Anyone try the latest Armbian 24.04 on their DT a06? All I’m getting is black screen, and pretty sure I don’t have a micro HDMI at home to test and see if it is defaulting to HDMI. I also don’t have serial connected, going to have to get that wired up at some point.
Basically, I’m back at trying to use this device after giving up for almost a year. It seems that every time I really need it to work, it would fight me or refuse to work at all. So back trying the latest Armbian and no go. Why Armbian? Because it mostly worked in the older version and was a base OS that I was somewhat comfortable working with.
For those times it fails me, I have to carry around a cheap Windows laptop to make sure I can get work done. Simple browser stuff like OPNsense firewall, or serial port work in my switches. Sometimes I was good working with the DT, sometimes it would just fail me and I’m hoping to figure it out. Else I may need to buy a Pi4 module and move over to that OS
After messing around with a bunch of different images, the problem starts with kernel 6.x. I ended up going back to the last version of 5.x for now. I don’t think the person/people working on Armbian have a Devterm or any of the processor modules to go with it. I’ll have to buy an HDMI micro adapter and see what happens on the new kernels, I should probably have one in my IT bag anyway.
I may still buy a Pi 4 module and track down a CM4 Lite to run as an upgrade, it seems like the most recent work is all going into the Pi family. I’m not at all up to speed enough where I can try compiling my own OS or kernel.
Looks like there will be no help from the Armbian forum… I connected an HDMI and still nothing coming out, or nothing that will fit a resolution that my monitor can render. The DT is drawing 1 amp while it sits there doing whatever it is doing. I can also see that it didn’t expand the image to use all the free space on the card, using a small 16gb card so that it would be faster to expand.
I’m just about to the stage where I’m never going to buy something that isn’t mainstream again. I’m kind of thinking that even buying the CM4 module is going to be more good money after bad. Hardware was a neat idea, software was a complete dumpster fire!
Maybe I’ll donate mine to someone like Jeff Geerling just to get it out of my sight.
I have an A04 and a CM4, the machine is a lot better with the cm4. It’s still true you can’t flash just any distro and run it but we’re up to 6 distros that are current with the CM4. You’ll have a much better experience switching to the CM4. If you already have a use for the device then it don’t think switching core would just be throwing money away.
I agree. I originally got a A06 DevTerm when they first came out, and while it was a sort of fun project for a bit, just trying to get it working, and maybe even working “well” (or at least stable) despite all the issues, it ended up collecting dust for a while. Later, I decided to get a CM4 for my DevTerm. Even before all the community distros that have recently appeared, with the default OS, it was still more reliable and stable than the A06. (Now my spare A06 chip collects dust, instead of my whole DevTerm).
When they were first released, everyone seemed excited over the hardware and was convinced the A06 would perform better than the CM4. I bought into that hype too. I’m not even convinced it is true. OS platform bugs aside, it seemed to suffer more from heat issues, and would need to be throttled to the point where it wasn’t much better than the CM4 and may have actually been worse, at least based on my anecdotal usage. Some people spent time on better cooling solutions like the fan assembly that would force air through better, and that may have helped. But even a moderate performance gain may not be worth the extra hassle of having to build everything from source, and hope that the source your using isn’t making any assumptions about the Pi platform that may not be true for the A06. Even controlling the cooling fan on the A06 was a pain, relying on a hacky python script, where with the CM4 it’s using the built in OS fan controls rather than weird extra stuff.
I never owned an A04 but those things seemed to be even more of a problem, since I don’t think I ever read anyone successfully get HDMI out working on them in the forums, and I’m guessing that’s why they are no longer sold.
I don’t plan on going with custom processors in the future either. Even if they do work well, the business model ClockworkPi seems to have is to make something (legitimately cool) and then let the community support it, and it’s harder for the community to support something custom (or even care as much) because less is known about it and fewer people will be using it.
I haven’t been following the Pi4 threads… Which CM module do I want to buy? I see Lite which suggests no EMMC, and Lite with Wifi? Can the EMMC version be used or is that a failure waiting to make me angry? Looks like another $100usd for a CM4 lite (no wifi) with 8gb of ram (yes I want 8gb) and the adapter for the DevTerm, is that what I should be looking for?
I do have a fast 256gb SD card that I’m using with the a06, thought I might want the storage, but not really needed now that I can get a better feel for how well, (or not) it works.
I’ve also looked at the uConsole, due to the better resolution on the screen, this might be a better choice because it should prevent some of the stupid menu issues that the 480 tall display gives us. Would also be better for the web pages that I may need to work with. Just wondering if the uConsole might be a better use of the money, still going forward with the CM4 to power it. The only thing I don’t like about the uConsole is only a single USB port (unless the C port can do more than power). I often need a USB serial device and a USB ethernet device, gigabit ethernet would be a big bonus if that C port works at faster speeds.
