Tried a brand new USB flash drive and got the same error.
CHS: Error 0c00 reading sector 3427421 (213/88/33)
EDD: Error 0c00 reading sector 3427421
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How large is the USB driveās capacity?
It is a Sandisk Cruzer Blade 8GB
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What happens when you try a different USB port?
Have tried 2 different ports. Have my keyboard and mouse plugged into the other two
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What happens when you attempt to boot the USB drive from a different machine? Does it still throw an error, or does it successfully boot?
So I tried with another pc and the grub menu comes up and the options to boot pureos live come up and either option gives me this message. Does not seem to go beyond this point.
error: no suitable video mode found.
Booting in blind mode
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Thatās expected if the other machine requires proprietary device firmware for the graphics card (AMD/Nvidia or latest generations of Intel), since PureOS doesnāt include that firmware.
Unfortunately that doesnāt really tell us whether the flash drive worked or not in the other system, it may have choked after that but been unable to display the error.
Could you try one of the Debian 12 live ISOs in both the Mini v2 and the other system? (Index of /debian-cd/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid) The goal here is to get to a point where an image boots correctly on at least one system, so we can tell if there is a problem with the other system (or, preferably, it boots on both and we go back to trying PureOS or Qubes if you prefer).
It could still be a problem with the way the ISOs were written to the media, a problem with the downloaded ISO, or something else. I donāt think you intentionally unplugged them early, but sometimes flushing disk caches can take much longer than you might think. I would assume balenaEtcher would flush caches before telling you itās done but Iāve never actually tried it, I always dd them myself out of habit.
While youāre trying that, I can give balenaEtcher a try just to see what might go wrong.
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There can be some merit in checking the SHA sum (for some hash algorithm). Ideally Purism would publish the SHA sum (not so much for cryptographic integrity purposes but just to detect dodgy downloads) - so there would be 3 SHA sums that must all be equal:
- what the distro published
- what you get on the downloaded file
- what you get on the flash drive after using
dd(or whatever) to copy to flash drive - but this may require care to get to match
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@jonathon.hall tried out the Debian 12 live iso and it failed on the Librem Mini but it did work on my pc. On the mini the intial menu came up but when I selected to install Debian 12 it just hung for a while and I got the same CHS/EDD error messages as above
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Thanks for testing that @zstocs , glad we have a confirmed working medium now and itās clear we need to find out why the Mini is having trouble reading it.
Is your device a Mini v1 or v2?
Could you try running a memory test? Get the memtest86+ ISO and boot it, let it run until āPASSā or āFAILā appears. Direct link: https://memtest.org/download/v7.00/mt86plus_7.00_64.grub.iso.zip
While youāre on the SeaBIOS boot menu, could you let me know what version it is? (Something like version rel-1.16.1-3-g001fea6c.) I can use that to figure out what firmware version you have, since weāre not able to boot anything to check it directly.
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Mini is v2 and my SeaBios version is rel-1.16.2-3-g001fea6c
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Thanks @zstocs that means you have a recent release, one of 4.21-Purism-1 to 4.21-Purism-4. Please let me know what the memory test reports and weāll go from there.
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@jonathon.hall ran memtest on my mini over the weekend and it passed. Ran three passes and all of them looked good.
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@jonathon.hall @FranklyFlawless are the any developments on what could be wrong with my mini? I currently have $1000 door stop. Tried all the usb ports and I get the same error. Wondering if I need to update the bios? That is probably the last option as far as I can see.
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You will not be able to update Coreboot unless you perform a hardware reflash or successfully boot into an operating system using the Librem Mini. You may want to disassemble it and ensure that the hardware components within them are securely mounted, otherwise I suggest contacting Purism Support (support@puri.sm) for an RMA.
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@zstocs Sorry for the radio silence, Iāve been working on this issue most of this week, 4 days went by faster than I expected.
I do have an idea of what may be going wrong and some suggestions. While you are welcome to disassemble if you want, I donāt think there is much you will find on USB 2.0 signaling from inspection.
I have another report of issues with USB 2.0 devices and I think this is similar - it appears that the transmitter configuration in coreboot may not be optimized enough for all Minis. (This is a very āanalogā problem, even if the transmitters tuning is a bit off many devices will work, some may be more marginal than others, it may depend on the USB device as well.) This prompted the preview builds I posted (Librem Mini v1/v2: Feedback request for USB tuning preview build but those changes were not enough based on the feedback I got.
Iāve been working on getting more optimized tunings, and I aim to have a build soon to try. But in your case, we need to get a booting OS since you are unable to flash firmware otherwise.
- Do you have a USB 3.0 flash drive you can try? I believe the Cruzer Blade you mentioned is USB 2.0. If this allows you to boot, go ahead and reinstall the OS while we get the USB tunings sorted out.
- Otherwise, you can get a working OS by swapping the SSD. Either move the Miniās SSD to another PC and install an OS, or borrow an SSD with an installed OS from another PC. The OS must be installed in BIOS mode to work with SeaBIOS on the Mini. This will allow us to flash new firmware to test USB tunings. If the āother PCā requires proprietary device firmware, Iād recommend using Debian 12 for this process, and you can go back to PureOS on the mini once USB is sorted out.
If you prefer, you can also contact support (support@puri.sm) to discuss all available options to solve this. You can let them know that youāve been working with me on this issue via the forum and I will sync up the ticket with where we are so far. (Please mention the thread, itās not always obvious to match up forum handles with emails.)
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I got the new build together and posted it to that same thread: Librem Mini v1/v2: Feedback request for USB tuning preview build - #2 by jonathon.hall
@zstocs If you are able to get a booting OS on your Mini v2, I would appreciate it if you can try that build and let me know if the USB 2.0 connectivity is improved on the blue ports. If you are not able to get a booting OS or would like to discuss any other ways to solve the problem, please contact support.
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@jonathon.hall @FranklyFlawless I will see if I can find a USB 3.0 drive and try that first. If not, I will have another machine by the end of next week that I can use for installing an OS on the SSD. Will keep you posted. Appreciate the help. I really like the device and I would rather not have to send the it back if I can avoid it.
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