Dual boot on uConsole

Hey,
Did any of you guys manage to make dual boot on uconsole? I know it’s not big deal according to raspberry pi. I’m only wondering if screen works properly during choosing OS. I was considering to install retroPie and raspbian on one SD card.

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First off, you do know dual booting is moot when you can simply have a distro for each SD card? There’s a reason so few users (if any) bother to configure their installs to dual boot.

If you want an experience that’s quite close to dual-booting, consider trying Bedrock. This is not recommended for beginners, though.

NOOBS was discontinued but PINN is the continuation of that project. From there you could conceivably dual-boot on a uConsole. But you would likely only have correct video output on external HDMI and not the internal screen.

I think the place to start would be in the buildroot/ directory and start adding things that are known to be requried for uConsole (and DevTerm) displays. For example pinn/buildroot/linux at master · procount/pinn · GitHub contains a list of kernel patches that are applied during the build of PINN. And of course you’d need to include the device tree (.dtb) files for uConsole.

Not exactly easy work. But there is a LOT of stuff leverage for someone that wants to add the support.

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A dual/multi boot option could be really interesting. I disagree that it would be “moot”, as not everyone wants to have to swap the SD card in and out, and if you’re changing between different OS installs frequently enough, such swapping would be annoying.

Sounds like the perfect solution (albeit requiring some work to get going) for what @Avogadr was describing, which to me sounds like a sort of “gaming” option and a “non-gaming” option. I could also see this being useful for a “media” option (like Kodi). Sometimes it makes sense to keep things separate like that, but quick swappable.

If someone does roll a custom version of PINN, or even just lightly documents what was done to make it work, please share here. There are probably other folks here who would appreciate it, even if they don’t have a pressing need for it right now. :slight_smile:

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Not the most elegant solution but easy.

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mNmEO6u

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I took a look at pinn yesterday and as well i check how to make pinn works with custom OS. I think i will start working around it this weekend. I have zero experience in that area, but at least I will give a shoot.

I’m thinking also that card slot can get loose due to changing card 10 time a day :sweat_smile:

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I stand corrected. What is it that you do or are doing which requires you to switch up to ten cards a day?

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I’m not using the duel card with a switch, but I use this. It’s just a longer adapter and I switch cards 20+ times a day when I’m building a new community OS.


Working on a Pop_OS! and Ubuntu 20.04 builds right now.

If you need any help feel free to shoot me a DM.

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I bought uConsole mostly for my work. Before I always needed to carry laptop in my backpack to read all data from the sensor. I’m playing on uConsole on the way to work and during breaks. Now I’m just chilling with Heroes might and magic. Ofc I can just install retroarch. UConsole isn’t powerful or super ergonomic but anyway we enjoying using and working on that device. If we want to avoid all of obstacles, we can as well sell it and get something else on windows or not on ARM at least.

Edit:
If I will get completely stuck then I might ask you for advice Rex. Any way it sounds challenging for me and I like it :sunglasses:

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