Re: Unable to boot Pi 3b+ UPDATED

Apologies for top posting, but now that I understand the problem better, 
most of the stuff below is not relevant. Here's the whole issue:

Late last year there was a new hardware release of the Raspberry Pi 3B+ 
board. The PMIC chip was changed; more information is here:
https://pip.raspberrypi.com/categories/797-pcn/documents/RP-003337-PC/Pi3B-Revision-9-PCN.pdf
The new board is Rev. 1.4, a.k.a. a020d4.

The FreeBSD image at
http://ftp3.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/13.2/FreeBSD-13.2-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-RPI.img.xz
boots fine on the old Rev. 1.3 version of the board but it fails to boot 
on the Rev 1.4 version. I have tried it on more than one example of each 
version of the board. 1.3 boards boot fine, 1.4 boards fail to boot and 
flash the green LED in 4 long - 7 short pattern.

Not sure what to do about this. Is it a known problem? Should I file a 
bug report?



Mark Millard wrote on 2023-08-16 06:45:
> On Aug 16, 2023, at 01:49, Peter G <list-freebsd-arm@box559.com> wrote:
> 
>> Mark Millard wrote on 2023-08-15 20:25:
>>> On Aug 15, 2023, at 19:17, Peter G <list-freebsd-arm@box559.com> wrote:
>>>> I am unable to get FreeBSD-13.2-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64 to boot on either of two brand new Raspberry Pi 3B+ boards. (Just as a diagnostic, I checked that both work perfectly well with Raspberry Pi OS.)  I have tried several different brands and sizes of SD card (which all boot fine with Raspberry Pi OS). I have redone the image downloads multiple times and verified the checksums. I burn images to the SD card on another machine using dd with bs=1M. If I mount the prepared SD cards on that other machine, I can confirm the files are readable.
>>>>
>>>> I have tried both
>>>> /ftp/releases/arm64/aarch64/ISO-IMAGES/13.2/FreeBSD-13.2-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-RPI.img
>>> It may not be likely to be the issue, but you did not mention
>>> it explicitly, so . . .
>>> I instead see:
>>> http://ftp3.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/13.2/FreeBSD-13.2-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-RPI.img.xz
>>
>> Yes, this is what I used. Sorry to not have been more explicit; I used unxz -k to extract the .img file before dd'ing it to the SD card.
>>
>>> Note the *.xz naming. I do not see a: FreeBSD-13.2-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-RPI.img
>>> to download
>>> After downloading FreeBSD-13.2-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-RPI.img.xz ,
>>> using:
>>> # unxz FreeBSD-13.2-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-RPI.img.xz
>>> would produce a:
>>> FreeBSD-13.2-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-RPI.img
>>> That, in turn, would be dd'd to the microsd card.
>>>> and
>>>> /ftp/releases/arm64/aarch64/ISO-IMAGES/13.2/FreeBSD-13.2-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-disc1.iso.
>>> Definitely the wrong media: no RPi* firmware, no U-Boot for the
>>> aarch64 RPi* , and so on.
>>
>> Lack of a boot loader would explain why I get no green LED at all with the disc1.iso
>>
>> The other image, the RPI.img one, at least tries to boot, as evidenced by the 4 long and 7 short blinks of the green LED. As a further diagnostic, I took that same SD card that blinks the LED and fails to boot in the 3B+ and put it in a Pi 4, where it boots fine.
>>
>> So the RPI.img, the one you suggested above, is booting and working well in the Pi 4 but the exact same SD card fails to boot in the Pi 3B+. Since my two Pi 3B+s both work fine with other (non-FreeBSD) images, it seems that there must be a problem with that FreeBSD image on the PI 3B+. Are there any known issues with the boot loader on the Pi 3B+?
>>
>> Again, perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't know what else to try. Suggestions most welcome.
> 
> https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=259438 comment #4 indicates 13.2 booting
> an example (older) RPi3B+ for someone that has one. (I do not have access to any vintage
> of RPi3B+ .)
> 
> This, with your finding that your media does boot a RPi4B, suggests that modern RPi*3B+'s
> have some sort of technical change that requires newer RPi* firmware than releng/13.2
> contains. (I do not expect that U-Boot would do the blinking activity, for example.)
> 
> You could try a microsd card made from a modern snapshot. If that works, you
> could replace appropriate msdosfs material on the releng/13.2 media with
> materials from the modern snapshot and then see if that boots.
> 
> I've used:
> 
> http://ftp3.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/ISO-IMAGES/14.0/FreeBSD-14.0-ALPHA1-arm64-aarch64-RPI-20230811-136fc495615f-264678.img.xz
> 
> and know it has the modern RPi* firmware. Likely the following would as well,
> but I've done nothing that would confirm or deny that:
> 
> http://ftp3.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/ISO-IMAGES/13.2/FreeBSD-13.2-STABLE-arm64-aarch64-RPI-20230810-5abba9619cbb-256019.img.xz
> 
> 
> Do you have a serial console environment for the RPi3B+'s? It is hard to get
> evidence from early problems without such. Capturing and reporting the serial
> console output (if any) would be relevant evidence. For example, it would
> likely be obvious if it reached the U-Boot stage or not.
> 
>>>> Neither boots.
>>>> The first image gives green LED blinks: slow four and then fast seven. The second never blinks.
>>>>
>>>> Any advice on what I'm missing would be appreciated.
>>
> 
> 
> ===
> Mark Millard
> marklmi at yahoo.com
> 
> 
>