Confused

luren · Published in 2016-6-8 20:34:55

Hi

I have never played around with any single board computer before, and I got my orange pi one yesterday although feeling a bit confused. It came with no documentation so I am not sure if I am missing something.
After having read and followed this tutorial: http://www.orangepi.org/orangepi ... wthread&tid=342 (using card reader via usb, for regular sd card) and set all up, I noticed the card reader does not light up when plugged in. Needless to say, nothing happends and I get no screen either. Am I not supposed at least to get some kind of BIOS no matter if there is a card or not, or is my unit malfunctioning? I have also tried putting a regular USB stick in it, but its LED does not light up either.

luren · Published in 2016-6-8 20:36:05

I should add, when I plug power in: Although the USB/card reader does not light up the ethernet does. Both LEDs on the ethernet are turned on and static. Dont know if this is normal or not.

KY69 · Published in 2016-6-9 10:47:57

luren replied at 2016-6-8 09:36
I should add, when I plug power in: Although the USB/card reader does not light up the ethernet does ...

If I understood correctly you're trying to boot from a USB device without a microSD card inserted in the OPi. I do not believe that would work, you need at least a very small micro SD card with a boot partition, and then you would be able to have the rest of the system on your USB device, whatever that is. If you look at what you have in your SD card now you should have two partitions, the first one is the boot partition (small FAT partition), the one you need to have on a micro SD card inserted in you OPi. The second partition is probably named linux, and it's an ext4 partition with the rest of your OS there. The rest is explained in the first post of the thread you already read (existence of cmdline.txt and its contents, etc). Notice that the boot partition is very small, and any old micro SD salvaged from some old device will probably be more than large enough.

luren · Published in 2016-6-9 14:02:14

Ah, I see, so the microSD card must be in place in order for the hardware to even trigger the boot up? The USB stick got the partitions you mention.

KY69 · Published in 2016-6-10 05:57:56

luren replied at 2016-6-9 03:02
Ah, I see, so the microSD card must be in place in order for the hardware to even trigger the boot u ...

For the OPis that do not have eMMC, yes, AFAIK. So you should have a (small?) micro SD card with at least a boot partition (a copy of the small FAT partition already in your SD card), and the rest can be in your current SD card via USB. Do not forget to create a cmdline.txt in the boot partition as explained in the thread you mentioned. Also, when creating the FAT partition in the micro SD card, try to create it to start as in the SD card, i.e., pay attention to the first sector number. I do not have my OPis at hand now, but I believe it was 40960, so create a FAT partition starting there (check to see the correct number). Also make sure you copy the proper script.bin.OPI-whatever to script.bin (according to the resolution and connection type you're using). It should work then.

luren · Published in 2016-6-10 13:03:38

KY69, thank you very much for your help.
Ordered a new SD card, so will see in a few days how I succeed with this.

KY69 · Published in 2016-6-11 06:26:36

luren replied at 2016-6-10 02:03
KY69, thank you very much for your help.
Ordered a new SD card, so will see in a few days how I succ ...

Okay, good luck! Let me know how it goes.

luren · Published in 2016-6-15 18:24:39

Btw, what script-bin and uImage should I use for orange pi one/debian?

luren · Published in 2016-6-15 18:44:51

I booted the unit with all content of the scriptbin_kernel.tar.gz and it boots up fine, although getting a few messages in the startup. Was this correct to do?

I also tried running "sudo install_to_emmc" and it start off with : Installing linux system on emmc (turquoise text) but then quits with Error: EMMC not found. Does not the 'one' model have emmc?

KY69 · Published in 2016-6-16 02:16:14

luren replied at 2016-6-15 07:24
Btw, what script-bin and uImage should I use for orange pi one/debian?

When the OPi-one came out, the people who got the first units had no script.bin ready to use and this question showed up somewhere in the forum. I did not pay much attention because I do not have an OPi-one, but I believe it was said that using the OPi-PC image worked, but do check this in the forum, this information is burried somewhere. If you would want to do it yourself (adjust the parameters in script.bin), then all you have to do is get a script.bin as close to your hardware as possible, convert script.bin to text (bin2fex), edit the parameters accordingly (number of USB ports, RAM, etc), and convert it back to bin (fex2bin). Even if you do not need to do any of this, taking a look at the fex file for your board is very interesting, I encourage you to do it. Giving it more thought, I believe the OPi-one is different from the previous H3 based OPis as it has a different voltage regulator. Again, all this has been discussed somewhere in the forum, I just did not follow the discussions closely.