These products are really cool, but abandoning them after the hardware is released is not cool. The RPi is so strong because they really got behind the software side and keep it going, along with the community support that helps out. Hard to suggest that doesn’t make for a winning product as we can see the reults between Pi and all others.
Get the CM4 lite with WiFi. The CM4 can’t use the main boards WiFi. Emmc is faster but you’ll need a separate io board to flash the image to because if you have emmc the SD card slot becomes unusable. I have both and the uConsole is leagues better in usability because of the screen. 480 just isn’t good unless you’re just in the console all the time. The USBC is just for power but there is a addon card with 3 USBC ports running at USB 2 speeds. My DevTerm was way better after putting in the CM4 I also use a 8gb one.
Kind of against better judgement, and after messing with the newer version of Armbian and failing again, i just ordered the CM4 adapter, and a uConsole with CM4 adapter to put both devices on Pi 4.
I’ll be back with questions once I get everything in my hands. Still not sure if I’ll get 4gb or 8gb modules. I reached out to a Youtube creator to see if he wanted to sell any CM4 to help cover new stuff, going to give him a few days to see if he responds. If he wants, I’d be willing to send him one or both devices to mess with for a little bit.
Losing my mind here… The Armbian images directly from Armbian don’t contain things like the fan daemon, at least the older ones that actually boot. Decided I would go back to the official image that is only slightly older than the last Armbian image that will boot (back to kernel 5.10.x)… Click the download link, and it says… 7 hours.
What in the absolute hell is this? Are we serving these up on phone lines? Ugg, that CM4 adapter can’t get here soon enough!
Well, I forget how bad the experience is with the OEM image… flash, and boot. A bunch of text scrolls for a while and then nothing but backlight. Then a flashing cursor. Then nothing but backlight. Repeat for at least half an hour. Going to wait at least an hour this time to see if it ever really comes up to a booted state.
This is precisely why the a06 does not beat any RPi board, there just isn’t support for making the stupid thing work consistently. I can generally make x86 systems work, but this a06 board is a whole different ball of wax and starting to make me want to beat it with a hammer! I’m not up to speed on the lower level portions of the OS and it’s killing me.
Another day, another download that took like 30 minutes, and now an image that boots. Now I need to go back through and add the screen resolution shortcut keys and get the arrow keys working for scroll controls.
Armbian team can only rely on volunteer maintainers for boards where support budget is negative. And at least two people are required to secure solid support, but that seems not to be in anyone’s interest.
Without a maintainer contribution, sponsorship, throwing money into … device support (on modern software stack) will never be completed (under Armbian or copy of it) and one day it will stop working. This is not simple Rpi device that, on top, has millions of developers financing its support.
There are plenty of orphaned devices, new are coming out every day and here vendors focus. Most of them don’t even understand the value Armbian brings to them and live in a delusion that Armbian developers are happy porting (and loosing tens of thousands of hours while doing that) Armbian on their custom HW … There is almost absolute absence of support from consumers / end users and in past 10 years little has changed. Except more alternative OSes are providing Armbian under different name without fixing any problem / contributing anything to the common. Biggest job is not making and selling devices, but supporting them. Who will sacrifice that time or provide comfort / compensation to those that will? General support for the project is highly demotivating and clearly not sufficient to cover (a) person(s) for anything, especially not for orphaned devices. If we all can’t cover a single (better two) person’s time / device for this device to work … How do you think this device will remain operational and maintained by people (developers) that doesn’t need this to work? Alternative is = end users learning hard way to get to the level to be able to fix. This require persistence, diligence and takes year.
“Armbian” is by any means not responsible for this. It is clarified on the download page:
Community maintained boards are not officially supported by the Armbian project. These boards are maintained (or not maintained) by community members (like you). These builds are provided by the Armbian project as a service to the community. They are automatically generated and untested !
Few years ago there was someone at Armbian that did the hard job of bringing the device to Armbian. Which is by all means several classes above any vendors OS. Armbian secures many segments - always up to date software, SDK, reproducible SW stack. At that point images worked and device was supported. Without maintenance, software (firmware) starts to fall apart and Armbian regular project maintainers (that anyway don’t have this device) have no options then changing status to “community maintained” once its reported failing or maintainer stops responding.
Another advantage of officially maintained software is that images are mirrored around the globe. Torrent download should always maxed out your download line. Try.
Just a note. Before posting here I posted at the Armbian forums looking for help, the response was… not good. More like insulting and I’m very much done with Armbian on anything once I get the CM4 module installed.
