Meles 128gb emmc module broken

Meles
1

hello,

i received my meles from arace with the extra 128gb emmc module, but that seems to be broken: on first boot (from sd card, but with the emmc module connected) it was still detected but gave errors when trying to access it from within linux and starting from the second boot it was not even detected anymore by the system. taking it out and replugging it in (in powered off state of course) did not help (to make sure it is not a contact problem). all this was with the official milk-v meles sd card image downloaded from their github. did anyone else experience something similar with their 128gb extra emmc module?

a lot of thanks in advance and best wishes - hexdump

1 Like
2

There seem to be some early setup issues with this board. Mine can’t go into download mode anymore after flashing SPI. Did you flash SPI? Are you able to get into download mode still?

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3

i did not flash the spi - i used what was on the board and it booted the sd card image fine - just that the emmc they shipped seems to be broken. what do you get as “dmesg | grep mmc0” after booting your linux from sd card? what does “fdisk -l” show? - both to be run as root (or via sudo of course).

a lot of thanks in advance and best wishes - hexdump

1 Like
4

I appear to be in the same boat, there are mentions
of mmc0 and mmc2 in dmesg, but fdisk won’t touch either and I can only see the mmc1 sd card device under /sys

Devicetree problem maybe?

root@revyos-meles:/home/debian# dmesg |grep mmc0
[ 3.330077] mmc0: SDHCI controller on ffe7080000.sdhci [ffe7080000.sdhci] using ADMA 64-bit

root@revyos-meles:/home/debian# dmesg |grep mmc
[ 3.330077] mmc0: SDHCI controller on ffe7080000.sdhci [ffe7080000.sdhci] using ADMA 64-bit
[ 4.119234] mmc1: SDHCI controller on ffe7090000.sd [ffe7090000.sd] using ADMA 64-bit
[ 4.231311] mmc1: new ultra high speed SDR104 SDXC card at address 59b4
[ 4.238784] mmcblk1: mmc1:59b4 USD00 58.9 GiB
[ 4.247843] mmcblk1: p1 p2 p3 p4
[ 4.254081] sdhci-dwcmshc ffe70a0000.sd: allocated mmc-pwrseq
[ 4.394715] mmc2: SDHCI controller on ffe70a0000.sd [ffe70a0000.sd] using ADMA 64-bit
[ 4.459233] mmc2: queuing unknown CIS tuple 0x80 (2 bytes)
[ 4.466384] mmc2: queuing unknown CIS tuple 0x80 (3 bytes)
[ 4.473501] mmc2: queuing unknown CIS tuple 0x80 (3 bytes)
[ 4.481900] mmc2: queuing unknown CIS tuple 0x80 (7 bytes)
[ 4.490961] mmc2: queuing unknown CIS tuple 0x81 (9 bytes)
[ 4.559284] mmc2: new ultra high speed SDR104 SDIO card at address 0001
[ 6.676864] EXT4-fs (mmcblk1p4): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
[ 9.216244] EXT4-fs (mmcblk1p4): re-mounted. Opts: (null)
[ 13.309600] Adding 4194300k swap on /dev/mmcblk1p3. Priority:-2 extents:1 across:4194300k SS
[ 13.648403] EXT4-fs (mmcblk1p2): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)

root@revyos-meles:/home/debian# fdisk /dev/mmc0

Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.38.1).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.

fdisk: cannot open /dev/mmc0: No such file or directory
root@revyos-meles:/home/debian# fdisk /dev/mmcblk0

Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.38.1).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.

fdisk: cannot open /dev/mmcblk0: No such file or directory
root@revyos-meles:/home/debian#

root@revyos-meles:/home/debian# fdisk /dev/mmc2

Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.38.1).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.

fdisk: cannot open /dev/mmc2: No such file or directory
root@revyos-meles:/home/debian# fdisk /dev/mmcblk2

Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.38.1).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.

