Uses for eMMC

Hawk

Is there any reason to get a H3 device with eMMC?
Can BE NG access eMMC?
Can the firmware be loaded into the eMMC to boot without an SD card?
If it can boot from the eMMC, will it boot from the SD if it is present?
So many questions all brought about by this board.
Lctech Pi

painintheworld

It looks like I have another H3 device to purchase 🙂 I do look forward to seeing if you come up with anything!

Dmian

That board used to be called CherryPi PC v7. Looks like now they renamed it to Lctech Pi H3 V7. I tried to get one but those suddenly disappeared. I guess they had problems with the name or something (I'm guessing it was too similar to OrangePi PC?).
It's nice to see them appear again.

MC10Guru

Ahoy,
Last week was a bad week so I've been inactive. I turned Hex 3D years old and I'm sorry, I've been very sick. Right now I'm in a 73dF room wearing a sweat shirt and insulated hoody and still I'm chilled.

I have much I could write about booting on the small ARM boards but have not the energy. Just remember that Linux has drivers to see eMMC (not NAND) storage as a hard drive volume. As such If you boot Linux on that board you should be able to flash EB NG to it the same as an sd card. The H3 ALWAYS tries first to boot from sd card then tries eMMC/NAND 2nd. So there is a possibility that it would work. It shouldn't hurt to try it anyway.

Armbian has a Multitool program that can back-up eMMC/NAND storage to an image and flash to it from an image. You might investigate that. It is mentioned a lot in the Armbian on TV Box forums.

I'll try to be back soon as I mend.
daveyb

Hawk

MC10Guru really sorry to hear that you’re doing it so tough with sickness at the moment. Hope you’re back on the mend real soon…for selfish reasons of course, then you can help me get my head around all these new fandangled SoCs and why we can’t just rebuild BE NG for a different SoC. 😉

Seriously, I hope you are feeling better so that you can get back to the things you enjoy.

I just reread your explanation, and I think I understand what you’re saying…use a Linux image on an SD card to boot the H3, then copy the BE NG image into the eMMC/NAND and then reboot, but backup the original image first just in case I want it as a TV again.

MC10Guru

Hawk,
Remember that eMMC and NAND are not the same thing. eMMC is a standard where NAND flash is combined with a standard controller all on one chip. As such a standard driver can be used in Linux to use eMMC storage. NAND flash needs a separate controller added and that may not be the same contoller chip as used with eMMC. Therefore there is no standard NAND driver in Linux and it usually can NOT be used directly from Linux.

My experience with these H3 boards that have flash is that it is usually just NAND flash. Therefore you need a special method to flash the storage that sees the controller chip used by the board. Tauon uses a dedicated OTA program to reflash the OS to NAND. FriendlyArm (Nanopi) uses a program called eflasher. Armbian has the Multitool program to use with both eMMC and most NAND storage.

My Libre Tritium has an eMMC socket but it seems that it doesn't have the right mating socket for eMMC modules used by Odroid/Pine64. I have an extra Odroid 32GB eMMC module and a Pine64 64GB one but I guess these won't work with the Libre 🙁
Laterz, daveyb

Hawk

Thanks for the excellent explanation Davey, you continue to educate me about these perculiar boards that seem so similar on the outside but are really very different.

So my understanding, from what you've said, is that if it has eMMC then you can boot to Linux and then copy over BE NG to the eMMC "drive" and then it will always boot the BE NG even without an SD card.

If you want to do the same thing with NAND, then you need special software, depending on the varient you have, and you risk bricking your device if it goes wrong.

painintheworld

Belated birthday wishes, @MC10Guru ! We both have a birthday around the same date and were sick at the same time...only you have me by 10 years. I hope you have the good fortune of feeling as good as can be expected!

You guys are leaving me in the dust with different SBCs 🙂 I need to order more! After all of these years, I finally got a couple of Raspberry Pi, too. The wife bought me some microSD/SD plastic cases, as she got tired of me swearing about not remembering what was on all the SD cards lying about the desk 😆