Is it possible to run the ArmBian system on OZPi v2 with a copy of the microSD system on a USB Pendrive?

[TRay]

 

My friend, when he next inserted the microSD card into the Orange Pi Zero 2 slot, the microSD slot fell off the board 😞

It is not possible to solder it because some of the tracks on the board have become detached

so Is it possible to run the ArmBian system on OZPi v2 with a copy of the microSD system on a USB Pendrive?

 

I am looking for a method to run OZIPI v2 without microSD on the system via USB disk

[Werner]

Not possible without tinkering since at least the boot loader must be present either via sd or on board SPI flash.

However no idea how to access this onboard 2M storage w/o the option to boot the board via sd beforehand.

Not sure if it is worth exploring in this direct. Faster and probably cheaper too is to buy a new board.

[TRay]

38 minutes ago, Werner said:

Not sure if it is worth exploring in this direct. Faster and probably cheaper too is to buy a new board.

 

Thanks for the answer and you're probably right, but I was curious if it was possible, maybe someone did it just for experience 🙂

I think that this may have happened to many people with a broken microSD slot

 

 

[TRay]

I found interesting info on https://linux-sunxi.org/Xunlong_Orange_Pi_Zero2

 

 

SPI booting

The board contains a 2MB SPI NOR flash chip (located on the underside of the board), and the SoC can boot firmware from there. The BOOT_MODE bit in the SID is cleared, to let GPIO pins determine the boot order. So to enable booting from SPI flash (after the micro-SD card has been tried), pull PC5 to GND, by bridging pins 9 and 13 on the expansion port header. U-Boot supports SPI booting since v2023.01-rc1.

 

But I don't know if it is still possible to boot via SPI without micSD, which would allow you to use a USB drive later. Maybe someone tried this?

[Stephen Graf]

@TRay Try connecting to the serial port and watch the output while powering up without the SD card.  This will tell you what boot options are available.

[TRay]

Stephen, thanks for the tip, I will pass these suggestions on to my friend