The board does not even try to boot on power-on

[crosser]

I got my box yesterday and assembled it (looks gorgeous, and reasonably easy to assemble).

Without external power and with battery connected, green led 1 is on. With external power, orange led 9 in addition to that.

FTDI chip is recognized regardless of power status, I can connect to the console.

After pressing power button, green LEDs 2 and 3 and blue LEDs 4 and 5 light up immediately, and after that nothing else happens. Nothing on the serial console, no LEDs change status.

Tried disconnecting the battery. Then without external power, all LEDs are dark (but FTDI chip is still visible), with external power orange LED 9 blinks, the rest is exactly the same: four more LEDs light up on pressing the power button, and no other signs of life.

 

Looks to me as if either u-boot is absent / corrupted / inaccessinle, or the SoC does not enter boot mode.

 

No jumpers connected. There is no CR1225 (the board arrived without it. But with the 18660 pack).

 

Any advise? (I would be comfortable to play with low level boot tools).

[SIGSEGV]

Did you create a bootable microSD card?

The U-Boot image is not on SPI yet - so it needs it will look for it on the SD and eMMC - if you haven't written the image on either of these you won't get any output on the console.

[gprovost]

@crosser Yes you have followed any of the instructions described here : https://wiki.kobol.io/helios64/install/preliminary/

If yes, at which step are you stuck ?

[crosser]

Thanks!

I could not respond earlier because forum allows to make only one post in the first day.

It is embarrassing, I am actually quite certain that I tried to boot with SD card and without it several times, and the result was the same (no signs of life). And I even wrote the image to the card again and tried again. But when I tried to boot yet again with the same card the next day, after reading @SIGSEGV's answer, it booted! I can only suspect lousy contact on the card or something?..

@gprovost yes, of course I did. And believe that I explained clear enough at "which step".

Anyway all is well now, thank you for your help!

[Werner]

7 hours ago, crosser said:

I could not respond earlier because forum allows to make only one post in the first day.

You received a like. Limit should be gone within 24h.