Another case of unable to boot from SD

ehj666 · January 13, 2013, 10:38:07 PM

I just received an A13-Olinuxino-Wifi. It booted to Android first time, and everything seems fine there. I could not find a distributor carrying the debian image SD here in the US, so I downloaded the image and burned it to a 4GB SD. When trying to boot I get nothing, screen is black, and if I try to connect the serial cable to a USB port on a PC, I also get nothing.

While I did have a problem installing the serial driver for Windows, I at least get that usual bing that a USB device is ready or ready to install when booting to Android. When I try to boot to the SD I get nothing on the PC.

I have tried 3 SDs, 2 4GB from PNY and one 32GB from Transcend. Unfortunately my local Best Buy only carries PNY in the 4GB size. If I plug any of the SDs into my Android tablet, I can read them just fine. If I boot the Oliuxino to Android and then install any one of the SDs, all three report damaged SD.

My intended power supply has not arrived (1.2A @ 12V), but I am using a USB power supply suitable for charging tablets (2.1A @ 5V).

Is it the brand of SDs I am using, or is there another problem? Can anyone confirm whether PNY or Transcend SDs work in the Olinuxino?

Thanks,
Eric

jwischka · January 13, 2013, 11:24:48 PM

Which prebuilt image are you trying? How are you putting the image on the card?

ehj666 · January 13, 2013, 11:55:17 PM

I used the R4 image here:
https://www.olimex.com/wiki/Prebuilt_SD_card_images_running_debian#Debian_with_GUI_.28X.29

I have tried writing it with both Win32 Disk Manager and from Ubuntu 12.04 Linux.

jwischka · January 13, 2013, 11:59:58 PM

Do you have all four pins of the serial port connected, or just three? That was my problem, initially. Have you verified that there are two partitions on the card? When you load it in Ubuntu, do you see what you would expect (kernel/script.bin) on /dev/sdb1, rootfs on /dev/sdb2?

Sorry for all the questions - just trying to debug.

ehj666 · January 14, 2013, 12:40:26 AM

What is the fourth pin, my cable has three, gnd, rx and tx. You mean this cable, right:
https://www.olimex.com/Products/Components/Cables/USB-Serial-Cable/USB-Serial-Cable-F/

There are two partitions on the card, fdisk on ubuntu reports sdb1 start 2048, size 16384, and sdb2, start 34816, size 3795968.

I can read the SD successfully from windows, ubuntu linux and a tablet running android. Only the Olinuxino reports that the SD is damaged from android. This is true for both 4GB SDs.

jwischka · January 14, 2013, 12:48:37 AM

My cable has a +5V pin as well - so if you've only got 3, that solves that.

If you mount the card in Linux, what is on it?

sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt
cd /mnt
ls

do you see uImage and script.bin?

When you mean the serial port is blank, what exactly do you mean? Are you using Putty to try to view the output? Do you have the right COM port (varies, depending on the computer - one of mine is COM3, one is COM11 - go figure?) and baud rate (115200)?

Again - just trying to get on the same page with you to know what to try next.

Quote from: ehj666 on January 14, 2013, 12:40:26 AM
What is the fourth pin, my cable has three, gnd, rx and tx. You mean this cable, right:
https://www.olimex.com/Products/Components/Cables/USB-Serial-Cable/USB-Serial-Cable-F/

There are two partitions on the card, fdisk on ubuntu reports sdb1 start 2048, size 16384, and sdb2, start 34816, size 3795968.

I can read the SD successfully from windows, ubuntu linux and a tablet running android. Only the Olinuxino reports that the SD is damaged from android. This is true for both 4GB SDs.

ehj666 · January 14, 2013, 01:49:22 AM

As I said in the first post, I had a problem with the windows drivers. They seemed to have installed alright, but when I boot the Olinuxino to Android and connect the USB, it sees a new device and tries to install it, but gives an error that it cannot find the appropriate drivers. Booting to the SD gives nothing. In neither case does a new port appear.

The first partition of the SD has those two files, and only those two files.

jwischka · January 14, 2013, 01:56:22 AM

Ok - so I think the problem may lie in your technique. When you boot with the SD card in Linux, it's not supposed to do anything on your computer unless you have a terminal emulator running.

If you don't have Putty, download it.

