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I bought one in early 2020. My main issue with it so far is that 3/4 of the time it fails to boot from eMMC (if you bought the serial cable, you can see that u

I bought one in early 2020. My main issue with it so far is that 3/4 of the time it fails to boot from eMMC (if you bought the serial cable, you can see that u-boot just hangs). Also, the default Manjaro image doesn't have hardware video acceleration so good luck watching YouTube at more than 480p.

entropicdrifter 5y ago
I also bought one in early 2020. No issues booting with mine. Based on some research, it looks like if you want video acceleration to 'just work' your best bet is running Armbian with these instructions: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16516-rk3399-legacy-multimedia-framework/ https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16516-rk3399-legacy-multimed...
CameronNemo 5y ago
What u-boot version are you using? I boot from eMMC on my PBP pretty much every day and I've never had it fail. Lack of hw video accel does suck, but I've been able to watch 1080p using ffplay and mpv without it. I wouldn't try that on the battery though.
morganvachon 5y ago
I've had a good experience with the latest versions of Manjaro and video acceleration, but I've also had the same boot issues since I bought mine (around May 2020). Right now it sits unused and neglected because I can't trust it to boot when I need it to, and it still suffers from the power draw bug during sleep so I can't just close it and come back to it a day or two later; unlike most laptops with properly configured power management, it will be dead after a couple of days sleeping instead of just down by a certain percentage.
- CameronNemo 5y ago
  You could probably resell it, right? I have seen intact used PBPs go for 150$+.
  - morganvachon 5y ago
    I'm sure I could. I actually tried to donate it to an OpenBSD developer but never heard back from them for the address to send it to, so it went back in the closet.
Iolaum 5y ago
That's strange. Could it be a hardware issue? I have a PBP from the same batch and Manjaro (the default installation from eMMC) has been so reliable that I 've held off from distrohopping.
- Teknoman117 5y ago
  Could be. The boot problem is not a Manjaro problem, it's a preboot problem. It just doesn't see the eMMC occasionally, but most of the failures are it hanging trying to load the u-boot secondary stage off of it. SD card boot works all the time though.

entropicdrifter 5y ago

I also bought one in early 2020. No issues booting with mine. Based on some research, it looks like if you want video acceleration to 'just work' your best bet is running Armbian with these instructions: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16516-rk3399-legacy-multimedia-framework/ https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16516-rk3399-legacy-multimed...

CameronNemo 5y ago

What u-boot version are you using? I boot from eMMC on my PBP pretty much every day and I've never had it fail. Lack of hw video accel does suck, but I've been able to watch 1080p using ffplay and mpv without it. I wouldn't try that on the battery though.

morganvachon 5y ago

I've had a good experience with the latest versions of Manjaro and video acceleration, but I've also had the same boot issues since I bought mine (around May 2020). Right now it sits unused and neglected because I can't trust it to boot when I need it to, and it still suffers from the power draw bug during sleep so I can't just close it and come back to it a day or two later; unlike most laptops with properly configured power management, it will be dead after a couple of days sleeping instead of just down by a certain percentage.

CameronNemo 5y ago
You could probably resell it, right? I have seen intact used PBPs go for 150$+.
- morganvachon 5y ago
  I'm sure I could. I actually tried to donate it to an OpenBSD developer but never heard back from them for the address to send it to, so it went back in the closet.

Iolaum 5y ago

That's strange. Could it be a hardware issue? I have a PBP from the same batch and Manjaro (the default installation from eMMC) has been so reliable that I 've held off from distrohopping.

Teknoman117 5y ago
Could be. The boot problem is not a Manjaro problem, it's a preboot problem. It just doesn't see the eMMC occasionally, but most of the failures are it hanging trying to load the u-boot secondary stage off of it. SD card boot works all the time though.