Dingoo A320 forum

Hello everybody,

i'm also experiencing problems to boot linux on my dingoo. I have a 9325 lcd controller, testing on ubuntu 9.04 and windows. I tried to follow the quickstart page on the wiki of dingoo-linux.

First i made partitions on my micro sd card with fdisk, part 1 is FAT32 (tag 0xOb), 128mo, part 2 is 1800 mb in ext3. I used mkfs to format partitions exactly like said in the wiki, then extracted rootfs on the ext3 partition. After that i used the usbtool available on dingoo-linux, resetted my a320 with b button pressed, the syslog tells me it's detected, everything works fine.

Then using usbtool, i booted hwhinit.bin, everything works fine with usbtool, no error; i got nothing on screen, but that does not surprise me. When trying to load the zImage, everything works fine on usbtool, everything done but then i get nothing on screen... no backlight, no kernel starting, nothing... First i asked myself if usbtool neeeds a configuration file or something, but the wiki does not talk about anything like that for the linux part.

I also tried to boot on windows, with usb_boot.exe and config files. Again, the "boot 0" command works fine (it does start the backlight, maybe this init code is a little different, but that means communication works between the tool and the a320). Loading the zImage in ram works, and the instruction "go" gives no error on usb_boot, but nothing on screen...

It seems the results are the same with or without sd card inserted. Is my problem a partitionning problem? like the first fat32 partition is not found by some boot process? As far as i know, linux would still boot if the ext3 partition is broken, simply not finding the root filesystem.

How did you guys do the partitions on the sd card? i used fdisk and mkfs.vfat, mkfs.ext3 to build 2 primary partitions (/dev/sdd1 and /dev/sdd2), is there another way to prepare the filesystem? i tried many things like with parted, linux won't boot on the dingoo ... i'm a little bit lost at the moment...

Or is it another problem? Is there any way to get feedback from the dingoo during boot process to know what fails?

Any help appreciated. Thanks for this forum, i really appreciate the dingoo scene. Keep up the good work, and sorry for the possible english mistakes...

make sure it is not this issue - http://code.google.com/p/dingoo-linux/i ... tail?id=14
i.e. first boot the device to original system, then reset+hold b, then attach usb cable

I used gparted to setup my partitions. I havent been following the lcd issues too much but make sure you are using a kernel that supports your lcd if you happen to have the newer one. If you dont you probably wont have anything on the screen.

Since it does say that it successfully loaded the hwinit and zimage it would seem like communication is at least working and it is probably running something as long as you sent them both to the correct addresses. Keep in mind it will usually let you send code to any address, it will just have issues running.

Thanks guys, you solved my problem. It was the same as described in issue 14 on dingoo-linux.

Maybe someone should join the group on google code to help writing on the wiki about this problem. I may try when i get comfortable with the development environment.

Thanks again, now it's time for me to install the toolchain and get some apps running on this linux.