Table of Contents
BananaPi R3 Mini
Hardware
- MT7986(Filogic 830) quad core ARM A53 SoC
- 2G DDR RAM
- 8G eMMC flash, SPI-NAND (128 MiB)
- 2x 2.5GbE network port (airoha en8811h phy)
- dual-band wifi:
- 2.4G
- 5G
debug-uart
connections from the edge of board: GND,RX,TX (remember RX/TX swap on your adapter :) )
Software
my R3mini came preinstalled with vendors openwrt (21.02-SNAPSHOT, Linux version 5.4.171) on emmc and nand. i suggest to leave the nand to have always a rescue-system and only flash emmc as productive system with a more recent version.
It will take some time till i can release a full emmc-image for R3 Mini, but my uboot-repo generates already a very basic bpi-r3 emmc image (Releases Page) without rootfs/kernel which can be used on r3mini as well. Userspace can generated with the buildchroot.sh of my BPI-Images Repo or extracted from a full r3 Image.
Step-by-step:
used usb-stick to get files accessible from r3mini
started with r3-img:
gunzip -c /mnt/sda2/bpi-r3_bookworm_nokernel.img.gz |dd bs=1024 conv=notrunc,fsync of=/dev/mmcblk0
then flash uboot (wonder why there is no mmcblk0boot0 block to flash the bl2 - seems to be a problem with vendor-image, in my linux i see the boot0):
#r3mini/bl2_r3mini_emmc_pcie.img to boot0 conv=notrunc,fsync dd if=/mnt/sda1/r3mini/fip_r3mini_emmc_pcie.bin bs=1024 conv=notrunc,fsync of=/dev/mmcblk0p4
booted original openwrt from nand….
root@OpenWrt:/mnt/r3mini# dd of=/dev/mmcblk0p4 if=/mnt/r3mini/bpi-r3mini_emmc_fip.bin 631+1 records in 631+1 records out root@OpenWrt:/mnt/r3mini# dd of=/dev/mmcblk0boot0 if=/mnt/r3mini/bpi-r3mini_emmc_bl2.img dd: error writing '/dev/mmcblk0boot0': Operation not permitted 1+0 records in 0+0 records out root@OpenWrt:/mnt/r3mini# echo 0 > /sys/block/mmcblk0boot0/force_ro root@OpenWrt:/mnt/r3mini# dd of=/dev/mmcblk0boot0 if=/mnt/r3mini/bpi-r3mini_emmc_bl2.img 392+1 records in 392+1 records out root@OpenWrt:/mnt/r3mini#
Kernel (creates the bpi-r3.itb with conf-emmc-mini bootconfig):
https://github.com/frank-w/BPI-Router-Linux/tree/6.6-r3mini
need to drop the “run setbootconf;” from newboot first
BPI-R3M> run useusb BPI-R3M> setenv initrd rootfs.cpio.zst BPI-R3M> setenv fit r3mini/bpi-r3.itb BPI-R3M> setenv bootconf "#conf-emmc-mini" BPI-R3M> run newboot
how to get available bootconfigs from binary fit image:
dumpimage -l /media/frank/Android-x86/r3mini/bpi-r3.itb
thermal
root@bpi-r3-mini:~# cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp 48408
manipulating trip points…this lets the fan run at 45°C silently and faster at 55°C (Case for R3mini gets really hot)
root@bpi-r3-mini:~# echo 45000 > /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/trip_point_3_temp root@bpi-r3-mini:~# echo 55000 > /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/trip_point_2_temp
my kernel
i merged R3Mini support to my 6.6-main
vendor-kernel
DTS for reference:
chainload uboot
BPI-R3M> fatload usb 0:1 $loadaddr r3mini/u-boot-pcie.bin
815592 bytes read in 73 ms (10.7 MiB/s)
