A20-OLinuXIno-LIME2 boot up hang

[zymxjtu]

Recently I purchased one A20-OLinuXIno-LIME2 board, for the past few night after I have received the board, I have tried to get it run with no luck. I'm frustrated and wondering is it I'm so stupid that I can not get it working or there is something wrong with the board.

1. I have tried using (A20-OLinuXino-LIME2 Debian Jessie with kernel 3.4.103+ release 3) and (A20-OLinuXino-Lime2 Debian with kernel 3.4.90+ release 2) and the images  from (http://www.armbian.com/olimex-lime-2/) as mentioned in "https://www.olimex.com/wiki/A20-OLinuXino-LIME2" without luck. After the booting process runs to some stage it just hang there.

2. I have tired 3 MicroSD cards. One 8G MicroSD card that comes with my Raspberry PI purchase. Another 8G MicroSD card. And one 32G MicroSD card. All of them can not get it working.

Have I missed out something or the board I received has some hardware faulty?

So far I have seen some very strange message such as "Failed to set core voltage! Can't set CPU frequency" or "cpu(0) try to kill cpu(1)" or "try to kill cpu:1 failed!". That is so weird.

I pasted one of the boot message for image (A20-OLinuXino-LIME2 Debian Jessie with kernel 3.4.103+ release 3) as below:
http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/14878309/

[JohnS]

Usually it turns out to be poor power.  What are you using?

John

[zymxjtu]

Usually it turns out to be poor power.  What are you using?

John

Thanks John, I'm using the the power supply "https://www.olimex.com/Products/Power/SY0605E/" I purchased together with the board. I also tried powering it up through the USB-OTG, both can not get the board working.

I have read one thread in the forum "https://www.olimex.com/forum/index.php?topic=4986.0" which pointing to power supply related issue. Will power supply cause damage to the hardware board? As for my case, in the beginning I was using the power supply I purchased to power it up. In all the boot logging I got from my board, sometimes there is "Internal error: Oops: 5 [#2] PREEMPT SMP ARM" message when I power the board using the power supply. I did google search "PREEMPT SMP ARM" and found the link "http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29178044/raspberry-pi-2-crash-internal-error-oops-preempt-smp-arm" which talks about overclocking and hot..

I am lost...

[LubOlimex]

Hey,

First make sure that you initial tests are carried with one of these two images (ignore the rest of the images for now):

- Wheezy: https://www.olimex.com/wiki/images/3/39/A20-lime2_debian_3.4.90_release_2.torrent
- Jessie: https://www.olimex.com/wiki/images/b/b2/A20-lime2_debian_3.4.103_Jessie_2G_release_3.torrent

Then observe the board's LEDs when there is nothing connected to the board except the power supply (no HDMI, no serial cable, etc). There are two LEDs - the RED is a hardware one that indiciates if the power supply circuit is ok. The yellow LED however is software one - if it blinks than the uboot loads successfully (and probably the Linux loads also). This would usually mean the problem is in your video output - try another method to connect to the Debian.

This power supply can't damage the board but it can be insufficient in several scenarios. I would recommend you to test with another power supply unit. It is not uncommon to have more than 1A draw with LIME2.

Note that the issue might be related to the HDMI monitor as explained here: https://olimex.wordpress.com/2014/01/22/bevare-non-grounded-tv-monitors-can-damage-your-olinuxino/

If the problem persists send an e-mail to support@olimex.com (provide a link to this thread so we don't start from the beginning).

Best regards,
Lub/OLIMEX

[zymxjtu]

Hi Lub, thanks a lot. I will try them out to verify. Will update my findings. Really appreciate your help.

[zymxjtu]

Update:

Sorry for the late update. Didn't get sufficient time for testing and verification. And one of the verification takes very long time and I may still need to spend days to confirm for the worse case.

1. I did occasionally get the board boot under the case described below: It seems once the board can not boot, it will no longer be able to boot no matter what I do unless I place the board there with no connection at all and wait for maybe 20+ hours. I'm not very sure how long I need to wait, but I have tested 7+ hours and 10+ hours seems not enough. This is time consuming, it appears to me when I waited 20+ hours and carefully make all the connection and power it up, I may get the chance to boot up the board. But even it boots up, it is very unstable, I can not confirm what will cause it unable to boot,I only got the board boot up maybe 3 times, and when I did something such as software reboot/power off etc, and somehow the board will become unbootable. And after that I need to wait another 20+ hours maybe to have another observation.

