Internal mass storage device

[Rex]

Have you tested anything else in the port?

[M3l0nh3ad]

no… guess i should do that and see… it works in usb drive with c-a adapter

[M3l0nh3ad]

so… i have power but no data. plugged my phone in and it charges but doesnt ask to connect like it does on the pc

[M3l0nh3ad]

maybe i missed something… i only get power off the three external usb-c but can pull data from the internal one… is this how its suppose to work? i get a strange screen flicker here and there too

[Rex]

You probably need to ask the boards maker then.

[M3l0nh3ad]

[M3l0nh3ad]

i feel like im missing something to enable the ports…

he is on here now, they posted on this post. should i create a new post? this post is the only one that has this new expansion board on it.

[Rex]

Here’s fine. You don’t have to do anything to enable the USB ports.

[M3l0nh3ad]

its so strange they all show up in lsusb but only the one on the inside will read the storage drive. I gained one usb plus a 5v pad for the fan. I’ve tried everything there isnt alot of information on the tindie site.

[Rex]

I’d email the maker and ask if there’s a problem.

[Partypyrate]

I would contact @Radiation_Joe if it’s one of their boards. Mine doesn’t seem to have that issue.

[Rex]

@M3l0nh3ad Check your messages @Radiation_Joe sent you a message about your card.

[M3l0nh3ad]

Thanks again rex! Life saver in this community!

[u0d7i]

First of all - thanks a lot @Radiation_Joe , just received my ext. board - fast shipping, perfect packaging, everything’s working:

Second - you don’t need any additional bootloader magic or custim initramfs to have simple way of dual-boot and fast switching betweentwo different os installations as @adcockm wants - uConsole perfectly boots from USB port attached directly to CM4. This my setup:

1. Prepare SD card with with working Debian (like @Rex 's Bookworm -lite- image) and boot into it.
2. Insert USB flash drive you are going to use as external storage
3. check storage devices with lsblk. SD card appears as /dev/mmcblk0 USB flash appears as /dev/sda
4. Copy SD card you booted from to USB drive: sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/sda bs=4M status=progress
5. Verify CM4 boot-order options:

$ sudo rpi-eeprom-config
[all]
BOOT_UART=0
WAKE_ON_GPIO=1
POWER_OFF_ON_HALT=0

# Try SD first (1), followed by, USB PCIe, NVMe PCIe, USB SoC XHCI then network
BOOT_ORDER=0xf25641

# Set to 0 to prevent bootloader self-updates (without recovery.bin)
# For remote units EEPROM hardware write protection should be used.
ENABLE_SELF_UPDATE=1

# Set to 1 to disable the bootloader HDMI diagnostics screen AND
# network install e.g. for kiosk devices.
DISABLE_HDMI=0

BOOT_ORDER looks fine to us.
6. Power off uConsole, remove SD card, boot without it (it boots from USB):

7. Insert your regular SD card (like full desktop image) - it boots from SD card if present:

My SD card I copied Debian onto USB flash is smaller than USB, so, I’ll re-partition the remaining USB flash space to use as shared data partition.

NB:
a) Yes, these ugly insulated 18650 cells are from old Tesla battery. USB flash drive draws hell lot of peak current during boot, may not boot from weak batteries, you may need to boot on charger if yours are the case.
b) Avoid using the same image for booting off SD card as you have on USB flash - their partitions have the same ID, and USB storage devices appear higher in the list, you may end up having /boot/firmware you are booting from mounted on SD, but /root on USB (or you may modify partitions ID’s on USB, to not clash with inter-change’able SD ID’s)

[Kirou]

Thank you very much for this solution!!! I will test this as soon as possible.

[enronhubbard]

Also having the same issue as with the USB-C board from Tindie by @Radiation_Joe - power gets delivered from the 3x external ports, but no data.

Both data and power work fine on the internal USB-C port. Nothing in dmesg or lsusb when plugging/unplugging on the external ports, and nothing comes back from lspci. I’m on postmarketOS edge, kernel 6.1.74-v8.

I saw @M3l0nh3ad had the same issue on this thread - how did you end up addressing it, if at all?

[Radiation_Joe]

@enronhubbard send me order msg and will send you new board

[REDROBRC]

Will this work with the cm5?

[white-round-square]

It works both with CM4 and CM5 (not tested with CM3).

[Kirou]

Finally, it’s gone! I replaced my CM5 with a CM4… And now it works with an SSD plugged into the internal USB port. I still don’t understand why it doesn’t work with the CM5.

EDIT : I’m trying to redo the whole process from the cm5 directly.