[SOLVED] apu2 internal TTL com port

xbipin

no i dont have lcdproc or nut loaded, give me a few days as i have ordered a few more usb to uart adapters so once they arrive can attach those and test as well and report back as well as pcengines ppl are also testing it on their end to see if its debug info or no

stephenw10

I only suggested debug output there because the ALIX had this diagram available which is labelled debug so it seems to be something they might have done previously. A lot of speculation there!
However if it were I might expect to see it whether or not pfSense loaded.

Steve

xbipin

pcengines ppl just tested it using the same usb to ttl adapter and they send me a screenshot of it working and displaying properly so now im wondering if my tera term app is faulty or no so trying with putty

xbipin

i tried with putty and its still same so lets just wait for the other adapter to come then ill report back

Guest

You wrote, "apu and older alix boards", which of them do you have here in that case!?
Differences between Alix and APU

115200,n,8,1
Must be set up at three locations;

Putty or TerraTerm console program
Board BIOS for the COM port
pfSense directly

then it will be often looking like the other one (com or serial port)
Also on the other side it can surely be that the chip from the USB to Serial Adapter will not be supported due to
whatever a circumstance. Be sure that you will be not led into a trap searching something you could not fix!

If you are using an APU2Cx board you may be happy with that equipment here, it is working out of the box!
As said both are working together with pfSense and verion 2.3.x & version 2.4 for me.
APU2C4 serial to USB combo
USB to RS232 cable

And please make sure that you are using a null modem cable and not another serial cable!
PC Engines HowTow collection

If nothing helps you out here, but you will have the need for another console port you may have a look over that piece
of hardware. AirConsole

jahonix

AirConsole is nice, use it for years already. But it's basically a serial to USB converter with Ethernet extender. Doesn't change a thing on displaying the data, only extends the path.

xbipin

ok finally got it working, the reason for garbage was along with the tx and rx line gnd also needs to be connected and my gnd pin on the adapter had a loose solder joint so gnd pin wasnt making contact, on the new adapter connected it and serial console started showing on com2 without issues, thanks for all the help

stephenw10

Ah, yup that'll do it! :D

Steve

jahonix

Meanwhile I found why my APU1 doesn't show uart1.
That's an old beta board with an even older firmware. I bet if I'd update it… ::)

Good to hear that you got your problem solved! Productivity of this forum is quite amazing.

FranciscoFranco

The nice thing about the APU series is that the GPIO driver written for the APU1 works with the newer APU2 and APU3. They used the same exact Nuvoton chip so I really appreciate the small things like that. Their Alix case with 3 LAN works with the newer APU as well.

I just built a Zoneminder server based on the APU3 with 4Gig RAM and I got the PCIe slot option for a 2 port POE card, the Startech ST2000PEXPSE
The slot is horizontal like the Soekris was.
Zoneminder is hammering it -but it is not running that hot. It was just an experiment to see if the APU has other usage cases besides router.
I have 3 now stacked.
I really like coreboot too.. Really feels like an industrial setup.

doktornotor

@jahonix:

Meanwhile I found why my APU1 doesn't show uart1.
That's an old beta board with an even older firmware. I bet if I'd update it… ::)

You can now update the BIOS from pfSense.


pkg install flashrom
rehash
flashrom -w apu??????.rom -p internal

FranciscoFranco

Thanks Dok
I found you must pass the programmer thru:

flashrom --programmer internal -w /apu/apu2_v4.6.0.rom

Guest

Thanks Dok and FranciscoFranco, worked perfectly.

kevindd992002

@doktornotor

Any ideas why I'm getting a board mismatch error:

Calibrating delay loop… delay loop is unreliable, trying to continue OK.
coreboot table found at 0xdffae000.
Found chipset "AMD FCH".
Enabling flash write... OK.
Found Winbond flash chip "W25Q64.V" (8192 kB, SPI) mapped at physical address 0x00000000ff800000.
This coreboot image (PC Engines:PC Engines apu2) does not appear to
be correct for the detected mainboard (PC Engines:PCEngines apu2).
Aborting. You can override this with -p internal:boardmismatch=force.

As you can see in the logs, they're the same exact board so I'm not sure why there's a mismatch?

EDIT: Nevermind, I already figured it out. It seems to be caused by the space between PC and Engines so forcing it fixed the problem.