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Hello, Recently I have upgraded Armbian on my PBP (w/o kernel). My current kernel is 5.10.60 #21.08.1. I know, it's old but the newer only makes PBP unusable at all - black screen on boot. My current issue concerns the PBP keyboard. Some keys started generating weird outputs. I have never faced with something like that. When I press 'q' - output is - aq2468 x - zxetuj c - cfghk d - DWRI 1 - the screen is dimming I have no idea if this is software or hardware issue. The computer was on the shelf. Nothing has happened to it physically. After years of fighting with this crap :( - I want to be sure if that is the last straw to put this computer to the garbage or maybe I can fix it. If I connect an external keyboard there is no issue.

Hello, unfortunatelly I post again, because of the latest problem with broken install of initramfs .... The system is unable to write it to uboot and gives the error about unsupported architecure. Every standard commands are probed, without result. it comes always the same error.

I bought a Pinebook Pro two weeks ago. It came with Manjaro KDE preinstalled on EMMC. I wanted to try out Armbian, so I downloaded the Bookworm XFCE image from May 27th. In order to get the SD booted, I first flashed Tow-Boot for Pinebook Pro (pine64-pinebookPro-2021.10-005.tar.xz) from github Tow-Boot to the SPI. Then during boot after pressing ESC the menu lets you select the SD card for boot. The first boot to Armbian worked well. I could set up user, timezone and everything. The XFCE desktop looks very clean with a reasonable selection of software. Well done, team! But after I upgrade the system with apt update & upgrade, the next time the machine is booted and SD card is selected, armbian won't boot anymore 😞 The upgrade seem to have broken something. I tried it twice, the second time freezed the kernel-upgrades in the armbian-config tool prior to upgrading it. Didn't help. Manjaro from EMMC still boots ok. Attached is a screenshot of the failed boot process, after I selected SD card to boot on the Tow Boot menu.

I slowly convinced myself that I wanted a PineBook Pro, some time after the first production run. But then COVID, parts shortages, etc. happened and they were not available again until about mid-2022. But when they were, I decided to snap one up. And since then I have not been able to get it to boot Armbian. It came from the factory with Manjaro, which for me being a Debian guy, might as well be useless. So the PBP sat around collecting dust. Since then I have tried a few times to get it to work. I read many forum posts, tried some things. I won't document all that in detail. In this post, I will continue from where I left off here. However to summarize, that was about comparing DTB/DTS files to Kali, which supposedly works. That may become useful later, but I don't think that's the main problem. I think that the main problem is that this new batch came from the factory with no bootloader flashed to the included SPI flash chip. This is a problem on PineBook Pro because the RK3399 has a kind of weird boot order: SPI, eMMC, SD card. Therefore, if you just put in some SD card you flashed, it still boots from the factory Manjaro from the eMMC. Whatever bootloader they are using also apparently will not recognize an otherwise working Armbian image on an SD card. Now, because of the weird boot situation, there is supposed to be a switch to turn off eMMC. However this did not work for me. Which means one of 2 things: The switch does not work. I read at least one other person saying this. Also on the new revision, it's in a slightly different place than the old revision (may be a clue, maybe not). I simply had a bad Armbian image (which I had burned to sd card) that would not boot for whatever reason.[0] But let's put that aside for a moment. As I still think the main problem is the (empty) SPI. And that will be the easiest/best path forward. I confirmed the 'blank SPI' theory 2 different ways. First, as mentioned in a follow-up to the linked post (4 paragraphs above): As Martijn Braam states here: Of course, I like to beat a horse until it's really dead be thorough in my investigations, so today I wasted a lot of time[1] verifying that this indeed was the case. I did so by dd'ing the /dev/mtd0 block device into a file[2]. When I examined the file, it contained all FF, and also it is about 16 MiB in size. To me this confirms that indeed, the SPI on the new batch comes from the factory empty. So what is next? I keep reading that the only people who had success first had to install something like tow-boot to the SPI. That will be my next step. But before I flashed anything to SPI, I wanted to see what really came from the factory (which I did above). I will continue to document my progress whenever time allows for me to work on this. [0] Once I got the bootloader situation sorted, I later used this same image (on the SD card) to boot and install Armbian, so I do not think this was the case. [1] In the end the solution was simple. But first I wasted a lot of time trying to get rkdeveloptool working in Manjaro on the PBP. Only to realize it's intended to be used from a second machine to read the SPI flash via USB in maskrom mode. Anyway, lesson learned. [2] I tried to attach it but maybe it's too big.

