Hi all

Disconnected PL2303 USB to serial converter cable, connected to HDMI TV/monitor with USB keyboard got gibberish on the screen booting, looks like it didn't boot.

In INSTALL_AllWinner_A20-BananaPiPro.txt there's
I'd like for it to boot either headless or HDMI monitor and USB keyboard, what setenv tweak should I be trying?

Thank you

could you possibly try boot with both HDMI and serial cable connected?
and report?

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SCerovec, thanks for the reply

both HDMI and serial cable connected booted successfully

without serial cable got gibberish on the screen booting

looks like didn't get past u-boot

You're welcome
So it is capable to boot - in a pinch, only fails so for some reason...
That reason might be the lack of a registered serial port the USB adapter provides?
I'd investigate the
... command in the kernel commandline and options further, and check the few configs in the install media and here

It seems to me as if the kernel (or maybe u-boot) fails to figure out where to turn it's default console to.

For HDMI to register properly one has to supply a few "words" to the kernel, but the u-boot should figure this out by it self so far i could tell

Do fiddle a bit and report what you did?

Happy Slacking

If you use the setting below, you'll get U-Boot on both HDMI and serial, and when Linux starts the console output will disappear from the serial port and you'll be able to see Linux and the OS booting on the HDMI.
Once the OS has booted, you'll get a login prompt appearing on the serial in addition to the console available via HDMI (as you'd get on x86 at run level 3).
You get the login prompt over serial because it's configured in /etc/inittab.
You can see Linux and the OS booting over the serial, only if you configure the Linux Kernel (using the command line settings) to output the boot messages there.

I think that's about the extent of it.

If your machine seems unstable, try using a different PSU. One of my Banana Pi's became unstable and I just switched to a decent PSU and it's all happy again.

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Re PSU:

Recent fast charging wall adapters for mobile phones, that, sadly, outlast the devices they where bundled with, seem to particularly suit the role, in my experience.

I bought a USB power meter (cca $5 or here about) to troubleshoot many of the issues i ran into FWIW.

Thanks drmozes, SCerovec for the replies. I'm all set.

As I was following INSTALL_AllWinner_A20-BananaPiPro.txt, I did what I thought what was needed for the banana pi pro, one of the lines was:

I removed that and now it boots u-boot then slackwarearm.

Looking forward to playing with my new toy.

EDIT:Actually it seems having the PL2303 USB to serial converter cable connected to the board but not to USB port. I disconnected it from the board and u-boot shows up on the HDMI then boots slackwarearm.

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Valid point Stuart. I don't own a Banana Pi but I'm assuming the device is much the same as many other ARM devices when it comes to power requirements.

I've had some very time consuming problems to solve in the past (especially with the RPis) that have boiled down to the quality of PSU I was using.