Device-tree improvements

[summers]

Excellent. Yes everything worked as expected. Means now have a fairly clear view on what every line of change is for.

There was one minor change, basically so you have the same patch that Armbian tried - he wasn't "comfortable" with one of the speed settings - so thats now been backed out. Didn't expect this to change operation, but good to check.

On bluetooth, we are dependent on the greater bluetooth patch going through. Best we can do there is support the patch, and maybe test it. In particular can we get bluetooth to work with the OBDA8723 firmware (which is all that is publicly available). Anyway once that patch is accepted; we need to make minor changes to the device tree to pull up that code. But then good chance it will work.

Oh yes, "warm" vs "cold" boot. On a warm reboot, we don't power down. In particular the rk808 chip stays powered the whole time. Problem is that the kernel when it goes down switches off the 1.8V io regulator during power down, and in uboot nothing switches this on again - so the state continues. In a cold reboot (poweroff, unplug, plug in, and power up) the power on *all* components is cycled; so everything comes up in a fresh state. Looks like for the rk808 this is with 1.8V IO powered.

I've the day off work today, have other things to do, but if time allows I'll redo the patches and resubmit.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('summers', 'E')xcellent.
.....On bluetooth, we are dependent on the greater bluetooth patch

[summers]

Ye Ha!

SD card detection changes accepted into linux 5.1 (probably because its a fix).

Wi-Fi accepted into linux 5.2 (as its new functionality)

Bluetooth still pending - but that not a surprise, as known to need more work.

So we are getting close to mainline solution now.

[jamithy]

Hi,

I'm trying to follow this thread, but I'm not technical enough I'm afraid! From what I understand so far that we need to wait for kernel 5.2 to bring in support for sd card (5.1), and wifi (5.2); so are we saying that once kernel 5.2 comes around then i'll be able to install ALA on my tinkerboard S please?

If i don't care about wifi & bluetooth, is there a location that I can download ARA for the tinkerboard s, along with some basic instructions please?

Many thanks in advance!

[summers]

the probelm with sd card was (minor) but taken as a fault. So the solution I think has been back ported to stable, so IIRC is already in the current kernels.

WiFi I think will have to wait for 5.2; as taken as new functionality.

Bluetooth is in the long grass, need a kernel driver for the bluetooth on arm machines. There is a patch out there - but hasn't been accepted; has too many external blobs - and thats not liked. I think the relevant thread has gone quiet, hope the author is still working on it, but hard to say. Anyway until a bluetooth driver patch goes through, bluetooth won't work on arms. Its beyond my coding to improve.

[TheSaint]

In my tests the latest kernel still not solve for wifi. Far to be able on bluetooth.
You'll find the file to prepare your installation.
First you should unpack and set an SD or eMMC with the u-boot image:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'sudo dd if=u-boot.img of=/dev/sdX ## X stands for what the kernel assigned to the SD or eMMC')
Than later you should prepare the partition to install Archlinuxarm. So you might use gparted and make the a partition of your liking, but make sure to leave the 4 MB untouched, where the u-boot reside.
Last, after installation, you should copy the *.dtb file, onto /boot/dtbs, but preferable you rename the original one first.
For the installation the current guide should suffice.

I refrain to start with an SD card, otherwise you might face problem to access the eMMC in case of failure.
More info you might find on the tinkerboarding forum.

[jamithy]

Many thanks both for your useful instructions - I have one final question, what URL should I point my wget to, eg:
wget http://os.archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinux ... est.tar.gz

Which is obviously the wrong one, should it be the generic arm.tar.gz please?

Many thanks in advance!

[summers]

This is usually best http://de6.mirror.archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM-armv7-latest.tar.gz its the generic armv7 distribution. The distributions for specific machines mainly differ in the various boot operations; as the Tinker Board isn't officially supported, you have to use your own solution to the uboot. @TheSaint will probably say what his preferred boot mechanism is right now, we know how to do it from source (its somewhere in these threads) - but he may well have moved on.

[jamithy]

Thank you both so much @summers & @thesaint - I'll give it a try over the next couple of days. I'm currently moving all my pi's and others over to arch linux, and my tinkerboard S was the last stumbling block. I think that I'll try @thesaints attachment - which is a couple of messages up from this one (i.e dated april 3rd, 2018 @ 5:28pm)- as the boot image, and also the *.dtb, and then pull in the generic arm7 snapshot, and see what happens!

I'll try to document it as I go, and post it in here in case any others want to install it. Assuming it's successful, do you think it would be worth trying to get this as an officially supported board?

Many thanks once again!

[TheSaint]

Finally is arrived!!!
Today I tried the new dtb, from kernel.org and it's working. Thank you Summers & co!!
Bluetooth might come when Asus will dispose the TB production , rather than telling how their hardware works.