plugged it in and nothing happened

[danielr]

Hello,

I've received my new A20-OlinuXino-Lime board (the one without NAND flash) today, but I appear to have fallen at the first hurdle.

following instructions for the lime in the Wiki, I've downloaded the Debian image from the drive.google.com link.
the file appears to be the full file (988MB in size) and downloads without error.

the image unpacks happily enough using 7Zip to an .img file.
and win32diskimager writes the image to an SD microcard with no worries.

then I come to plug the device in.
I started trying to use a USB cable plugged into a USB port on my laptop, that didn't work, now i've resorted to using a 5v 2A power supply (tablet charger) the output of that charger is USB and I am again trying to use the OTG port to power the device. -like the Wiki says I should be able to.

I know that the SD card is good (I can boot my rasperry pi using it in an adapter.) -SD card is a Samsung branded 64GB class 10 card.
I know that the power supply is good - I can measure that.



When I plug the device in... if I have a network cable attached, then I see network lights, and a flashing light (see below), if I unplug the network then just the flashing light.

There is a green light (shown as Status light on the wiki picture ) and LED1 on the silk screen that blinks twice in rapid succession, then goes off, then blinks twice goes off.

It does this at a rate of 84bpm (yes I used a tap metronome on my phone to measure it in case it was important)

Aside from that, there is nothing, nothing on the screen, (HDMI).

To be honest it's a bit of a disappointment/let down - Can't quite understand how and why it's not just working out of the box!



Any ideas where I've gone wrong or what to look at next?

I'm guessing that I need to dig out a serial cable and look at the UART0?

if I have to do that can someone confirm what the port settings are for speed parity flow control etc will be?


Many many thanks,
Danny.

[Lurch]

Can't help much, I only have the A20-Micro boards.
UART0 is for all boards 115200 Baud, no parity, 1 stop bit. The output is usually very helpful in finding problems.
The green LED blinking once per second on A20-Micro means the board is booting/booted.

[kaloyan]

I have the same issue, as you.
Since my cards are slower(4GB, class 2), I have left the device for some minutes,
but again nothing happened.

The network lights are from packets comming into the device, nothing goes out.
I have attached it to my laptop and capture traffic  with tcpdump.

I have the A20-Olinuxino-Lime-4Gb, use 5V/2.5A to the power connector.

[JohnS]

Without looking at debug on the uart you've no data.

(Common problems are expecting HDMI from an image that does VGA or writing the IMG wrongly.  Another is bad PSU.)

John

[klausbm]

Hello Danny,

on page 21 of the A10-OLINUXINO-LIME manual it is written "The board works with micro SDHC cards up to 32GB of storage."
You are trying to use "-SD card is a Samsung branded 64GB class 10 card". Maybe you have to try out another SD card.

Klaus

[danielr]

Well, I changed memory cards, and still no joy regarding getting a picture on the display.

I'm now using a branded Sandisk 16GB card, this time class 4 rather than 10, but it should still work (according to the WIKI) just slower...


I've dug out a USB serial converter, and the db9 to three pin lead that I made up years ago.

I am getting some kind of output in the putty terminal window, but it's not clear what that output actually is...

It just looks like a mess! full of weird characters, appears to scroll backwards at times.

Code Select Expand


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¿9=99ëå8m#--='--;-#1¿75'=57¿5=9'!9-#1¿91;eo
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                    ëå<I99¥-#3E¿99!#3-1¿''¿!¿  ëåpI99¥-#3E¿99!#3-1¿''¿!¿eo
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Not useful!

I'm guessing that there is something wrong with either the settings or the serial adapter.

Settings are:
Baud: 115200
data bits: 8
Stop bits: 1
Parity: none
Flow control: none

I'm using putty, with the serial port as com9 on the laptop (checked in device manager)


The serial adapter that I'm using is quite old.
It's case suggests it's a U232-P9 adapter, but it is a TTL adaptor, and so should work.

I've got a new one arriving from ebay in a few weeks to rule that out as well.



I could perhaps see the issue when I was trying to use a card that was too big to be supported, but now I'm using a card of correct size (half max), with the image downloaded straight from the link provided on the Olimex site.

Can anyone confirm that the default image is meant to have HDMI enabled?

[dave-at-axon]

A search on Google shows that the U232-P9 is an RS232 level device.

Does it have a DB9 connector on the end? If it does, it will most likely be RS232 levels and would explain the corrupted data.

I hope you didn't connect the TX line to the RX input on the A20? That would be bad as it will put +-12V onto the 3.3V IO pin and that is not good.

[danielr]

Thankfully no, I haven't swapped around the pins.

I guess I'll just wait for a new serial adapter to come...

[JohnS]

If you connected a +- 12V pin then probably damaged the A20, sadly.

John

[danielr]

well... It's worth trying at least before giving up.

Though to be honest, I think that the adapter I have is a cheaper version without the charge pump circuitry, there are a lot of unpopulated spaces on the board, I'll have a look with a scope and see what sort of voltages are present...


I've ordered a cable from Olimex, mostly as I'll "trust it" to work with the device, and secondly because it should arrive by tomorrow. (so no need to wait the near month it seems to take stuff to arrive if ordered from China.)



I'd be very frustrated if it is broken or damaged...
not least because I should never have had to connect this cable in the first place!

A brand new board, used with a good SD card flashed moments before with the image supplied and recommended by the vendor should just work!
The fact that it doesn't is a pretty poor show from Olimex and points to a lack of testing somewhere.
there is a thread asking how they can improve their images, and compete with the Raspberry pi. -well testing that they work would be a start!


At the moment the board is still behaving in the same way as it was before attaching anything, sort of looking like it might be doing something, but having no output on the screen and just a regular flashing LED. no output on the TV using HDMI.