BPI-R3M> go $loadaddr
## Starting application at 0x46000000 ...
U-Boot 2024.01-bpi-r3mini-00011-g5aadabca11e5-dirty
pcie/nvme
working in my r3mini uboot (2024-01-bpi-r3mini)
BPI-R3M> pci enum
drivers/pci/pcie_mediatek_gen3.c:mtk_pcie_startup_port[261] detected a card
set trans table 0: 0x20000000 0x20000000, 0x10000000
BPI-R3M> pci
BusDevFun VendorId DeviceId Device Class Sub-Class
_____________________________________________________________
00.00.00 0x14c3 0x1f32 Bridge device 0x04
01.00.00 0x1c5c 0x1327 Mass storage controller 0x08
BPI-R3M> nvme scan
BPI-R3M>
BPI-R3M> nvme info
Device 0: Vendor: 0x1c5c Rev: 80002C00 Prod: ND94N163610404F0R
Type: Hard Disk
Capacity: 244198.3 MB = 238.4 GB (500118192 x 512)
BPI-R3M>
network support
only working once then network is stalled
BPI-R3M> setenv ipaddr 192.168.90.2 BPI-R3M> ping 192.168.90.1 Using ethernet@15100000 device host 192.168.90.1 is alive BPI-R3M> ping 192.168.90.1 Using ethernet@15100000 device ARP Retry count exceeded; starting again ping failed; host 192.168.90.1 is not alive BPI-R3M>
This is fixed in my 2024-04 uboot by always run autonegotiation code (genphy code seems not working here).
Writing firmware to emmc boot1:
usb start mmc partconf 0 1 2 2 mmc erase 0x0 0x120 load usb 0:1 $loadaddr EthMD32.dm.bin mmc write $loadaddr 0x0 0x20 load usb 0:1 $loadaddr EthMD32.DSP.bin mmc write $loadaddr 0x20 0x100 mmc partconf 0 1 1 0
daniel wrote it here: https://forum.banana-pi.org/t/bpi-r3-mini-boot-from-nand-fails/17340/27
Linux way:
echo 0 > /sys/block/mmcblk0boot1/force_ro dd if=/lib/firmware/airoha/EthMD32.dm.bin of=/dev/mmcblk0boot1 dd if=/lib/firmware/airoha/EthMD32.DSP.bin bs=16384 seek=1 of=/dev/mmcblk0boot1
nand install
openwrt (file could be transferred also via usb): https://forum.banana-pi.org/t/bpi-r3-mini-boot-from-nand-fails/17340/27
Fix bricked boot
In case nand and emmc are broken there is a way to load uboot via uart for reflash/fix bootchain of the storages.
https://forum.banana-pi.org/t/bpi-r3-mini-boot-from-nand-fails/17340/24
files here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1b8KWe0p7fZmsRs9eBZUJBBISv3r2oUOR?usp=drive_link
$ ./mtk_uartboot -s /dev/ttyUSB5 --aarch64 --payload bpi-r3mini_ram_bl2.bin --fip bpi-r3mini_ram_fip.bin mtk_uartboot - 0.1.1 Using serial port: /dev/ttyUSB5 Handshake... hw code: 0x7986 hw sub code: 0x8a00 hw ver: 0xca01 sw ver: 0x1 Baud rate set to 460800 sending payload to 0x201000... Checksum: 0x3663 Setting baudrate back to 115200 Jumping to 0x201000 in aarch64... Waiting for BL2. Message below: ================================== NOTICE: BL2: v2.9(release):v2.9.0-357-g553a16af808e ram NOTICE: BL2: Built : 17:17:10, Mar 3 2024 NOTICE: WDT: Cold boot NOTICE: WDT: disabled NOTICE: CPU: MT7986 (1998MHz) NOTICE: EMI: Using DDR4 settings NOTICE: EMI: Detected DRAM size: 2048MB NOTICE: EMI: complex R/W mem test passed NOTICE: Starting UART download handshake ... ================================== BL2 UART DL version: 0x10 Baudrate set to: 921600 FIP sent. ================================== NOTICE: Received FIP 0x4d695 @ 0x40400000 ... ==================================
now you can use minicom or similar tool to get uboot-console and reflash bl2/fip to nand/emmc