I tested Armbian 24.5.1 Noble Gnome + trunk MESA/VPU Kernel: 6.6.31, Size: 1.3GB, Release date: May 25, 2024 on my PBP (sd card). What does not work: - Sound - HDMI Monitor on PB dock Thank you

Hi Referring to https://forum.armbian.com/topic/32667-usb-c-port-doesnt-work-on-pinebook-pro-after-the-latest-update-on-kernel-662/ USB -C is not working. I also tried 6.7.4-edge with no success. Looking for a solution G??gle found this: https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-arm-108/pinebook-pro-usb-c-port-not-working-after-kernel-upgrade-4175732886/#google_vignette referring to Megi`s 6.7 kernel. The link was outdated, but the base worked and had versions 6.8 and 6.9. Tried both with a lot of success: USB-C working and the HDMI monitor output as well as Gigabit Ethernet work like a charm again. 😄 The only small issue remaining: Sound is not working (no analog or digital.) armbianmonitor: https://paste.armbian.com/mamocolodo (I had a small issue following Megi`s Readme: The board.dtb should replace rk3399-pinebook-pro.dtb in one of the existing dtb trees. I used dtb-6.7.4-edge-rockchip64.) any ideas about the sound issue are greatly appreciated. Sepp

Also the function keys don't seem to work either. Any fix?

Hello, as already mentioned in topic USB C port doesn't work after upgrading to the latest kernel 6.6.2 . The previous problem with not working left usb 3 port persist no more. Everything is fine. As I remember , before update the usb c port has worked with the adapter and the devices like mouse, usb flash etc. Now it doesn't work any more, furthermore it gives no signal of life. There is 0 amps current measured, also dmesg -W gives no output at all after plugging in the device. PS: I was unable to upload the report file, also the service paste.armbian.com doesn't work at the moment.

!!! Warning !!!: Think twice before you upgrade kernel on your PineBook Pro. After years unfortunately I decided to unlock upgrades Armbian Kernels and upgraded kernel to the newest one (current) - 5.15.93. After reboot Armbian couldn't find my encrypted root disk and booting ended every time in (initramfs). I installed again kernel 5.10.60 #21.08.1 and Armbian finds my encrypted disk again. Of course still there is no information that I have to enter the password to unlock disk but only black screen. Happily I know that I have to enter the password when the screen is black. Every upgrade of Armbian is connected with a dose of stress that I'll have to fix my computer. I thought that every following kernel should fix errors not create them.

does displayport over usb-c dock work for you? It doesn't for me neither on 5.15 nor on 6.1.

Hello all, I got a problem after new update of armbian firmware through your own module (script). The left USB port on pinebook pro has stoped working at all. Before that was occasionaly after 6 -7 boot ups only one time not working (it is used for mouse). Now after x rebooting it doesnt work at all. The right USB port works without problems. On the left, also USB flash drive doesn't work. No idea, what could it be? Before, as already said, it has worked in 90%. Before firmware upgrade.

So, I tried to adapt @Kwiboo and @jernej patches on my 5.6 branch, but this made the kernel fail to boot for no visible reason. Since I were able to boot it without the VPU patches, I'm convinced that it's their readaptation that broke something. The patches applied are here : https://github.com/Miouyouyou/RockMyy64 If someone wants to play with them and determine which one break the boot process.