This isn't the first thread on these forums that questions why the lime board fails to boot from SD, and other threads suggest that if you didn't get the NAND equipped version (enabling you to do a warm reboot) then there may be no way to boot the board at all?

[JohnS]

Most if not all problems posted have not been the board.  They've been bad power, wrongly written SD, wrong image put on the SD, etc.

I think you'll find that Olimex test every board.

John

[danielr]

OK,

I used a 5v 2A capable supply.
With a mini USB plugged into the USB OTG port.

This would give a total available power of 10w which is more than the board draws according to the wiki

https://www.olimex.com/wiki/A20-OLinuXino-LIME

The wiki specifies an image.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-bAEPML8fwlV0RsenB6cXBqSWM/edit?usp=sharing

To be downloaded and written to an SD card. The wiki didn't specify that there was a maximum size, So at first I used a 64GB card, but have since used a 16GB card.

The wiki (the only documentation on the main Olimex site) says that HDMI should be enabled, but it appears to show nothing. -there is a suggestion that the video output is only enabled after the system is booted, which may explain the issues I'm having.


I guess my point is.
the SD Card is fine, it was and is working perfectly fine to boot a raspberry pi (with the correct image for that of course)
The TV and HDMI cables are fine and working with the Raspberry pi,
The power supply is fine and again working with the Pi.


I have followed the documentation "to the letter" and the board just doesn't work in the way that it is supposed to -i.e there is no display. and I can't tell what the problem is without buying further equipment.

For "some reason" this board is not booting correctly (problem with the image), or is booting correctly but is not working (problem with the hardware).


The "other thread" that I talked about.
the poster said that thy bought a board (call it board A) and the micro power supply, the fried the board then realised what they had done.
So they bought board B and a Lime power supply. and the board doesn't work. not that they fried both boards of tried to make the fried board work again.

Olimex may well test all boards, but this is at least the second thread started in August that points to failure to boot the stock image, when the (sparse) documentation is closely followed.


Funnily enough I bought this board rather than buying a third Raspberry Pi as I thought that it sounded like a better spec'd board, and certainly had better disk support with SATA. Now I'm starting to regret that decision.

[JohnS]

The wiki (the only documentation on the main Olimex site) says that HDMI should be enabled, but it appears to show nothing. -there is a suggestion that the video output is only enabled after the system is booted, which may explain the issues I'm having.

I have followed the documentation "to the letter" and the board just doesn't work in the way that it is supposed to -i.e there is no display. and I can't tell what the problem is without buying further equipment.

I understand you're frustrated but the wiki is not "the only documentation" as there's a 40-page user manual on the main site and links to other places such as github.

Also, "to the letter" isn't right as you've connected an RS232-level device as well as using an SD card that exceeds the stated size.  (The usual mistakes with SD cards are failing to use the right image or failing to write it to the card correctly.)

It would be nice if HDMI were enabled on power on, well, no it wouldn't be nice at all for those who wanted to save power but it would be nice for you.  However, Allwinner make the chips and they make the ROM code inside them which doesn't enable HDMI early on so short of Allwinner having a total re-think we are where we are.

It still may be a faulty board as no manufacturer of anything seems to have 100% perfection, not even Rolls-Royce or Ferrari.

As you own a 'scope maybe you can look at what comes out of the uart early on even if you can't decode the characters (if any).

John

[danielr]

well the cable came...


I can see and interact with a terminal now.
good news, teh system is actually started as it should.
it's booted to linux as it should, and the adapter that I had did not break anything I can send recieve data via the RX/TX lines, as I should be able to.

I can boot with both the 16GB card, and the 64GB card that I made earlier - so note the A20Lime board DOES support booting from a 64GB microSD. (good news).


I've also found out that there is a message that comes up saying that there is no IPV6 routers present.

and the DHCP is set to static with an address of 192.168.1.1 (I've now changed that to my own static preference in a range that I use. -whilst I understand it's impossible to please all the people all the time, I think that DHCP for initial setup is fairly universal as manufacturers simply do not know what address ranges people use.
After changing the address I also needed to add a default route.


So great, it seems that my cable didn't break anything...


however, what does seem clear is that the HDMI just doesn't work...
I've tried every setting in the
./change_display_a20_lime.sh script, nothing is displayed on my TV.


This does kind of leave me with the question, what next...?

t would be nice if HDMI were enabled on power on, well, no it wouldn't be nice at all for those who wanted to save power but it would be nice for you.  However, Allwinner make the chips and they make the ROM code inside them which doesn't enable HDMI early on so short of Allwinner having a total re-think we are where we are.

I invite you to read what I wrote again.
Olimex claim to have HDMI enabled in the image, but it doesn't seem to work. I understand that I should not expect a picture to appear on power on (like it does on the Raspberry Pi) -and I'm happy with that, -never suggested that anything should be re-thought.

What I was suggesting is that the "average" new user is probably going to get a board, burn an image and plug it into a TV (where HDMI enabled TV's are cheap as chips now and pretty ubiquitous), you'd expect most people to have a DHCP enabled router with "whatever their ISP set it as" still working.

In the image thread someone asks how can Olimex beat the Raspberry Pi?, simple answer is that there needs to be a lot more user friendly, a lot more "plug and play", a lot more just ready to go, with more documentation, or documentation that is easier to find -yes the user manual is linked, halfway through another page.



That's all besides the point at the minute, HDMI still doesn't seem to work.

[JohnS]

I prefer a static IP.  You prefer DHCP.  Can't please everyone 100%.

HDMI works for most people as you can tell by reading the threads.  Maybe your device is flakey.

John