OLinuXino EEPROM content – one step ahead to single Linux image for all A20 boards

We are struggling for some time now to make one single image which to work on all A20 boards we have.

Our problem is that we have more than 20 different A20 boards/revisions/ etc and every time we have to add or improve something we have to generate and test enormous amount of images.

It’s not so easy task as this image should run on different boards with differnt memory speed etc settings, different ports connections etc.

To achieve one single image which to boot to all A20 boards our first step is to add some content in the EEPROM which all OLinuXino has.

The EEPROM now contain this info: Header, ID, Revision, Serial number, Configuration, Reserved area for future (MAC etc), Checkcum.

The new image we work on now (based on Armbian with mainline kernel) will automatically recognize the board from the EEPROM content and run.

What will happen if no valid EEPROM content is read (i.e. old boards), there is tool which to be used to write EEPROM content based on board revision.

We are going to release this image soon.

 

A64-OLinuXino Open Source Hardware board with 64-bit Cortex-A53 processor is in released

A64-OLinuXino OSHW board is now released. Current revision is Rev.C.

Features are:

• A64 Cortex-A53 64-bit SoC from Allwinner
• AXP803 PMU with Lipo charger and step-up
• 1 or 2GB or DDR3L @672 Mhz
• 0 / 4 or 16GB of industrial grade eMMC
• SPI Flash in SO8 package with hardware WP (not assembled)
• USB-OTG and USB-HOST
• HSIC connector (not assembled)
• Gigabit Ethernet
• BLE/WiFi module
• HDMI and MIPI display connectors
• microSD card
• Debug console serial connector
• Audio In and Out
• LCD display connector
• GPIO 40 pin connector (not assembled)
• UEXT connector (not assembled)
• 5V power jack
• Dimensions: 90×62.5 mm

For the moment we have three models:

• 1G0G with 1GB RAM, no Flash, no WiFi/BLE
• 1G4GW with 1GB RAM, 4GB eMMC and WiFi/BLE
• 2G16G-IND with 2GB RAM, 16GB eMMC with industrial grade components -40+85C

The optional connectors and SPI Flash etc may be assembled upon request for small fee.

A33-OLinuXino OSHW Quad Core Linux SBC prototypes ready for test

We just assembled our A33-OLinuXino prototypes, these have PMU and should not overheat so badly as H3.

The advantage to have PMU is also that it have LiPo charger and can run from LiPo battery.

The features are:

• A33 Quad core Cortex-A7 SoC
• AXP223 PMU
• 1/2GB RAM
• optional 4GB NAND Flash
• Audion Input
• Audio Output
• CSI/DSI connector
• 40 pin LCD connector for LCD-OLinuXino-XX LCD modules
• USB-OTG
• GPIO 40 pin connector

Both H3 and A33 support dual CS DDR memories, this means they can work with the new 8Gb DDR3 ram chips which have two CS lines and H3-OLinuXino and A33-OLinuXino could have 1GB or 2GB RAM as option.

A33 have no Ethernet and HDMI, would be good for handheld video/audio processing devices.

The next revision of H3 and A33 OLinuXino will have eMMC option too.

 

EDIT: 18.00 o’clock update A33-OLinuXino is booting and working fine. As we expected although with same Quad Core Cortex-A7 it do not overheats at all compared to H3. Something is really broken in the H3 Linux clock/power configuration!!!

Debian 8 (Jessie) is finally released for OLinuXino boards

Hurray! We finally managed to move from Debian 7  Wheezy to Debian 8 (Jessie)!

The new images use Kernel 3.4.103+ which is rather old, but have all video and graphics accelerations.

The boards that get the update are: A20-OLinuXino-MICRO; A20-OLinuXino-LIME; A20-OLinuXino-LIME2; A20-SOM (and their respective 4GB versions).

Links to the torrent files with the images are already available at the respective wiki articles of the boards.

What took us so long? Have look at our boards there are tons of peripherals and different LCDs, USB dongles, BT etc etc peripherials we had to test one by one to make sure EVERYTHING works, and when we see mistake we have to re-build the images and start from scratch again, this took us weeks. As you can see we still even didn’t do this for A13 and A10 boards we have as the process is really long and bumpy.

What’s new beside the move to the higher version of Debian? We gain some experience, made the images smaller, also now there is OPTION to install the images directly to the NAND Flash!

All you have to do is to run “nandistall” script and wait for the image to transfer from the microSD card to the NAND memory.

To move to the new Debian all you have to do it to download  the archive containing the image via the torrent from the wiki; then to extract the archive and prepare your microSD card with it. Note: the images are about ~2GB of size after extraction, but you can use bigger SD card as well. We decided to prepare the official images with lower user space in order to speed up the download and extraction time and to lower the time it takes to transfer the image to a microSD card. It is recommended to re-size the user space in order to use all space on your microSD. In the root directory execute the resize_sd.sh script as follows:

# ./resize_sd.sh /dev/mmcblk0 2

The build instructions and all required files are published in GitHub.

For more practical advice and basic starting point for the new image refer to this document.

Note that it is completely fine to continue using the previous Debian 7 (Wheezy) images if you don’t have some particular reason to switch to Debian 8.

Looking forward to your comments and feedback about the new images.

A64-OLinuXino OSHW 64-bit ARM DIY Laptop idea update

A64-OLinuXino Laptop idea becomes with better shape, we managed to find supplier for the laptop plastic ABS body with 11.6″, 1366*768 LCD and keyboard where we can embed our A64-OLinuXino motherboard.

the body have power supply jack, 2x USB hosts, HDMI, SD card connector, headphones 3.5 mm jack, four speakers,camera, touchpad, power button

needless to mention this window button will become Tux 😀

 

Devuan Jessie for OLinuXino images

Devuan is Debian fork to get rid of so much disputed SystemD used in the newer version of Debian.

We were nice surprised to see that there are pre-built images for Devuan Jessie for A10-OLinuXino-LIME, A20-OLinuXino-LIME, A20-OLinuXino-MICRO and A20-OLinuXino-LIME2 in the file repository: http://files.devuan.org/

So now you have this option to run on OLinuXino!

A10, A20 OLinuXino LIME and LIME2 are officially supported in Debian 8.0 Jessie

 

Debian 8.0 Jessie now supports many Allwinner boards including A10-OLinuXino-LIME, A20-OLinuXino-MICRO, A20-OLinuXino-LIME and A20-OLinuXino-LIME2!

more info you can find on https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Allwinner

 

Another interesting article for using mainline Linux uboot and kernel you can read here