fdisk: cannot open /dev/mmcblk2: No such file or directory

root@revyos-meles:/home/debian# ls /sys/class/block/ -la
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Jan 1 1970 .
drwxr-xr-x 57 root root 0 Jan 1 1970 …
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 1 1970 loop0 → …/…/devices/virtual/block/loop0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 1 1970 loop1 → …/…/devices/virtual/block/loop1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 1 1970 loop2 → …/…/devices/virtual/block/loop2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 1 1970 loop3 → …/…/devices/virtual/block/loop3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 1 1970 loop4 → …/…/devices/virtual/block/loop4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 1 1970 loop5 → …/…/devices/virtual/block/loop5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 1 1970 loop6 → …/…/devices/virtual/block/loop6
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 1 1970 loop7 → …/…/devices/virtual/block/loop7
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 1 1970 mmcblk1 → …/…/devices/platform/soc/ffe7090000.sd/mmc_host/mmc1/mmc1:59b4/block/mmcblk1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 1 1970 mmcblk1p1 → …/…/devices/platform/soc/ffe7090000.sd/mmc_host/mmc1/mmc1:59b4/block/mmcblk1/mmcblk1p1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 1 1970 mmcblk1p2 → …/…/devices/platform/soc/ffe7090000.sd/mmc_host/mmc1/mmc1:59b4/block/mmcblk1/mmcblk1p2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 1 1970 mmcblk1p3 → …/…/devices/platform/soc/ffe7090000.sd/mmc_host/mmc1/mmc1:59b4/block/mmcblk1/mmcblk1p3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 1 1970 mmcblk1p4 → …/…/devices/platform/soc/ffe7090000.sd/mmc_host/mmc1/mmc1:59b4/block/mmcblk1/mmcblk1p4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 1 1970 mtdblock0 → …/…/devices/platform/soc/ffea000000.spi/spi_master/spi1/spi1.0/mtd/mtd0/mtdblock0

5

this looks exactly like what i see - so looks like they either shipped broken emmc modules or their sd card image does not support them well … as my emmc was initially at least properly detected on the first boot and later not anymore my guess would be that they shipped broken or at least dying emmc modules … anyone from milk-v around maybe to comment? (i sent an email to arace and via a followup to milk-v as well, they asked for dmesg output and since that i did not hear anything else from them anymore …)

1 Like
6

properly detected on the first boot and later not anymore

If this is a problem on the TF card, you can try and reproduce it by reflashing your TF card with the same bootable image again and testing whether it does it again or not.

7

i do not see where this should be related to the sd card, but i can give it a try to reimage the tf card fresh and try with that during the next days - i guess not much will change, but we will see …

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8

You just use the emmc for data or did you flash the OS to the SD and the emmc?
Having the same filesystem label or uuid twice can screw things up, but that’s a stretch, probably not was is happening here. :person_shrugging:

1 Like
9

i just connected the emmc to the board (leaving it as it came - i assume empty) and booted the sd card image from sd card … the errors i got during the first boot where the emmc was at least detected still also were not filesystem related, but clearly (e)mmc related, so my guess still is that the emmc either was already broken when it arrived or it broke during that first usage or the sd card image has a problem with emmc …

1 Like
10

An update:
While trying to resolve my other issue of losing the ability to flash over serial with cct after having burned the initial copy of u-boot, I stumbled upon the method to flash the EMMC:

Flashing in download mode over the USB cable with fastboot worked, including writing the image to EMMC. Unfortunately, trying to boot afterwards by holding down the MMC boot button doesn’t work. It tries and fails to load from the EMMC until you let go of the button, then it tries to boot from SPL and fails without an SD card inserted:

brom_ver 8
[APP][E] protocol_connect failed, exit.
[APP][E] emmc card boot error.
brom_ver 8
[APP][E] protocol_connect failed, exit.
[APP][E] emmc card boot error.
brom_ver 8
[APP][E] protocol_connect failed, exit.
[APP][E] emmc card boot error.
brom_ver 8
[APP][E] protocol_connect failed, exit.
[APP][E] emmc card boot error.
brom_ver 8
[APP][E] protocol_connect failed, exit.
[APP][E] emmc card boot error.
brom_ver 8
[APP][E] protocol_connect failed, exit.
[APP][E] emmc card boot error.
brom_ver 8
[APP][E] protocol_connect failed, exit.
[APP][E] emmc card boot error.
brom_ver 8
[APP][E] protocol_connect failed, exit.
[APP][E] emmc card boot error.
brom_ver 8
[APP][E] protocol_connect failed, exit.
[APP][E] emmc card boot error.
brom_ver 8
[APP][E] protocol_connect failed, exit.
[APP][E] emmc card boot error.
brom_ver 8
[APP][E] protocol_connect failed, exit.
[APP][E] emmc card boot error.
brom_ver 8
[APP][E] protocol_connect failed, exit.
[APP][E] emmc card boot error.
brom_ver 8
[APP][E] protocol_connect failed, exit.
[APP][E] emmc card boot error.
brom_ver 8
[APP][E] protocol_connect failed, exit.
[APP][E] emmc card boot error.
brom_ver 8
[APP][E] protocol_connect failed, exit.
[APP][E] emmc card boot error.
brom_ver 8
[APP][E] protocol_connect failed, exit.
[APP][E] emmc card boot error.
brom_ver 8
[APP][E] protocol_connect failed, exit.

