Compatibility of RAM modules?

NXP LX2160
1

Hi there, I recently bought a HoneyComb LX2 board off eBay and I’m trying to get it to work.

The tested RAM modules listed on site are a bit difficult to source so I bought an Oloy brand DDR4 3200 CL18 1.2V 16GB x2 kit from Amazon.

As it turned out that, I couldn’t get the board to boot with the memory kit (tried different configs, e.g. 1 stick, 2 sticks, in different slots etc). And by not booting up, I meant there was nothing coming through the serial console: the board did power up, with LED1 on, CPU fan spins up to 100% then quiets down.

Since RAM modules and 20-pin power are the only 2 things required to be plugged in for the board to start, and the power appears to be working, my current conclusion is that the RAM modules are not compatible, so I wonder how particular is the board about RAM models?

Alternatively, another speculation could be that the board is simply defective (though the seller said that the board is open-box, but new never used), so I wonder if there are other ways to get more debugging output of the boot process to see where things might be broken?

Thanks!

2

Today I found Samsung M471A4G43AB1-CWE (which is on the tested memory list) at a local store, but the board still won’t boot. I guess this lead to the latter part of my original question: how do I debug further and verify that the board isn’t just DoA?

3

It sounds like the board is booting if the fans are spinning up and down. Have you verified on your host OS that the serial console is enumerated properly when you plug it in? Also have you verified the boot select jumpers are correct for the medium you are trying to boot from?

4

Looking at the specs I found, those memory modules should work fine in your HoneyComb

5

Have you verified on your host OS that the serial console is enumerated properly when you plug it in?

Yes, I do see /dev/ttyUSB0

Also have you verified the boot select jumpers are correct for the medium you are trying to boot from

They are currently at: 1-off, 2/3/4-on, 5-off (I don’t believe this is used), which means boot via microSD. So I actually powered things on without an microSD (or any boot medium FWIW) since I was expecting to see some sort of POST process & messages, but your response seems to imply a boot medium is required.

Anyways, I followed the instructions for making a boot microSD, and now I’m indeed getting something over serial console though it was an error:

NOTICE:  BL2: v1.5(release):LSDK-20.12-8-g9115785
NOTICE:  BL2: Built : 19:24:37, Jun 15 2021
NOTICE:  UDIMM M471A4G43AB1-CWE  
ERROR:   Failed to load 29 firmware.
ERROR:   Loading firmware failed (error code -2)
ERROR:   Calculating DDR PHY registers failed.
PHY handshake timeout, ddr_dsr2 = 0
PHY handshake timeout, ddr_dsr2 = 0

NOTICE:  64 GB DDR4, 64-bit, CL=22, ECC off, 256B, CS0+CS1
ERROR:   BL2: Failed to load image (-2)
Authentication failure

Any pointers on what the error is about? (also now the fans spins at full speed while displaying this error).

6

BTW the image I used was lx2160acex7_2000_700_3200_8_5_2-bc46e34.img on a SanDisk extreme plus 32GB card

7

Can you please test with our SystemReady UEFI image, https://solid-run-images.sos-de-fra-1.exo.io/LX2k/lx2160a_uefi/lx2160acex7_2000_700_3200_8_5_2_sd_ee5c233.img.xz ? Just dd that to your uSDHC card and boot from it.

8

Thanks! This image booted up for me: there’s a text based menu options presented; however as shown on the menu, it seems that only 32GB of RAM was detected, but earlier message over console reported 64GB (same as my earlier reply).

Also, how do I proceed from here to get a proper OS (e.g. Ubuntu) booted up?

Thanks!

9

Don’t mind what is reported in the UEFI screen, that is currently not accurate and will be fixed in a future release.

This is a SystemReady ES image and will boot a normal Ubuntu installer from a USB drive. Most distros still do not have networking support out of the box as this was just included into the mainline kernel as of 5.14. Fedora 35 is the first distro where this is working. There are community members that build Ubuntu kernel packages with the patches required for networking support. You can chat with the community over on #solidrun channel of the Dev Ecosystem discord server. Developer-Ecosystem