What is supposed to happen when the A20 is powered up ?

[F4HCV]

Hi all,

I just received from the UK representative of olimex in UK a A20-OLINUXINO-MICRO board.

I connected it to a native hdmi TV set auxiliary port and powered the board at the jack with 12V.

I see a LED lighting up red, but then I have no idea of what is supposed to happen ...!

no output on screen, It is all like the board is not switched on...

Am I missing something ?,  As far as I can read from the manual, pressing the PWR BUT button should initiate the booting of the board...pressing for 30 sec doesnt help .  It is like the board is not willing to switch on.  Is this board screwed ? or is there something to set in the firmware or something ?

Am I doing something wrong ?

Second question:  why is the debian image larger than what 4Go sandisk micro SD can accept ?

It seems like these memories are amptutated of ca 300 Mo which prevents the transcription of the image file (version 5 so-called ultimate) to the microSD...

Any help would be appreciated.

The board I have doesnot have a NAND.

[progmetalbg]

Hi,

Your board can only boot Linux or Android from microSD.
When you power up the board it boots straight from the OS written to the microSD, you don't have to press PWR BUT (at least if it is Linux, I'm not sure about Android)
Did you manage to write the Debian image to microSD card successfully?
If you have only this 4 GB Sandisk microSD and cannot write the official Debian image you can try other unoffical images such as Arch Linux ARM which, fits on cards below 1 GB (it is CLI only):
https://www.olimex.com/forum/index.php?topic=1856.0

Another option is Android:
http://olimex.wordpress.com/2013/10/02/android-4-2-2-images-for-a20-olinuxino-running-from-sd-card-is-updated-on-wiki/

[F4HCV]

Thanks my friend,

I just went to the store to get a 8Gb class10 microSD, installed the ULTIMATE image file ...and by magic, in a matter of 2 seconds, I booted with full hdmi display...great stuff !

I am now working on getting more from debian.

I am interested in radio-ham applications for highly portable use for digital tranmission in HF (phase shift keying, RTTY, SSTV, etc...)

Some of these applications do exist in the original distro, but obviously not in this one, is this a reduced distro ? or does it contain the full range of appl ?..4Gb seems comprehensive.

[Lurch]

There's a lot of stuff in the image you may not need.  The best thing is to re-size the partition and use apt-get install xxxx to install the extra stuff you need.
You can re-size while using the running image on your 8GB sdcard.
Essentially what you want to do is delete partition 2, create a new, larger partition 2 and write the partition table to sdcard. Then reboot.  Then resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2

# fdisk /dev/mmcblk0
  d
  2
  n
  <accept the defaults for partition 2, startblock and endblock>
  w
<reboot>
# resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2

Now you will have about 36% used and room for new stuff.

[charlieholimex]

I don't understand the statement that you can't put an official Linux image on a 4 GB micro SD. I bought a Linux image from Olimex and it came on a 4GB card.

[Lurch]

Of course you can.  But, if you want to do stuff with the board, maybe install more applications, you may need a larger one.  Use the df -h command to see how full the card is. 
If you're happy, stay with it.