weecee

Hi, An old problem, since I got the board which is 4C. Not a + - or whatever but the plain C. Symptoms: 1. HDMI worked randomly, maybe every 10th...15th boot lead to a working system, or rather to a visible HDMI-connection. But now switching on-off does not help at all. 2. Quite often one can get the board booting to the point where it asks for the password, and after clicking ok, it switches the screen off, and won't return. So the telly says that "no signal". 3. When switching on the board the tv set sees that there's someone on the hdmi port, and shows the booting sequence, and finally goes to Armbian's graphical mode asking for the password. Click "ok", and in 10 sec we are in the "no signal" -state. 4. And now guessing; when the board loses its connection to the tv set once, it will keep the hdmi feed down and it can not be woken up but by re-booting the board? Is there such a two-way feedback in-built? I mean, if the board does not recognize the tv, then it's stops sending video signal? And how to switch off this feature if there's one? Btw, I'm not a computer hobbyist so knowing not much about these, maybe just a (ab)user. I've been writing about this "feature" earlier to many platforms but no answer whether Armbian is programmed so that the board-whatever needs to "see" the receiving set all the time to keep its hdmi signal alive. This has 5.10.63-rockchip64 - kernel, the last one to have a working sound with this board. Well, not even sound now... And yes, this has a miniature hdmi -connector which maybe the culprit partly. It's very weak both mechanically, quite loose cable connection. If you twist-press the cable it may help to get the screen on, but now even this does not help anymore. And it's been tested with half a dozen cables so that's not the reason either.

Ok, Let there be sound, and sound was there... : vesa@rockpi-4b:~$ uname -r 5.10.63-rockchip64 vesa@rockpi-4b:~$ aplay -l **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices **** card 0: rockchiprk3399 [rockchip,rk3399], device 0: ff880000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0 [ff880000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] Subdevices: 0/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 card 1: hdmisound [hdmi-sound], device 0: ff8a0000.i2s-i2s-hifi i2s-hifi-0 [ff8a0000.i2s-i2s-hifi i2s-hifi-0] Subdevices: 0/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

And some further updates lead to nowhere: vesa@rockpi-4b:~$ aplay -l **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices **** card 0: Analog [Analog], device 0: ff880000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0 [ff880000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 card 1: hdmisound [hdmi-sound], device 0: ff8a0000.i2s-i2s-hifi i2s-hifi-0 [ff8a0000.i2s-i2s-hifi i2s-hifi-0] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 vesa@rockpi-4b:~$ uname -r 5.19.16-rockchip64 To be noted that upgrading to 5.19.16 kept the loudspeakers silent, so what next...

Right, accidentally updated: vesa@rockpi-4b:~$ uname -r 5.15.74-rockchip64 vesa@rockpi-4b:~$ aplay -l **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices **** card 0: hdmisound [hdmi-sound], device 0: ff8a0000.i2s-i2s-hifi i2s-hifi-0 [ff8a0000.i2s-i2s-hifi i2s-hifi-0] Subdevices: 0/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 And the silence is here again...

Ok, reverted back to the tested version 5.10.63 (Armbian Config - quite handy for a beginner like me). HDMI sound works nicely again. Ending my adventures on kernel upgrades here vesa@rockpi-4b:~$ uname -r 5.10.63-rockchip64 vesa@rockpi-4b:~$ aplay -l **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices **** card 0: rockchiprk3399 [rockchip,rk3399], device 0: ff880000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0 [ff880000.i2s-ES8316 HiFi ES8316 HiFi-0] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 card 1: hdmisound [hdmi-sound], device 0: ff8a0000.i2s-i2s-hifi i2s-hifi-0 [ff8a0000.i2s-i2s-hifi i2s-hifi-0] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Not brave enough to upgrade to 5.17 as it in my case it may lead to a completely non-booting system, and to get it back takes hours of trial-error-downloading-hassle, by experience...

Ok, this board is 4 B+, but maybe same symptoms exists as it was with my 4C. Luckily my 4C has the older 5.10.63-rockchip64, and its hdmi-sound works. It seems that I've learned nothing about these non necessary updates-upgrades, but they have been made so attractive and simple so its difficult to resist pressing the button...

Apparently auto-updates did no good, still no sound after upgrading from 5.10.63-rockchip64 (this had sound working) to 5.15.52. No sound in headphones, HDMI... Would be nice to know what those magic lines are in settings which made this vesa@rockpi-4b:~$ aplay -l **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices **** card 0: hdmisound [hdmi-sound], device 0: ff8a0000.i2s-i2s-hifi i2s-hifi-0 [ff8a0000.i2s-i2s-hifi i2s-hifi-0] Subdevices: 0/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 vesa@rockpi-4b:~$ uname -a Linux rockpi-4b 5.15.52-rockchip64 #22.05.4 SMP PREEMPT Mon Jul 4 09:40:29 CEST 2022 aarch64 GNU/Linux