Hi,

I still haven't been successful to get the Efika MX to actually work. It is connected to a 1920x1080 Full HD monitor via HDMI. When I power it up, I can see the boot screen with the Efika MX logo but after the boot screen the screen just goes to black. The monitor is receiving a signal but it is all black.

I tried it with two different monitors: My ASUS TFT monitor and my Samsung TV. Both use a native resolution of 1920x1080. Both screens show the same behaviour: The boot screen appears but then it is all black.

I've also tried to try to boot a newer version from SD card but I wasn't successful either. I've tried the following two images from http://www.powerdeveloper.org/platforms/efikamx/linux:

efikamx-armhf-20120226.img.xz (2012-02-26, 795 MB, XZ Archive)
maverick-20111010.img.xz (2011-10-09, 552 MB, XZ Archive)

I flashed them to an SD card using "dd" on Linux, put the SD card into the Efika MX and held down "Y" while booting ("Z" on a German keyboard). No success. I tried SanDisk and Kingston 8 GB class 4 SDHC cards, I tried a SanDisk 32GB class 10 SDHC card -- no success. It just doesn't work.

I am really pretty annoyed about the whole situation... I've bought the Efika in November 2011 and still haven't been successful to get it to work. It can't be so difficult to send a signal that monitors can actually handle, can it? What's even more annoying is that there seems to be no console or something... it's always booting straight into the bootscreen and after that it goes all black...

What else can I do to get this to work?

Hello, I would recommend to try the Maverick images from March or May 2011. These contain different code in relation to HDMI display support (you may be limited to 720P).

Doesn't work either.

I have the slight suspicion that the system does not boot from SD card at all because I always get the same boot screen and also there is LED activity during the boot screen so I suppose it's always trying to boot from the internal SD memory. How can I find out whether it is really booting from SD card? I always hold down the Y key (Z on a German keyboard) on an USB keyboard right after powerup until the boot screen appears. But I suspect that it's always trying to boot from internal SD memory instead of from SD card. Could that be?

Hi, it is pretty hard to sort this out here. As we see it, here are the options:

1. Return the Efika MX for a refund. Please include any information that will allow us to identify you as the buyer.

2. Send the Efika MX back for inspection and repair. If possible, we will fix it or we will send you a replacement.

It does not sound like the SDcard updates are working. It is possible, you may have an older version of uboot that does not support the latest images.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,
R&B

_________________
http://bbrv.blogspot.com

There is always LED activity regardless of the chosen boot device but the frequency of the shown colors should be different when you boot from either the internal SSD or SD card.

That said, your assumption may very well be correct.
You do not have to press any keys during the actual boot process. If you insert an SD card that is readable and contains a bootable operating system, the machine will always boot from it. The Mavericks installer will show a text message below the Genesi logo to clearly indicate that you are booting the Installer from the SD card.

If this fails to happen, either your SD cards cannot be read for some reason (I have successfully used 2GB and 4GB cards myself) or you failed to properly write the image to the SD cards (which actually happened to two or three other users) or your SD card reader is faulty (but must have worked before since the standard OS with the Genesi boot logo was installed).

After writing the Mavericks image, how many partitions does the card have?

That certainly does not appear.
Here is what fdisk says (with the March and May 2011 images of Maverick):

Platte /dev/sdc1: 7818 MByte, 7818182656 Byte
241 Köpfe, 62 Sektoren/Spur, 1021 Zylinder, zusammen 15269888 Sektoren
Einheiten = Sektoren von 1 × 512 = 512 Bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Festplattenidentifikation: 0x000069b2

Gerät boot. Anfang Ende Blöcke Id System
/dev/sdc1p1 7812 250000 121094+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdc1p2 250001 3261718 1505859 83 Linux


Platte /dev/sdc1: 7944 MByte, 7944011776 Byte
245 Köpfe, 62 Sektoren/Spur, 1021 Zylinder, zusammen 15515648 Sektoren
Einheiten = Sektoren von 1 × 512 = 512 Bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Festplattenidentifikation: 0x000bf7e3

Gerät boot. Anfang Ende Blöcke Id System
/dev/sdc1p1 1 250000 125000 83 Linux
/dev/sdc1p2 250001 3261718 1505859 83 Linux

The problem has been solved.

For some reason, "dd" failed to properly write the images, yet did not report any errors. Using win32diskimager.exe on Windows finally produced bootable SD cards. If anybody else encounters similar problems, it is recommended to try a different imaging tool, different OS and / or different SD card reader.