New u-boot 2020.04 firware

miguelagve

This morning I've noticed there's a new firware version avaliable in the website since May 9th, with updated uboot to 2020.04:
http://share.loverpi.com/board/libre-computer-project/libre-computer-board/aml-s805x-ac/firmware/
I've installed in my board and it seems to be running fine after a few hours running BOINC. Running the command neofetch now returns the correct CPU frequency (1.2Ghz) instead of the previous 1.5Ghz.
The only minor inconvenience I found is that my MAC address changed after the update.

loverpi

That was actually a beta release and we have a few more fixes. R2 should be here within a week to address those issues.

miguelagve

loverpi said:

That was actually a beta release and we have a few more fixes. R2 should be here within a week to address those issues.

I thought so, since you haven't made any announcements but it's great to see you guys pushing the update so quickly!!

gblues

@loverpi your team should also be aware that the eMMC USB drive is broken in that 2020-04-r1 beta release. It fails with an error "couldn't init USB controller" and returns to the main menu.

I reverted to the 2019-04-r5 release and it resolved this issue.

It also still does not fix the issue where the menu does not correctly process the arrow keys from a USB keyboard, so the cursor seems to lag behind a keypress and you end up selecting the wrong menu item. I did find a workaround: mash the CTRL key after pressing the arrow key until the cursor moves.

loverpi

@gblues We found the bug and it will be fixed in the next release coming shortly. Can you share specifics about your keyboard? Which language and model?

WereCatf

loverpi said:

@gblues We found the bug and it will be fixed in the next release coming shortly. Can you share specifics about your keyboard? Which language and model?

I am also seeing the same issue with USB-keyboards. I have a whole bunch of them: some no-brand Chinaman-ones, some Logitechs, some Razers and so on, and they all exhibit the same issue.

jimm0thy

My CoolerMaster Devastator 2 did that, and so does my current Kingston HyperX AlloyCore RGB. I've also noticed that while the keyboard works in the uboot menu and once the system is fully booted, it does not work during the grub selection

loverpi

One of the things to note is that the u-boot keyboard handling stack is very simple and limited. Many of the more advanced keyboards do funny things with key input that may cause the readout to be different. There's the source code on github and you can print out key-presses to see what the actual keycode that a specific keyboard is sending.

gblues

@loverpi
Language: en-US
Make: Razer
Model: Huntsman (RZ03-0252)

gblues

also @loverpi I was able to download and build u-boot, but I'm not sure how to flash it to test my changes. none of the files built by the u-boot make process looks like a surrogate for the shipped u-boot images (the *.bin files are ~654K vs. the 1.7M of the beta 2020-04-r1 image). Is the build process documented somewhere?

djismgaming

Just my two cents, I used to only be able to use the DELL SK-8115 USB wired keyboard I have, to go into the u-boot bootmenu pressing Esc at power on and to select anything.

After updating to 2020.04r1 I can now successfully use my Logitech K750 wireless solar keyboard (Mac edition) without any issue! It was not able to do anything until after boot into the installed distro.

loverpi

There's a new release coming that fixes the eMMC mode.

djismgaming

loverpi said:

There's a new release coming that fixes the eMMC mode.

Yes!!!!! Thanks!!!!

loverpi

u-boot 2020.04 r2 released.

djismgaming

Working flawlessly and boot of Armbian on 2020.04 editions goes without display corruption just before the verbose boot. With 2019.04 there was some on boot, although everything worked great.

loverpi

@djismgaming Good to know. We should have UEFI runtime support completed by 2020.10 if not earlier.

miguelagve

No matter what I do, my board doesn't seem to recognize the firmware on the usb drive. I've use the same one with every firmware before, and never encountered this issue. The board goes straight into booting the eMMC.

djismgaming

@miguelagve I did update to 2020.04r1 using the python script from another post on this forum and the directions there worked great. I did using my RetroPie machine using Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia (an Intel 2-core bevy NUC).

To update to the latest 2020.04r2 I did via USB. I booted the board pressing Escape as a mad man, then on the menu I selected Boot USB. The USB was a FAT32 formatted 16GB Toshiba flash drive with just two files on it:

u-boot-2020-04-r2.scr > renamed to boot.scr
u-boot-2020-04-r2.bin

miguelagve

djismgaming said:

@miguelagve I did update to 2020.04r1 using the python script from another post on this forum and the directions there worked great. I did using my RetroPie machine using Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia (an Intel 2-core bevy NUC).

To update to the latest 2020.04r2 I did via USB. I booted the board pressing Escape as a mad man, then on the menu I selected Boot USB. The USB was a FAT32 formatted 16GB Toshiba flash drive with just two files on it:

u-boot-2020-04-r2.scr > renamed to boot.scr
u-boot-2020-04-r2.bin

I expected the firmware to be loaded automatically like previous times. I selected Boot USB like you said, and it went flawless. Thank you for the help!!

djismgaming

@miguelagve
Glad to be of help! You made my day man! 

djismgaming

@miguelagve be sure to update to 2020.07r3, with it you can even update firmware directly from the board using LOST (Libre Computer OS Tool)! Works pretty good!!!!!
http://share.loverpi.com/board/libre-computer-project/libre-computer-board/aml-s805x-ac/firmware/

miguelagve

@djismgaming I did yesterday as soon as I saw it was released, but thanks for the reminder!!
I'm looking forward to use LOST for future firmware updates. I tried it after release to create an image and it's very cool an easy to use.