[Solved, but magically] Orange PI PC won't boot at all

userloser

Here's the setup:

Orange PI PC
USB keyboard, plugged in one of the horizontal USB slots
USB mouse, plugged in the vertical USB slot
5V 2.1A USB power supply.
Using the supplied cable. One end (the USB) goes into the USB supply, the other (the round one) into the Orange PI PC power socket
Red light on the board, green and yellow lights on the Ethernet
HDMI cable, the other end attached to HDMI monitor, monitor power on

SD Card:
Class 10, 16 gigs

Images tested:
Debian jessie mini (per instructions on the Gentoo page)
Orange Pi jessie XFCE
Orange Pi PC Ubuntu Vivid mate

Checksums downloaded and checked, match the image files.
Image written to sd card per instructions, dd if=whatever.img | pv | dd of=/dev/sdb
dd completes normally, partitions are mountable and clean.

SD card is plugged into the slot before power on.

Boot process starts, switches monitor on, outputs some unhelpful initialization messages text, hangs at about 4 seconds. No attempt to start init from SD, no text console, no gui, no network.

Also, no oopses, no helpful error messages.

Copying script.bin(script.bin.OPI-PC_1080p60) and uImage(uImage_OPI-2) to the first partition from a certain script.bin archive, supposedly working with the Opi-PC and available on whatever google drive produce no difference.

Where to go from here?

milan285

well ubuntu trusty mini DIDN'T work

milan285

hmmmmmm,i had the same problem,i downloaded ubuntu to my pc and used it for writing images
maybe your SD card is broken,try using another one,also try some minimal images

milan285

ummm,just dont touch the ulmages and scripts,try like that

userloser

milan285 replied at 2015-11-30 17:52
ummm,just dont touch the ulmages and scripts,try like that

Thanks for your reply.
There's no difference, following the 'official instructions' with the provided images wont't work either. This is what I tried first.
That's why I tried all other options in the forum.
Alas, nothing works.

userloser

Thanks.

I use Debian and dd to write images. The SD card seems fine, as it works on several other devices.

I've also triple checked that images are written correctly to it.

I'll try a 'minimal' image on a different card -- I need console only anyways.

Do you remember what minimal image did you succeed with?

userloser

Nevermind, I prepared a new image with a minimalistic image, then forgot to swap the SD cards, and lo and behold, the board magically booted with Jessie with the modified scripts  from the same card it had until then refused to recognize. Not only that, it rebooted fine, survived a few sdcard swaps. It was probably the aliens, so I'm wrapping it in tinfoil and calling it a day.

scarapa

didn't work for me

discovolante

the same for me.
could you try this image http:
//www.orangepi.org/downloadresources/orangepipc/oragepipc_4a0e8d960f7f0a52606dfaba58.html

userloser

Sorry to hear that. Apparently, my problem was with the SD card slot, it got damaged in postage (I didn't notice it at first, then didn't bother to complain). Make sure the card is in proper position and properly read, because otherwise really weird stuff happens.

I used the OrangePI_Jessie_Xfce.img from the Google drive site with MD5 checksum 3a2e755c69cacbf3749103627d260c08

It has two partitions:
Device                    Boot  Start     End Sectors  Size Id Type
OrangePI_Jessie_Xfce.img1       40960  172031  131072   64M  b W95 FAT32
OrangePI_Jessie_Xfce.img2      172032 2953216 2781185  1.3G 83 Linux

On a different computer, best if it is a Linux machine, you write the image out to the sd card with dd as above.
Then,  you mount the windows partition, copy the proper init script for your device.
Then, mount the the linux partition, copy the proper kernel and modules for it.
Finally, pull out the power for a few seconds and on restart it should work, boot normally and start the network and the Xwindow system with Xfce.

I disabled X after the first login, but the first time it worked fine, if a bit slowly. But then, it was slower when I ran it for the first time on a 486 CPU )

I've not tried HDMI, as I run the device in a headless mode (that is, without X and graphics mode login), but everything else, including GPIO, seems to work.