Now, plug in your USB/serial cable. Go to Device Manager. Under "Ports" you should see a listing for USB-to-Serial connector (or some such) and it should have the COM port number beside it (COM3, in my case). If it doesn't, then you should probably right click and check on properties - it should be in there somewhere.

Now open Putty. Click the "Serial" radio button.
Change the port from COM1 to whatever your USB-to-Serial is
Change the speed from 9600 to 115200
Hit "open"
Plug in the A13-Wifi.

You should now see at least *something* come up, and hopefully you will see it boot. If not there should at least be an error message.

Let me know if any of that was unclear.

JohnS · January 14, 2013, 01:57:07 AM

I'm using a USB to 4-pin RS232 (well, there are 5 but I'm only using 4). It's a PL2303 and I'm using 3.3V rather than 5V. Works great but I had to swap Rx & Tx which reminds me of the old days...

My board is back to crashing during Linux boot. No idea why or what's changed.

John

jwischka · January 14, 2013, 01:58:43 AM

Quote from: JohnS on January 14, 2013, 01:57:07 AM
I'm using a USB to 4-pin RS232 (well, there are 5 but I'm only using 4). It's a PL2303 and I'm using 3.3V rather than 5V. Works great but I had to swap Rx & Tx which reminds me of the old days...

My board is back to crashing during Linux boot. No idea why or what's changed.

John

What's the error?

JohnS · January 14, 2013, 02:02:20 AM

The one in this thread:
https://www.olimex.com/forum/index.php?topic=356.0

Now it seems plugging the battery in has not cured it... well, I'm letting it flatten just incase that's the vital detail, unlikely though it seems.

John

jwischka · January 14, 2013, 02:04:12 AM

Quote from: JohnS on January 14, 2013, 02:02:20 AM
The one in this thread:
https://www.olimex.com/forum/index.php?topic=356.0

Now it seems plugging the battery in has not cured it... well, I'm letting it flatten just incase that's the vital detail, unlikely though it seems.

John

Ahh... an Android error... sorry, can't help you there.

JohnS · January 14, 2013, 09:15:27 AM

Not Android. It's Linux that dies with a NULL pointer deref.

jwischka · January 14, 2013, 04:30:23 PM

My bad - the title said Android and there was a lot of text there. I missed that you weren't the original author.

When you made your measurement of the voltage, was that from the battery or from a power supply - either way, is there a difference, and is there a difference between the three supplies you tried?

I am wondering if there is some sort of issue with the power connector on the board, especially since you say it fails at different points in the boot.

Quote from: jwischka on January 14, 2013, 02:04:12 AM
Quote from: JohnS on January 14, 2013, 02:02:20 AM
The one in this thread:
https://www.olimex.com/forum/index.php?topic=356.0

Now it seems plugging the battery in has not cured it... well, I'm letting it flatten just incase that's the vital detail, unlikely though it seems.

John

Ahh... an Android error... sorry, can't help you there.

ehj666 · January 14, 2013, 05:14:31 PM

Quote from: jwischka on January 14, 2013, 01:56:22 AM
Now, plug in your USB/serial cable. Go to Device Manager. Under "Ports" you should see a listing for USB-to-Serial connector (or some such) and it should have the COM port number beside it (COM3, in my case). If it doesn't, then you should probably right click and check on properties - it should be in there somewhere.

Now open Putty. Click the "Serial" radio button.
Change the port from COM1 to whatever your USB-to-Serial is
Change the speed from 9600 to 115200
Hit "open"
Plug in the A13-Wifi.

You should now see at least *something* come up, and hopefully you will see it boot. If not there should at least be an error message.

Let me know if any of that was unclear.

Ok, I made a small amount of progress. Putty does not give a selection of com ports, it shows COM1 and I can type in anything I want. If I run hyperterminal I see that a COM8 has been added. It exists, however, only when the USB is connected. One improvement is that it does appear regardless of whether I boot to Android or the SD drive.

Unfortunately, neither hyperterminal nor putty will allow me to talk to the port. I get a connection error or something similar from both programs. With putty, if the USB cable is not connected, I do not think the port even exists, based on what hyperterminal displays. So the error might be valid if I try to open a non-existant port.

Going past that, let me ask a very specific question. If you boot the Olinuxino to Android and then insert the bootable SD, can you read it from Android? Secondly, if you put in an ordinary SD, with a file system but no bootable OS, can you read that from Android? In my case I cannot. So the first thing I would like to do is to elimnate the SD itself as problem.

Thanks