All I wanted was someone to help me figure out why it didn’t boot with the 6.x kernels. Where to look and what to look for so I might correct it. Not what I perceived to be a rude answer along the line of the Linux Elitism that people get in a lot of places. Eventually I’ll be able to understand what I need to do to make these changes, but right now needed some guidance. I have the old Devterm “provided” OS working and I’ll be on that for a while, I also have a thin and light Windows laptop for backup, mostly because I know I’ll power this Devterm up and it will fail to do what I expect it to do, again. Been 9 months since I tried to use it for real work, I have more real work that I’ll try it on next week and see if it is willing to function.
As far as autogenerating the images for this device, you might as well free up the disk space, none of the 6.x versions boot, or if they do, neither display option functions and I don’t have a serial port wired up to this device to check it with another computer, just like most people won’t have this connected. I didn’t try SSH and certainly won’t now as moving to a current kernel just isn’t on my list of things to do.
Answering this can easily represent a week of work. And all elitists are highly busy not waiting for you to show up. Which is also equal to loosing thousands of dollars. Which is a problem if support budget is less then zero. Once you are done with your project sponsored by a group of elitist developers, you expect they also need to pay cash for your mistakes, education and support? And you were only asking “small” questions which they must know right from their heads in the middle of the night, anytime? Total delusion. Another problem is ratio between “elitist” developers : amateur developers which is around 1:1000. And all of you wants to have attention first. Perhaps this mob attack on scarce resources makes the elitist effect?
You blame Armbian because they could not resolve problem that has nothing to do with them. And have no resources to start researching and working on your private problem? If developer you address, complies with your idea and start working for you (and of course you expect this service for free) on top of hundreds of things others like you throw at them, he will soon just burn out. Which is loss for you and open source at large. But is impersonal so you don’t care that as you only see your problem, and negative response, which is expected in such circumstances. You are just a cost making spoiled kid running around with developers credit card. No offence, but this is how it often looks like.
Some people are asses, same as in general population. I don’t think we can ever change that.
You got a tool that helps you - and is free. A lot of work has been done to save your time. Ain’t perfect but it is maintained and constantly improving. Isn’t that worth supporting? No, you want professional service on top of that and we both know you have no interest to support people that will waste their private time instead of you.
Armbian didn’t make any money with this device and never said project will provide endless random technical support. But you expected that. This is the problem. Adjust expectations! You are bringing nothing, expect nothing, be happy for something and we all will be happy. This is how it goes. Not because someone is bad elitist, but because there are simply no resources and you don’t help. Not just you. Guidance? Teachers are not waiting, its the other way around. Then - who will be paying living expenses for the one that will stop working for food in order to deal with you? Why do you expect open source developers, you already don’t support, also paying for your education? RTFM, join open source projects and contribute (taking like in this case does not count) with what you know. I am sure you can give something. Contribute things where you are good at. This is how it goes. No open source project can afford to school people (without patrons).
Project have no budget and also no interest to support new and new devices. More devices, bigger expenses. And you (end users) are not involved in covering expenses. You only pay for beer, when you are happy. This means - to bring this device up, elitist would lost 10.000 USD and end up with endless support burden and you would make a 10 USD donation. Pretty stupid?
Board support is in interest of hardware makers and you. But you will need to do it a lot better. We can’t cover maintenance costs you and device brings. If you bring it in fully operational and tested, it will be accepted, but if you don’t maintain support for them, it will be just thrown out at one point. Armbian can not proceed to support your device after you add it. Not because of elitism or because we are bad, but simply because it is expensive and resources are slim. We can only maintain a few of them. And those we want to do it well. More then a few its not fun and without fun it is no go. This is open source, anyone can step up and maintain some device. You can also do it without making any direct damages to Armbian or since you are done with it.
tl;dr; Project does not need to maintain yet another device - you need it there.
If you expect someone to waste a week of his private time and you never give nothing in return, not even understanding and respect, you can expect getting a punch in the face. This has nothing to do with elitism, but with basic people and economic relations, common sense. People you are addressing are overwhelmed with work and they might need a month before even start listening to you, while you might already be shouting and screaming.
I am well aware I can not afford to guide you. Sorry. But I still contribute to open source how I can. With this advice, while on technical level, only with tips. I can’t afford to research instead of you to give you an answer and I hope one day you will understand all this.
Thank you very much for your concerns. Images are hosted on GitHub, so space and bandwidth is 100% free of charge. We loose less if we do absolutely nothing.
Disclaimer clearly tells that we have nothing to do with those images:
service to the community
automatically generated
untested
It there is currently nobody in Armbian behind this device, there is also nobody that will be listening or potentially doing anything about. Still, there is community forum, just like this one, and there you might find someone that is equally interested to get this fixed …
The idea behind automated builds is that once fix is contributed to the community (Armbian does not need this device to work), images will start working, update won’t kill the display or whatever is broken. We would do this instead of you, but I hope it is clear why this is sadly not possible?
