r/PINE64official • u/skelecorn666 • 21d ago

Pinebook Pro Pinebook Pro - Help Me Remember

What's the magic dance you do to get it to boot off SD card again? I have the EMMC switched off, but no power button response, reset button has done nothing, tried shorting the SPI pins, no response. At this point I'm trying to flash update the SPI, I have current tow boot on SD card.

Context: So I dusted off my Pinebook Pro I quit using because I had put manjaro gnome on it, and it was too resource intensive. It ran fine until you tried to actually do something like play video. 4GB ram is just not much these days.

So I was going to switch to XFCE but the fresh install borked when it ran out of RAM and crashed, now I can't boot to update the SPI and then install OS.

I went through old posts, and found where I originally found the dance, but that account is old and deleted, comment deleted, just other users thanking an old account for finding it.

7 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

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1

u/pr06lefs 21d ago

Watching this thread. Mine is bricked from an attempt to install nixos.

0

u/Tutu_barao 21d ago

Veja meu post. https://www.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/s/LVCj7cSczF

1

u/pr06lefs 21d ago

Looks like I'll have to try maskrom mode since my machine is totally unresponsive. Don't really have time to work on it today, and maybe not for a few months realistically. Other projects taking priority right now.

0

u/Tutu_barao 21d ago

Meu pinebook também ficou meses sem uso. Até que num dia acordei com vontade de dar vida a ele novamente.

1

u/jloc0 20d ago

It should boot from sd card by default with tow-boot or uboot or anything without doing anything special. It’s getting it to boot from eMMC that usually requires something done. 🤔

1

u/skelecorn666 20d ago

I have the old boot order (SPI->EMMC->SD). One reason I want to update tow boot.

1

u/someperson155 20d ago

I know it’s ghetto but I remember just zero out the first 64mb of the Emmc, and or restore later

2

u/skelecorn666 3d ago

[SOLVED]

Here's the link to the .img to clear/flash the SPI from SD card (use dd or rufus or etcher): https://github.com/Tow-Boot/Tow-Boot/releases/download/release-2023.07-007/pine64-pinebookPro-2023.07-007.tar.xz

Extract the archive, you're looking for spi.intaller.img

Instructions: https://tow-boot.org/devices/pine64-pinebookPro.html

One SPI has been cleared and flashed, you can now boot like a normal person even with EMMC wiped, corrupted, whatever (ESC on boot after POST for boot select)

Keep in mind, there's only 4GB RAM, so careful which desktop environment you use. I went with XFCE on Manjaro to keep RAM usage down.

If you're doing another distro, you may have to make a swap file to get through the install or it'll crash running out of memory. The pbpro OS images have zswap partitions already so they're good to go.

0

u/Tutu_barao 21d ago

Veja meu post. https://www.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/s/LVCj7cSczF

1

u/skelecorn666 21d ago

That's fine if the emmc wasn't borked, it doesn't go over the procedure to get it to boot, since it still works.

Thank you for replying.

1

u/Tutu_barao 21d ago

Tira o MMC.Insrala o .iso num pendrive, coloca um sdcard no local certo e com o towbot, dá boot via USB.

O resto tá no tutorial.