Cubieboard 1 - No display output when booting Debian 12 image

[Shakai2]

I downloaded and wrote the image to the SD card. I can see the U-Boot messages at the very beginning, but after a few moments, nothing is displayed anymore.
I believe the OS is still booting because the activity LED on the board keeps blinking.
Any idea what might be happening ?

Thanks in advance for any help !

[Werner]

https://debug.armbian.de

[Igor]

A10 / A20 hdmi support was reported as broken and bug was recorded https://armbian.atlassian.net/browse/AR-2674 some time ago.

[Shakai2]

Thank you for the reply !
I see — is there any version of Armbian or another distro that has working HDMI output and graphics drivers ?

[Nasko]

Same Here. 
 

I am using Armbian on top of cubietruk as cups print server for years without issue.

Now I have decided to see if I can use scanning function of my Samsung SCX-4600 3 in 1 machine. 

 

So, I logged in via ssh to my cubietruk running Armbian 23.02.0-trunk Lunar and I just did sudo apt-get update

(And got some errors of missing repos), Despite that I have decided to give a try with sudo apt-get install sane

Result was 5-6 missing packages 

 

Next obvious step was to start armbian-config and I went directly with "Update firmware and packages"

Update was success and armbian-config asked for a reboot, which I did. Unfortunately the system was not able to boot. 

 

Luckily I have 23" HP Z-series monitor next to my trusty SBC and saw that on the console was lots of errors related to ETHERNET. 

Second and third reboot was pointles, so I have decided that It is time for fresh install for my cusps print- server.

 

I have downloaded "Debian 12 (Bookworm)Minimal / IOT" from https://www.armbian.com/cubietruck/  and I have flashed it using dd. 

 

Next obvious step was to start the system. I saw U-Boot Logo and "Starting Kernel" 

Then the screen went BLACK. NOTHING. 

 

Now there is no way to configure this fresh install. 

Is there any workarounds? 

[Shakai2]

While searching the forum and the documentation, I found the list of mirrors. On some of them, it's possible to find an older version of Armbian (23.11.1).

 

I installed that version and it seems the drivers are working — I was able to use HDMI.

 

This is the mirror I used: https://armbian.atomonetworks.com/archive/cubieboard/archive/

[laibsch]

17 hours ago, Shakai2 said:

I found the list of mirrors. On some of them, it's possible to find an older version of Armbian (23.11.1).

 

I installed that version and it seems the drivers are working — I was able to use HDMI.

 

Thank you for letting us know as it allows an interested party to more easily bisect the regression.

[Anb_o7]

Hello,

 

Using Armbian 23.11.1, I managed to upgrade to 25.5.2 with the hdmi output still working by pinning the version of linux-image-current-sunxi. So right now I have armbian 25.5.2 running with the kernel from 23.11.1 (6.1.63) and everything seems fine so far.

I'll see if I can bisect the linux-image versions to find which one introduced the bug.

 

Also note that apart from the hdmi output not working everything seems ok as I can ssh the cubieboard and use it as a headless machine without any issue.

Edited 18 hours ago by Anb_o7

[Igor]

10 hours ago, Anb_o7 said:

I'll see if I can bisect the linux-image versions to find which one introduced the bug.

Check this thread