Thanks for this information. So, they would both under perform for the modem’s full needs? No need for me to get the R3 Mini then, thanks.
Will the BPI-R4 be any better?
This is the routing i mean…if r3 mini has usb3 routed to mpcie/m.2 slot it may be better. R3 has only usb2 on the mpcie slot,m.2 has pcie only.
But this is no different pcie version/speed,only what busses are connected to the connectors…
Btw. I have changed my uboot repo so that it creates emmc image template (bootchain till uboot,no rootfs or linux) for r3 and r4
Maybe anyone can try the bpi-r3_emmc.img.gz on r3 mini. I guess uboot will need additional changes for r3 mini for peripherals,but basic bootup should work.
Edit: noticed that this release uses wrong end-offset of gpt partition,not bad because this partition is only used to prevent overwrite and have same partition count as sdcard,but fixed anyway now
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i prepared with @ericwoud a basic r3mini linux…maybe anyone with the board can test it?
make sure booting the “conf-emmc-mini” config from fit
edit: added version var to my uboot which can be set in uenv.txt to load the right conf
I would be happy to test it but need some more detailed instructions on how to proceed.
THANKS!
Boot r3mini from nand and unpack + flash bpi-r3_emmc.img.gz to emmc user partition and flash bpi-r3_emmc_bl2.img to boot0 partition…then try to boot from emmc. Maybe you need to set partitionconfig to mark emmc as bootable
For bl2 and partconf you can look into my writeemmc function
Fip is already part of image and can be skipped when flashing image file (unpack first and put to usb and load from it)
If this works you can try to boot kernel itb you can compile from my kernel repo.
setenv bootconf "conf-emmc-mini"
fatload usb 0:1 $loadaddr bpi-r3.itb
bootm $loadaddr#$bootconf
Bootconf selects this from the fit image.
Maybe load initrd…you can also use some of commands i put in uboot environment,but they are not yet changed for r3mini. You can also add an initrd to the fit config (see disabled line).
Edit: i see i have still an error in emmc image creation as there bl2 should not be written to first partition…this breaks gpt…i fix this the start pipeline again
Done,pls use binaries here: Release Build for branch 2023-10-bpi (2023.10) · frank-w/u-boot · GitHub
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Hi. I bought banana pi r3mini. in stock there was 20230719 firmware, all woks, but no kmod packages on openwrt site for downloading. After i have installed new firmware 2023-09-12 from wiki page, and now wifi don`t work and also no kmod packages for downloading. Where can i find original firmware and kmod-packages?
i only know this openwrt source for r3mini:
you could self compile with all you need, official openwrt has no support for r3mini, i’m working with @ericwoud in supporting r3mini in mainline
SinoVoip never provided a sample to us OpenWrt developers and it is the first board on public sale with this Airoha 2.5G Ethernet PHY, so we do need a sample for testing before being able to offer official images. If you want official OpenWrt (ie. with working kmods from downloads.openwrt.org package feeds), please urge SinoVoip to provide a sample to OpenWrt devs – I will happily spend one afternoon creating the OpenWrt image and testing, but I won’t spend money for the hardware.
I can test any image(by official way to burn image to emmc) if u can compile it
Sorry, but it’s too annoying without the hardware in front of me (and hence being able to power-cycle and change what’s connected to the Ethernet plugs when ever I like). Esp. also replacing the bootloader (which will also require the PHY driver for Ethernet to work within the bootloader, e.g. for TFTP) is not something I can do remotely.
Is it possible to get the new quactel RM521f-GL running on this? or is 520n the only one supported?
Definitely interested in this answer, as I am awaiting on the availability of the Quectel 5G RM521F-GL modem. Missed out on the first batch of availability…
Any news about mainline openwrt support?
Tested it
So first of all for some reasons USB was not working. So turned it manually with usb start
Finally got this
BPI-R3> setenv bootconf "conf-emmc-mini"
BPI-R3> fatload usb 0:1 bpi-r3.itb
8551672 bytes read in 204 ms (40 MiB/s)
BPI-R3> bootm $loadaddr#$bootconf
## Loading kernel from FIT Image at 46000000 ...
Could not find configuration node
ERROR: can't get kernel image!
Damn … it was wrong itb (from 6.1 main) what had no such config node
Well seems finally need to build it 
Yes uboot requires usb core to be started manually. I have the script useusb which does this and sets some variables like device and partition used by newboot,but latter is not adjusted for r3mini
For booting r3mini kernel you have to use (compile yourself) 6.6-r3mini branch as i have not yet merged the changes (as i do not have the board yet for testing) to main.
Just built a 6.6-r3mini kernel, but not yet tested it and have a questions
Here https://github.com/frank-w/BPI-Router-Linux/blob/6.6-r3mini/bpi-r3.its I see a reference to used kernel-1, which used ./arch/arm64/boot/Image.gz
But in recently built kernel I see no such file. The only kernel image built is
ls -la BPI-BOOT
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 512 дек 30 12:47 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 2560 янв 1 1970 ..
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 23001 дек 30 12:47 bpi-r3.dtb
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8937500 дек 30 12:47 bpi-r3.itb
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 24554048 дек 30 12:47 uImage_nodt
Is this ok?
The Image.gz is build into the itb and is extracted by uboot
Well - kernel is loading, but finally need initrd
[ 6.652802] Kernel panic - not syncing: No working init found. Try passing init= option to kernel. See Linux Documentation/admin-guide/init.rst for guidance.
[ 6.666945] CPU: 3 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 6.6.0-bpi-r314bea7d278205bc8f10cc4132b595a24ca203745 #1
[ 6.676838] Hardware name: Bananapi BPI-R3 Mini (DT)
[ 6.681787] Call trace:
[ 6.684222] dump_backtrace+0x98/0x118
[ 6.687965] show_stack+0x18/0x24
[ 6.691268] dump_stack_lvl+0x48/0x60
[ 6.694921] dump_stack+0x18/0x24
[ 6.698224] panic+0x2fc/0x35c
[ 6.701270] kernel_init+0x198/0x1d8
[ 6.704836] ret_from_fork+0x10/0x20
[ 6.708401] SMP: stopping secondary CPUs
[ 6.712313] Kernel Offset: disabled
[ 6.715787] CPU features: 0x0,00000008,00020000,1000420b
[ 6.721084] Memory Limit: none
[ 6.724127] Rebooting in 1 seconds..
If I get it right I should build image from here GitHub - frank-w/BPI-Router-Images and put it to partition 6. Should I specify somewhere initrd param?