Pine A64(+) should be different from Pine A64-LTS?

[Tim Makarios]

I recently bought a couple of A64-LTS boards from the Pine Store, but I couldn't get the official Armbian images to boot on them.  https://www.armbian.com/pine64/

 

I could, however, get Manjaro to boot on them, and when I created an SD card with U-Boot from the Manjaro SD card, and the partition from the Armbian (Bullseye CLI) image, it booted into Armbian.

 

I noticed, though, that Manjaro distinguishes between the Pine A64(+) and the Pine A64-LTS.  Tow-boot also makes the same distinction.  So I wondered if maybe Armbian wasn't booting on my A64-LTS boards because it wasn't making that distinction, but it should be.

 

(I also noticed that the headphone jack and ethernet port aren't working properly on Armbian, though they do work on Manjaro, but perhaps it's best to focus first on getting an official Armbian image to boot on the A64-LTS.)

 

Here's the output of `armbianmonitor -U`: http://paste.debian.net/1266079

[Igor]

Welcome to Armbian forums!

 

3 hours ago, Tim Makarios said:

I could, however, get Manjaro to boot on them

 

3 hours ago, Tim Makarios said:

but perhaps it's best to focus first on getting an official Armbian image to boot on the A64-LTS.

 

I have to be honest with you. We have no interest - it just bring more expenses & stress to the people that work on project. If we provide images that doesn't fully work, and they never do, we are loosing money which is very troublesome when having no income. There were never any support budget for this hardware. Not a single cent. Vendor is unfriendly and not "community driven" as they advertise. Pine64 also rather supports commercial Linux projects that are focused in taking advantage of other FOSS projects. Including ours. Most of their ARM section was ported from Armbian, PostmarketOS ...

 

3 hours ago, Tim Makarios said:

Pine A64(+) and the Pine A64-LTS.  Tow-boot also makes the same distinction.  So I wondered if maybe Armbian wasn't booting on my A64-LTS boards because it wasn't making that distinction, but it should be.

 

We were officially not notified about any hardware changes even they recommend our work. If LTS does not boot, is IMO expected. The problem officially does not exits. Our images were made for hardware called "Pine64+": https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/master/config/boards/pine64.conf#L4

 

LTS (probably) needs different boot loader config / settings.

 

Towboot is just a fork of the same thing, a different UI with not enough people / activity to be taken seriously. Primary reason is anyway unrelated to low level hardware support, but to boot different kernels / user lands with the same boot image. Something that is not very important for Armbian.

[Tim Makarios]

Thanks for your reply.

 

I am disappointed, of course, that there's no official Armbian interest in supporting my A64-LTS boards, but I understand your position.

 

Based on a hunch, I tried the Pine64so bullseye image from https://au.mirrors.naho.moe/armbian/dl/pine64so/archive/ and it boots straight away, but the network and headphone jack are still not functioning correctly.

[Tim Makarios]

An update, in case this is useful to someone else:

 

I've built an image by replacing `_plus` with `-lts` in the line of code @Igor linked to above (and changing the file name and comment).  It boots, but the headphone jack and ethernet port still don't work.

 

However, I can get the ethernet port to start working by running `sudo ethtool -s eth0 speed 100 duplex full`, which slows it down to 100 Mb/s.  This is obviously less than ideal, but better than nothing.

 

I'm still really puzzled about why the heaphone jack and gigabit ethernet work on Manjaro, but not on Armbian.  In the process of trying to figure it out, I've been learning bits and pieces about `.dtb` files, but I'm still not confident I understand what's going on.

 

I compared the relevant `.dtb` files I found in `/boot/dtb{,s}/allwinner` on Armbian and Manjaro, but I couldn't see any obvious relevant differences.  In particular, it seems both have `phy-mode` set to `rgmii-txid`, and no rx or tx delays manually set.  But I don't even know if I'm looking in the right places for the relevant differences.

 

Unfortunately, I've had two laptops die of old age (both over ten years old, I think) in the space of a month, including the one I built that Armbian image on, so my ability to build new images to test is limited.  I can compile kernels on an arm64 board, but it seems I would need a working x86_64 computer to build another full image.

[Tim Makarios]

Another update, again in case it helps someone else:

 

Thanks to this hint https://forum.armbian.com/topic/9402-ethernet-not-working-on-sopine-module/?do=findComment&comment=71544 I've managed to compile a kernel (and, more importantly, a .dtb file) that gets the Gigabit ethernet working on my Pine A64-LTS.  I've attached the patch (which I placed in userpatches/kernel/archive/sunxi-5.15/) and board configuration file (which I placed in config/boards), to make it easier for others to use this fix.

 

Would it be even better if I turned this into a pull request?

arm-dts-pine-a64-lts-GbE.patch pine-a64-lts.csc

[Pander]

I have more than 20 PINE64 boards. Only a few are 1 GB and 512 MB but they run the same image as I run on the 2 GB. So I guess these are all non-LTS. How can I recognize on the PCB if it is LTS or not? I'm willing to buy an LTS board and consider supporting it, if that also welcomed by the core maintainers.

[Tim Makarios]

@Pander

 

By the PI-2-bus, mine has this on it:

 

Pine A64 LTS Version V2

2021-05-13

[Pander]

Also these differences?

 

LTS has R18 processor instead of A64 and LTS doesn't have microSD card slot installed. Also the power connector looks different, is it USB-C?

 

Having a list of several differences which are easy to check will be handy for our documentation.

 

 

[Pander]

A solution for the headphone issue is at

Can you reproduce the fix? Are you willing to help me getting a PR together for this?

[Tim Makarios]

On 4/24/2023 at 9:51 PM, Pander said:

Also these differences?

I'm pretty sure my LTS's CPU had "A64" (or possibly "A64-H") on it, not "R18", but I've attached a heatsink to it now, so I can't check just by looking at it.  I guess the information might be accessible via software, but I can't immediately see where.

 

Also, my board does have a microSD card slot, but it's under the board, where the pluggable eMMC socket is on top.  The power jack is a barrel socket, with 3.5 mm outer diameter.

 

On 4/24/2023 at 9:53 PM, Pander said:

Can you reproduce the fix?

I tried the .dts file and amixer commands in this comment

but still didn't get any audio coming out of my headphones.

 

On 4/24/2023 at 9:53 PM, Pander said:

Are you willing to help me getting a PR together for this?

I'm willing to help, but I don't have much experience with .dts files or amixer; and, as you may have guessed by now, I can't promise to respond quickly.

[Juriom]

the pine a64 is a very nice , stable board, would be fine it the analogue output / headphone jack could be again functional/ this overlay fix did was not explained fully and seems difficult to implement for laymen.

[stormwyrm]

Apparently the A64-LTS is basically identical with the SOPine, the only difference being the latter is on a CM2-compatible board that plugs into a baseboard with a SODIMM slot. I have both a SOPine+baseboard and an A64-LTS, and the same Armbian SOPine images worked on either board. Was a bit thrown because the board boots the SDCard before trying to boot from eMMC. I am not sure exactly what the differences are as far as hardware is concerned but I heard somewhere that the LPDDR3 used by the SOPine/A64-LTS is what breaks the old A64 images.