iMX233-OLinuXino-MICRO boots from battery, but not power adapter

[dblank]

Hello,

I have an iMX233-OLinuXino-MICRO (Rev B with R17 removed, purchased a while back from digikey, I believe) that boots just fine via a 3.7v battery, but fails every time when I try from a 5v power supply.

It always seems to fail at the same point:
i.MX IRAM pool: 28 KB@0xc4808000

..then reboots:
PowerPrep start initialize power...
Battery Voltage = 1.58V
No battery or bad battery
detected!!!.Disabling battery

"Battery Voltage" is the only line that appears to change when no battery is connected.

I've tried several power adapters, all providing 5.0 - 5.3v @1-2A, and also a few different microsd cards (which all work fine when device is powered via battery)

Serial cable connected to see messages, otherwise nothing else is connected.

LED does not light up with or without serial cable attached, unless I boot from battery.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[JohnS]

If you have no external devices connected how do you know where it fails?

John

[dblank]

Oops, I'll edit my original post..

Serial cable was connected to see the messages.

Fails to boot without serial cable, but I don't know where exactly.

LED doesn't light up in either case.

-Dave

If you have no external devices connected how do you know where it fails?

John

[JohnS]

Ideas:

On my iMX233 MINI (or MINI WIFI) I don't get any of those messages, so I'm wondering which image you're using.

May well be you have PSUs that basically lie about their output

Check serial cable voltage & wiring.

John

[dblank]

Currently using the ArchLinux release from here:
https://www.olimex.com/wiki/images/4/49/Imx233_kernel_2.6_ARCH_FS_WIFI_release_4.torrent

Had boot looping problems with other images, too, unless battery connected.

Tested power supplies with a multimeter, since I never trust those labels

-Dave

Ideas:

On my iMX233 MINI (or MINI WIFI) I don't get any of those messages, so I'm wondering which image you're using.

May well be you have PSUs that basically lie about their output

Check serial cable voltage & wiring.

John

[JohnS]

Does any other Linux version/variant work?  My guess is yes.

John

[dblank]

Last night I tried the Debian and Slackware images linked to in the wiki, both work fine via battery, but also boot loop when powered via DC jack.

Debian output:
U-Boot 2013.07-rc3HTLLCLC

U-Boot 2013.07-rc3HTLLCLC

U-Boot 2013.07-rc3HTLLCLC

I don't recall / didn't save the output from Slackware, but it was similar to ArchLinux; no battery/bad battery message, a few more lines, and a reboot. I'll dig up the exact messages later.

-Dave

Does any other Linux version/variant work?  My guess is yes.

John

[JohnS]

I only have the MINI boards and don't use battery.  All works fine and I see such as
U-Boot 2013.07-rc3-dirty (Jul 17 2013 - 13:59:24)

CPU:   Freescale i.MX23 rev1.4 at 454 MHz
BOOT:  SSP SD/MMC #0
DRAM:  64 MiB
MMC:   MXS MMC: 0
*** Warning - bad CRC, using default environment

In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
Net:   Net Initialization Skipped
No ethernet found.
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0
mmc0 is current device
SD/MMC found on device 0
182 bytes read in 206 ms (0 Bytes/s)
Importing environment from mmc (uEnv.txt)...
5389184 bytes read in 1862 ms (2.8 MiB/s)
9217 bytes read in 269 ms (33.2 KiB/s)
Booting from mmc ...
Kernel image @ 0x42000000 [ 0x000000 - 0x523b80 ]
## Flattened Device Tree blob at 41000000

(etc)

John

[Rec_Bat]

Hallo

found some info here:

https://www.olimex.com/forum/index.php?topic=3141.0

Thomas

[dblank]

I ended up opening 5v_e using a razor blade, then supplied power via +5vext pin, this finally allowed the board to boot! All the kernels that previously failed now boot, and so far things appear to be working as expected.

Olimex support suggested replacing C23 and C24 with new 10pF capacitors, and if that didn't work, to replace the quartz crystal, Q1. I may try this as well, but for now I'm happy powering via the +5vext pin.

Cheers,
-Dave