Orange Pi Zero V1 and U-boot v2025.04

[TRay]

Since U-Boot v2025.04 works very well on Orange Pi Zero v3 and has a shorter boot process time, if there was a possibility to switch to U-Boot v2504 for Orange Pi Zero V1, I would be grateful, as would probably other users of this SBC

 

Regards

 

Edited yesterday at 01:28 PM by TRay

[laibsch]

https://github.com/alexl83 and https://github.com/chraac are listed as the maintainers for the Opi Z3

[Werner]

Opi0 and Opi0-3 have nothing in common besides the naming. It is not that easy.

 

 

[TRay]

Yes, I know about it, but my intention was whether it would be possible to also upgrade the SBC Orange Pi Zero V1 to the newer version of U-Boot

[Werner]

Maybe. Just give it a try?

Check sun8i family config or add an uboot tag override in the board config. examples for latter you can find in the orangepi5 series config files for example.

 

I think though it doesn't make sense to touch. Chances are likely to introduce new issues while current version just works.

[ag123]

I've some old boards too e.g.

https://www.armbian.com/orange-pi-one/

interestingly there is an updated image for it, but that things I remember there are lots of gotcha unlike the whole many generation of incremental improvements between boards that finally evolved into a opi z3.

among the gotchas on orangepi one  and orangepi pc h3 is that it uses a proprietary openrisc chip for power off which back then, if you run poweroff, the cpu will instead become very hot rapidly and you have to pull the usb cable quickly.

today there is this thing crust which i've not yet tried which is deemed to be able to orderly  shutdown the soc

https://github.com/crust-firmware/crust

opi z3 uses a PMIC with its own internal firmware and I think it is comms i2c etc that starts the shutdown process.

 

things are different between the generations (of boards and kernel)

 

---

my guess is to try a new u-boot, it may take doing a build

and the changes may be quite similar to this

https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/8334

https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/8334/commits/49ccbe88bc2ddf31b55ece850d28ef18c6ae8a1a

 

---

 

if you want to venture and experiment with just u-boot alone

here is how I once tried

https://github.com/ag88/1.5GB_Fix_for_Armbian_on_OrangePiZero3

https://github.com/ag88/1.5GB_Fix_for_Armbian_on_OrangePiZero3/blob/main/build.md

 

[TRay]

SBC Orange Pi Zero V1 is still a popular SBC and is still sold on the market, among other things, because it has an integrated sound card and for this reason, a lot of hamradio operators still buy this model because it allows you to build very compact mobile hotspots without having to attach a USB sound card protruding outside the housing and that is why it is very popular and still sold despite the fact that versions V2 and V3 have been released, so it is not an SBC that has completely gone down in history.

[ag123]

sound is a gotcha on the opi z3, actually opi z3 has sound but output only. accordingly opi z2 has sound both input (mic) and output.

and i think for 'convenience' many would after all use a usb sound card instead, just that there is only one usb port and the other 2 is actually on the extension pins  on opi z3 as do with the audio output on z3

 

http://www.orangepi.org/html/hardWare/computerAndMicrocontrollers/details/Orange-Pi-Zero-3.html

 

as for usb + audio extension, orangepi sells an extension board

but that accordingly without that it may be possible to hack those usb connectors 

https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-usb-female-type-a-with-wire.htmll