Introduce the Radxa Zero

#131

If you are in China, you can buy it from Taobao soon. Check Allnet China Taobao store or Smartfly Taobao Store.

#132

Hi Jack,
I am interested to get a sample for Radxa Zero 2GB LPDDR4 with 8GB eMMC, WiFi5/BT5.
How can I go about ordering one?
Are you giving out a free sample?

Please Advise
Thanks

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#133

I have AP6256 on both of the 1 GB zero’s . Mine are slightly different , one is an internal antenna version , the other external antenna version.

Mil

#134

pi@twisteros-zero:~$ dmesg | grep brcm
[ 8.040939] brcmfmac: F1 signature read @0x18000000=0xffffffff
[ 8.041124] brcmfmac: brcmf_chip_recognition: chip backplane type 15 is not supported
[ 8.041131] brcmfmac: brcmf_sdio_probe_attach: brcmf_chip_attach failed!
[ 8.041140] brcmfmac: brcmf_sdio_probe: brcmf_sdio_probe_attach failed
[ 8.041303] brcmfmac: brcmf_ops_sdio_probe: F2 error, probe failed -19…
[ 8.533806] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM: ‘brcm/BCM.hcd’

#135

AP6236 is internal on this as was deliberate to test the base cost unit.

Presume Sven is the same.

#136

[ 8.041124] brcmfmac: brcmf_chip_recognition: chip backplane type 15 is not supported

I think we need to add support of ap6236 to the upstream.

3 Likes
Radxa Zero Slarm64 (aarch64 unofficial slackware)
#138
#139

Hi Jack, I have sent you an email. Please help us for procurement.

#140

Thank you very much for your answer, as in the ETA Prime channel I only saw Android I thought it would be a driver problem…
I can’t wait to get my hands on this amazing thing, great job.

#141

eMMC 128GB Release date?

#142

In two or three weeks.

#143

Can I flash directly to eMMC or should I flash u-boot to SD and partition eMMC from there? New in SoC but I definitely want to learn how they work.

#144

you can flash eMMC without sdcard and boot (if you messed up bootloader on eMMC)

#145

There is this documentation https://github.com/radxa/documentation/tree/master/rs102 that really should go on the wiki.

Its fairly easy really and you don’t need a serial console but does give you some feed back that the Zero is booting in USB mode.
Its pretty easy as ‘lsusb’ will not find it on the host computer so as said not essential.

So you can jump all the serial console and just

sudo pip3 install pyamlboot
sudo apt-get install fastboot

You prob need a linux machine and ‘sudo apt-get install python3-pip’ or use a live image off a usb stick.
You could also install python on a Windows machine but can not say how that will go but likely will work.

But by keeping the little USB boot button pressed on the back of the board when you apply power the bootloader almost instantly switches to usb mode.

You just download by, or copy and paste the url

wget https://dl.radxa.com/zero/images/loader/rz-fastboot-loader.bin

Then the command is

sudo boot-g12.py rz-fastboot-loader.bin

You can follow the top document and just wipe anything off the eMMC.

To get the Zero to load up as if its a USB stick its just a different download after a power cycle.

wget https://dl.radxa.com/zero/images/loader/rz-udisk-loader.bin

Boot into usb mode and this time

sudo boot-g12.py rz-udisk-loader.bin

Then you can flash your image just as if it was a usb stick or sd card in a reader.

Last thing

wget https://dl.radxa.com/zero/images/loader/u-boot.bin

sudo dd if=u-boot.bin of=/dev/sdx bs=512 seek=1

/dev/sdx x is whatever driver letter linux applies.

lsblk

Will list unmounted drives

Fastboot error: (remote: 'locked device')
#146

Zero on Armbian test:
Just tried armbian build for zero’s , on my non eMMc boards , works OK as is .
No need for additional uboot manipulations, works straight out of the box .
I used this link:
https://dl.radxa.com/users/jack/Armbian_21.08.0-trunk_Radxa-zero_focal_current_5.10.52_minimal.img
One thing that does not work out of the box for me is the wifi . However that could be because this is a minimal install image , only 1 GB .

Best Regards
Mil

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#147

That is weird Mil as on my eMMC 2gb insert that image and it will boot from SD rather than eMMC which is great.
In my non eMMC it still doesn’t boot though.

Wanted a lite server image anyway so that is great.

I think I like that image from what I see so far even zram makes a lot of sense with the zstd for log and a single for swap.

#148

@jack Armbian minimal image not booting on Zero(4GB/32eMMC) from uSD or eMMC.

#149

If there’s some still available ?
I would like buying one, trying to do a DIY handheld game console on Recalbox.

Cheers

#150

Can you try to Wipe your eMMC first, especially the eMMC boot0 and boot1.

echo 0 > /sys/block/mmcblk1boot1/force_ro
echo 0 > /sys/block/mmcblk1boot0/force_ro

Then use dd to wipe /dev/mmcblk1

#151

@jack Zero2GB 16GB eMMC
From my working image on the SD card of Radxa Armbian I removed the SD did the fastboot method.

fastboot erase bootloader
fastboot erase bootenv
fastboot erase 0

Put the SD card back in and now no boot.

Presume if I flashed the eMMC again it will return to when no SD boot from eMMC and with SD boot from SD.

It would seem part of the initial eMMC bootloader is needed to boot the SD?

Yeah press the USB boot button on power.

sudo boot-g12.py rz-udisk-loader.bin
wget https://dl.radxa.com/zero/images/loader/u-boot.bin
sudo dd if=u-boot.bin of=/dev/sdx bs=512 seek=1

/dev/sdx x is whatever driver letter linux applies lsblk to list

reboot with the SD card and I am back again.

Just can not work out how without a eMMC as its u-boot.bin on the eMMC that seems to be the 1st bit in the chain.
No image just bootloader so now until I flash image and bootloader again its just boot from SD via the 1st chain in eMMC.