Welcome to Armbian Bionic with Linux 5.4.20-sunxi

 

This is the thing I have installed... I'm trying to use the serial ports out of the GPIO header, nominally pins 8 and 10 which depending on what you read maybe ttyS1 or ttyS3.  Out of the box whatever they are they're not available. 

 

After much googling, I've seen stuff about FEX and DTS none of which mean much to me, I'm guessing Bionic doesn't use FEX as there's no sign of .FEX or .BIN files in the /boot directory.  The default state seems to pump garbage out the tx line whatever its doing. Minicom promises to talk to any ttyS? I give it, but theres no answer on loopback, And that's all I have.   All pointers gratefully received.

 

I never did get to the bottom of just what DTS is or how to configure it. 

 

Regards, A

What about the easy way first? 

 

armbian-config -> system -> hardware

Promising, I've got loopback on ttyS0 now... be nice if there was some EASY to find document that had this in it...  now let me see if I can get anything resembling data to my terminal   Thanks so far

That was ttyS1 not 0 that cam up.  Looks like it was an easy fix. 

 

 Leads me to a new question though, I need to feed this through an RS232 serial port to a legacy system.  The adapter/converter I have isn't doing the job, its just screaming rubbish.  Does anyone have a line on something that will do the job properly?  The one I have now was nominally for an Arduino if that makes a difference. This isn't the first one I've tried either... :/

 

Thanks, A

47 minutes ago, Aunty Entity said:

I've got loopback on ttyS0

This UART might be in use by Linux console. Check others.

1 hour ago, Aunty Entity said:

After much googling, I've seen stuff about FEX and DTS none of which mean much to me, I'm guessing Bionic doesn't use FEX as there's no sign of .FEX or .BIN files in the /boot directory.  

 

I never did get to the bottom of just what DTS is or how to configure it. 

 

@Aunty Entity In newer kernels the system doesnt use .fex anymore, but .dtb

This is a "compiled" version of the .dts - the technical "description" of the board and his pinout.

 

To configure your .dtb you have to de-compile it, edit it and compile it atfer the compile - then reboot

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONVERT dtb to dts
------------------------------------------------------------------------
dtc -I dtb -O dts /boot/dtb/sun8i-h2-plus-orangepi-r1.dtb -o /boot/dtb/sun8i-h2-plus-orangepi-r1.dts

------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDIT dts
------------------------------------------------------------------------
nano /boot/dtb/sun8i-h2-plus-orangepi-r1.dts

------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONVERT (BACK) dts to dtb
------------------------------------------------------------------------
dtc -I dts -O dtb /boot/dtb/sun8i-h2-plus-orangepi-r1.dts -o /boot/dtb/sun8i-h2-plus-orangepi-r1.dtb