2. Actually now it appears to me that I can immediately know the board can boot up or not when I power it up. When the U-Boot SPL shows "Failed to set core voltage! Can't set CPU frequency", it confirm can not boot. When the U-Boot SPL shows things like "CPU: 912000000Hz, AXI/AHB/APB: 3/2/2", it can boot up.

3. When the board can not boot up, I observed that the Orange LED (Charging?) is blinking, I have the feeling that when the board can boot up and after it boots up, the Orange LED is not blinking, I'm not very sure about that, need to spend more time to get the observation and it is time consuming.(Why it shows charging when there is no battery? I asked myself, does this hints something?)

4. I have the feeling that there is something wrong with the board, probably power supply circuit related or processor IC related? Is it normal that the Charging LED blinking when there is not battery attached, does this mean something wrong with the power IC? Why place the board there with nothing connected and waited for many hours and after that the board may boot up? Something is discharging?(and before it fully discharge, there is no way for the board to boot up).

Any idea after all those behavior described above? sorry for the bad and long description, I tried to describe those behaviors as much as possible.

Appreciate your help or ideas provided.

Thank you for your patience.

[LubOlimex]

Hey there,

It is strange that you were able to boot at all. If you were unable to boot at all I would immediately suggest to return the board. However, in your case I would recommend testing with a better power adapter (one that can provide more than 1A of current at 5V DC).

Refer to the power jack description here when selecting an adapter: https://www.olimex.com/wiki/PWRJACK

If the problem persists with the more powerful adapter, I would recommend sending an e-mail at support@olimex.com for RMA number. Remember to provide a link to this thread in your e-mail (to save time of discussing the issue again).

Best regards,
Lub/OLIMEX

[zymxjtu]

Hey there,

It is strange that you were able to boot at all. If you were unable to boot at all I would immediately suggest to return the board. However, in your case I would recommend testing with a better power adapter (one that can provide more than 1A of current at 5V DC).

Refer to the power jack description here when selecting an adapter: https://www.olimex.com/wiki/PWRJACK

If the problem persists with the more powerful adapter, I would recommend sending an e-mail at support@olimex.com for RMA number. Remember to provide a link to this thread in your e-mail (to save time of discussing the issue again).

Best regards,
Lub/OLIMEX

Hi Lub, thanks.

Actually it almost equals to can not boot. I just waited another 24 hours and just now I tried to boot it and it failed to boot. I will request for RMA.

Thanks a lot for your help.

[zymxjtu]

I send email to support@olimex.com but didn't get reply. How does this RMA process work? I can not find this information on the website.

I'm thinking to purchase another A20-OLinuXino-MICRO board, there seems to be more problems with A20-OLinuXIno-LIME2 board and more people are asking for help in the forum regarding A20-OLinuXIno-LIME2. I'm worried and do not have the confidence and also do not want to waste time.

Is it possible to ship the RMAed A20-OLinuXIno-LIME2 together with new purchase so that at lease there will be Shipping cost saving? And how can I send back the faulty A20-OLinuXIno-LIME2 board on hand?

Thanks a lot.

Hope to hear from you soon.

[zymxjtu]

Summarize my findings, hopefully it will be helpful to identify the root cause. I'm very interested to know the reason for the issue.

The board appears to be very unstable:
1: First, the board need to be placed there to discharge(with nothing connected, just leave it there) for 30+Hours(20+ hours sometimes seems not enough) if it failed to fully boot previously, then it can fully boot, without this discharging, the board will NEVER be able to fully boot. I have performed several rounds of testing so far these days. And I found that when the U-Boot SPL shows "Failed to set core voltage! Can't set CPU frequency", the board confirm can not fully boot. When the U-Boot SPL shows things like "CPU: 912000000Hz, AXI/AHB/APB: 3/2/2", it can fully boot.
2: Second, even if the board fully boot, it is very unstable, leave it run for some time(very short time, sometimes several minutes), it will reboot and it can enter infinite reboot loop. And somehow when the U-Boot SPL shows "Failed to set core voltage! Can't set CPU frequency", the board will never be able to fully boot again, And so far the only way is to wait another 30+ Hours to discharge(as I call it discharge). And it appears pressing the RESET button will get higher chance to enter this state. I have tried official power supply adapter, USB OTG, USB power adapter, all the same, so it can not be power source (even if using USB OTG, it should work since I don't have other connection, I even run without HDMI monitor, still have same problem).

Thanks.

Regards,
Yuming