Cubieboard won't boot

[Tapio Berschewsky]

My A10 Cubieboard has been on the shelf for the last year, retired after I didn't need a computer in that place anymore. The last time I used it, it worked fine.

I took it off the shelf today, since I need a new lightweight server. The sd-card for the linux distribution I had used earlier succesfully was still in the card reader. I attached a network cable, hdmi, and turned on the power. The red led turned on and nothing happened. I waited for 30 minutes, and nothing happened at all. I checked my router and it had not asked for an ip address.

Then I tried it without the sd card, and the result was exactly the same. No picture on the screen, no ip address asked from the router.

I used another computer to write the newest version of debian-server for Cubieboard (following the links from Cubieboards site), unzipped it and used dd to write the .img onto the sd card. Tried booting from it and was relieved. The green led lit up! It must mean it works, right? Nope. No picture, no ip asked from the router. Tried it with two separate screens. One 1080p, one XGA, no go.

Removed the sd card and tried to boot again to the Android on the NAND. The red led lights up, the green one doesn't. No image on either screen, no ip address asked from the router.

My Cubieboard was damaged almost immediately after I got it. Namely the USB OTG port got ripped clean off the board due to accidentally applying too much pressure on the cable. There was no other visible damage to the board, even when inspected under magnification, and It never hurt the boards use before - I used it for many months after that. But it does mean that I cannot debug the system over the OTG port.

Any ideas? Is my board bricked, or is the green led lighting up with sd card inserted a good omen? Can I do something to this?

[Tapio Berschewsky]

I have to add, that I also tried the newest version of cubeez too, with exactly the same results. Green led lights up if card in drive, but no image appears on any screen I tested with, and the router is never asked for an ip address.

[shogun x]

I recommend using the serial console, with a USB/TTL adapter.  I got mine from adafruit.  This way, you can see what is really happening.

On Jan 26, 2015 9:05 AM, "Tapio Berschewsky" <tapio.be...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have to add, that I also tried the newest version of cubeez too, with exactly the same results. Green led lights up if card in drive, but no image appears on any screen I tested with, and the router is never asked for an ip address.

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[Tapio Berschewsky]

Hi shogun, thanks for the quick reply. Could you point me toward a product that you would reccommend, or is linking to commercial products forbidden in the group?

I just read the FirstSteps article for Cubieboard and saw, that the green light should only light up when the Android on the NAND is loaded, but not when a Linux Distribution is loaded. So it should light up when the card is not in the reader. My situation is the direct opposite of that. Also, I just saw the green led once stay unlit even with the sd card in.

Hnnhg. I might get the serial cable, but I haven't done much debugging like this, and I'm wondering whether it's worth the possible frustration if I've already bricked the board.

[shogun x]

https://www.adafruit.com/products/954

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[louis....@gmail.com]

Hello, probably same problem for me.

I am using an old version of u-boot:

sunxi#version

U-Boot 2011.09-rc1 (Nov 26 2012 - 14:01:52) Allwinner Technology
arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc (Sourcery G++ Lite 2010.09-50) 4.5.1
GNU ld (Sourcery G++ Lite 2010.09-50) 2.20.51.20100809

If I try to boot from nand, it says:

sunxi#run bootcmd                             

NAND read: device 0 offset 0x3000000, size 0x2000000
 33554432 bytes read: OK
boota: bad boot image magic, maybe not a boot.img?

Thus I would like to flash a latest u-boot. I've looked at Bootable_SD_card but I have no command load.

Any idea?

Here are available commands:

sunxi#help
?       - alias for 'help'
base    - print or set address offset
boot    - boot default, i.e., run 'bootcmd'
boota   - boota   - boot android bootimg from memory

bootd   - boot default, i.e., run 'bootcmd'
bootm   - boot application image from memory
cmp     - memory compare
cp      - memory copy
crc32   - checksum calculation
env     - environment handling commands
exit    - exit script
false   - do nothing, unsuccessfully
fastboot- fastboot- use USB Fastboot protocol

fatdown - download data to a dos filesystem
fatinfo - print information about filesystem
fatload - load binary file from a dos filesystem
fatls   - list files in a directory (default /)
go      - start application at address 'addr'
help    - print command description/usage
key_test- Test the key value and dump key registers
loop    - infinite loop on address range
md      - memory display
mm      - memory modify (auto-incrementing address)
mtest   - simple RAM read/write test
mw      - memory write (fill)
nand    - NAND sub-system
nboot   - boot from NAND device
nm      - memory modify (constant address)
printenv- print environment variables
reset   - Perform RESET of the CPU
run     - run commands in an environment variable
saveenv - save environment variables to persistent storage
setenv  - set environment variables
showvar - print local hushshell variables
test    - minimal test like /bin/sh
true    - do nothing, successfully
version - print monitor, compiler and linker version

[louis....@gmail.com]

Ok, I understood that my sdcard was failing and I was redirected on some boot installed on the nand.
It's good for me then :/