Yeah ..... PinebookPro from most recent production run and received two days ago. the switch to turn off emmc has been changed and moved. I have attached a pic of the new configuration. With dip to the right the pro boots into manjaro. Logically setting to the left would disable emmc and I could boot with the sdcard spi image but I have no joy. I have new class 10 cards, have tried with emmc in and out, switch in both positions, etc. however, nothing shows up on the screen but led indicates power on. Booted manjaro and had 93% battery. Have been in and out with sd cards and it seems they seat correctly. Tried the reset and recover switches as well but not sure which is correct or maybe what order to use them. Any bright sparks out there?

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The SPI Image doesn't boot/work on the new pbp's. At least I couldn't get it to do anything but show me a blank screen, no matter what I did. I assume you are wanting to install to the SPI for an eventual Slackware install, and there is another way.

What I did is wrote this ArchLinuxARM image to a sd and booted it. You don't need to remove or disable the emmc, it will boot. Read that entire page, and you'll find instructions on writing tow-boot to the SPI from that Arch image you booted. After flashing it,you will be able to choose your boot device upon booting the pbp. If you're going nvme for slackware, keep in mind, you will have to write the bootloader to sd in order to boot the nvme, it will not directly boot AFAIK.

After you have access to the SPI you can continue the rk3399 installation doc and the rest should be smooth sailing. I didn't need to disable the emmc at all, and I just left it alone and occasionally boot manjaro anyway, as the boot time is much lower than slackware's. Be careful on the nvme you purchase, many use too much power (like mine) and constantly kernel panic, freezing the pbp. You can disable features with a nvme application included in slackware, but depending on your drive, it won't fix everything. Mine will panic if I let the battery drain to 54%, but other than that, it works great, I just have to watch the battery! (don't buy a samsung nvme!)

Good luck and have fun!

Thanks for that, I'm a bit tired and will have a cognizant squiz tommorrw

Did you follow?: https://docs.slackware.com/slackware...r_to_spi_flash

The recovery image is used to overwrite the SPI flash prior to booting the installer. Leave your emmc disabled. Here is the recovery image: https://slackware.uk/slackwarearm/pl...covery/rk3399/

Here is a list of the hardware tested on the Pbpro: https://docs.slackware.com/slackware...o#requirements

Here is a list of additional hardware tested on the PinebookPro, but not necessarily for Slackware Aarch64: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Pineboo..._Compatibility

@ mralk3 ... Yes, everything was as per instructions.

@ jloco ... My pbp was purchased last month.presumably from the most recent production run. How recent is your pbp?

It's from the same run, I ordered it the day they started sales again, and it came in around aug/sept sometime.

@jloco
Did you build the tow bootlader? using Nix?

No, I downloaded the latest release from their github and used the instructions on the arch INSTALL document linked above to flash it to SPI from within my arch SD card.

This could likely be done just as well on the manjaro emmc installation but you may have to separately download the flasher software package (and I’m unsure of it’s actual name to find it with pacman).

Thanks ... first go a no go. I'll have another go later that's enough for now

It seems the sd card is not recognized or perhaps the sd card port is stuffed. I have tried different class 10 cards. One was even purchased from pine. Two have had u-boot on board before and were used to boot slackware systems on bananapros using u-boot.

I had many issues getting any sd image to boot on the new pbp, I can’t say why that is but that arch image did boot for me, which I thought was unexpected seeing as all others failed to boot. I’ve had luck with the manjaro images and that arch iso, before flashing tow-boot. The software is in the arch repos, I just don’t know the actual name of the package currently. You should be able to flash the spi from the pre-installed manjaro as well.

Manjaro applies an additional patch to U-Boot (which is the same version as we have in Slackware) to handle some MMC issues on the PbPro. I've just rebuild the SPI flash images and I'll test them next week and push it all out. If it doesn't fix it, I'm not sure what else it would be if Manjaro works (which it ought to since it comes shipped with it).

I'll reply to this thread when the new SPI flash images are available.

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just erase SPI and boot from sdcard.

That is exactly what the spi flash recovery image already does in Slackware. All that is required is to boot the recovery image and u-boot is flashed on to the SPI flash.

@jloco: I'm thinking I may need to zero out my spi now before anything else as this is what I've been told on the pine forum.

@drmozes: Mamjaro doesn't boot. My understanding of the rk3399 is that it will first boot emmc, if no u-boot in spi, of there is u-boot in spi it will boot from spi. The sdcard is the last in line to get the baton and I don't think it is currently next in line. That being said I'll take one of your new testing images and test it if you like. At present I have nothing to lose.

@sndwvs: Indeed I'm trying to sort out a way to do that without access to either manjaro or an sd card.

@mralk3: just to be sure I once again downladed a fresh spi flash recovery image zcated to an sd card but no joy ... nada.

The maskrom mode using the recovery and reset buttons has not done the trick and I am not inclined to pry the shield off my pcb board using a pry bar or screw driver with the rk3399 housing as the fulcrum if I don't have to. I have been told on the pine forum that there are couple images out there that don't require u-boot to boot, one being diet pi that offers a pinebook pro image, and it was suggested to try and boot one those and see if I could zero spi .

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