| __ \ ()/ | __ | |/ /
| |) | _ _ _ | ( | | | | ’ /
| _ / | | | | | | |_ | | | | <
| | \ \ || | || | |) | |__| | .
|| __,|_, ||/|/||_
/ |
|/
– Presented by ISCAS

U-Boot SPL 2020.01-g96627087 (May 29 2024 - 08:34:19 +0000)
FM[1] lpddr4x dualrank freq=3733 64bit dbi_off=n sdram init
failed to setup ddr addrmap
ddr initialized, jump to uboot
image has no header

U-Boot 2020.01-g96627087 (May 29 2024 - 08:34:19 +0000)

CPU: rv64imafdcvsu
Model: Milk-V Meles
DRAM: 8 GiB
aon wakeup by gpio enabled
aon wakeup by rtc enabled
iic id:0 addr_mode:0 speed:2
C910 CPU FREQ: 750MHz
MMC: sdhci@ffe7080000: 0, sd@ffe7090000: 1
Loading Environment from MMC… Card did not respond to voltage select!
*** Warning - No block device, using default environment

In: serial@ffe7014000
Out: serial
Err: serial
light_c910_set_gpio_output_high: trying to set gpio output high
Use random addr as fixed mac addr
Saving Environment to MMC… Card did not respond to voltage select!
No block device
Failed (1)
ethaddr: ea:ce:5b:97:8f:1e
eth1addr: ea:ce:5b:97:8f:1f
Net: ethernet@ffe7070000 (eth0) using MAC address - ea:ce:5b:97:8f:1e
eth0: ethernet@ffe7070000
Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0
Card did not respond to voltage select!
Card did not respond to voltage select!
cp - memory copy

Usage:
cp [.b, .w, .l, .q] source target count
No aon config magic found in aon bin, please check the aon bin
aon config and set faild -1### ERROR ### Please RESET the board ###

1 Like
11

The Lichee Pi 4A documentation has some insights about the boot flow and the various image files involved:
https://wiki.sipeed.com/hardware/en/lichee/th1520/lpi4a/4_burn_image.html

2 Likes
12

They also do

fastboot flash ram ...
fastboot reboot
fastboot flash boot ...

in the Lichee Pi docs.

Does that work for anyone? After fastboot reboot my board just acts like dead. The last messages via serial are those from flashing to RAM. But the reboot does not produce any messages. Should it?

13

I had to power cycle and go back into download mode after the ram flash and reset stage. then the uboot/root/boot flashes worked.

i’m unclear what the purpose is of flashing RAM then immediately rebooting, seems redundant to me but who knows, both licheepi and meles docs say to do it…

1 Like
14

That’s exactly what I had to do. Okay, so that is not the problem on my side. Thanks! :slight_smile:
But still I get nothing after

brom_ver 8
[APP][E] protocol_connect failed, exit.

:cry:

If fastboot reboot worked, RAM contents could probably be preserved. The way they do it made me think the RAM-loaded u-boot needs to be there in order for flashing u-boot to work (but somehow that also doesn’t sound very logical), but I guess that’s not true either.

There’s no way to read out the boot loader, right? I don’t trust these tools, maybe u-boot is just never actually written to my board.

btw, there’s no dip switches or anything that could be set wrong. what makes the difference? :person_shrugging:

1 Like
15

Are there any milk-v engineering staff monitoring this forum? Not being able to use EMMC is a pretty major missing feature for a new board launch, especially when you have distributors bundling it with EMMC modules.

4 Likes
16

an update regarding my emmc problem: i got an emmc to sd card adapter today and with that as well the emmc does not show any life - looks like it is really broken … from milk-v support no response so far beyond “we are analyzing if this is a hardware or software problem” … together with all the other people who have bricked their meles boards by just flashing them according to the documentation it looks like those meles boards seem to be something to definitely avoid for now …

1 Like
17

Mine is now bricked like a couple of others here (can flash but startup wont progress beyond the soc bootrom to uboot) in addition to dead Emmc.

Support stated they were unable to reproduce the emmc problem.

I believe the Meles is a lemon.

2 Likes
18

@hoka - what is your comment on all those problems from milk-v side and what is your proposal of how to sort them out? quite a few people bought one of your products and ended up with an expensive useless paperweight just by trying to use it and following the instructions?

1 Like