is slow and very old. Do you expect the board to be a lot faster with a ssd harddisk? The only problem I had with the board was that it was too slow for Bugzilla. Now I'am working on the board I want how to make it faster. Is the board slow because of the processor, the amount of memory or the speed or the harddisk?

Thanks for all your help!

Kees

[LubOlimex]

Hello Kees,

Glad that worked out for your.

There would be considerable difference in the performance between class 4 card and class 10 card. I'd suggest booting from a faster SD card.

I don't think the HDD-SSD swap would make much a difference regarding the speed since the limiting factor in this design is not usually the speed of the hard disk but the throughput of the SATA interface of the A20 chip. Still if the read/write is very slow, it might be good indication that your hard disk has to go and you might also swap that.

In the end there are lot of tests that can be performed to check the speed - just some read/write test would be sufficient to compare, even simple dd command can be used to measure and compare. Search for "test hard disk speed linux" to find few easy ways.

Best regards,
Lub/OLIMEX