Setup Difficulties

Products Support Orange Pi i96
#1

I am having difficulties setting up the i96 for the first time. I have an sd card which I have flashed the ubuntu server image to (http://www.orangepi.org/downloadresources/). Next Installed the pl2303 driver and hooked up the ttl. When I connected the driver said “PL2303HXA Phased out since 2013”. How do I connect to the board? Putty just beeps at me when I attempt to connect. I downgraded the driver to a older version but it doesn’t seem to like the 921600 speed and also will not connect.

How do I connect to the board?

#2

A couple of things are a bit confusing in your message;
“Installed the pl2303 driver” – how? What do you mean by this?
“PL2303HXA Phased out since 2013” – what said this? It certainly wasn’t the driver, which does NOT contain that string; pl2303.c « serial « usb « drivers - kernel/git/stable/linux.git - Linux kernel stable tree

Most distro kernels should be built with the pl2303 driver enabled as “CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_PL2303=y” and therefore will NOT require you do to anything beyond just plugging the dongle in. It will then automatically be registered as /dev/ttyUSBx

#3

The pl2303 driver was on the windows machine. And the device manager had the phased out error.
This is the machine which I am trying to connect to the pi to change the network settings so that I can then log in and begin working.

#4

I am new to this board so I am making assumptions based off of the docs, but it is my understanding that I have to have an sd card with the proper OS installed, then connect the serial debug to connect to another computer(windows/linux) to initially set up the os (wifi) which then I can connect and ssh like a normal linux distro.

Initially I tried the ubuntu image linked on the website.

#5

I see. Then there is an easy solution: don’t use windows. That will do nothing but frustrate you because nothing ever works on it.

#6

ok, which program do I use on ubuntu to make that initial connection to the board?

#7

Any that you like.

screen, cu, minicom, putty, etc.

Personally, I usually use screen, you would launch it with something like screen /dev/ttyUSB0 921600

#9

Yes, just to connect using ssh you need IP addres of board, right? Sorry, but I did not understand the explanation how to get the IP address using two android mobiles, writen in “chinese english”.
And scanning the network does not show any new device …

#10

Some time ago I probably came across the same problem.

The point is that when the system is started for the first time (exactly according to the instructions in the manual), boot messages and then a login will be displayed on the terminal connected to the so-called diagnostic serial port (recommended PuTTY with USB adapter). User can log in (user = orangepi or root, pw = orangepi) and according to the instructions, run the “orange-config” tool, configure wifi and enable ssh server.

This all works, but once you halt or shutdown system, or just unplug the power, the system will no longer activate the diagnostic port for login. The next time you try to boot, all boot messages are displayed on the terminal, but the user can no longer log in. According to the manual, it should be possible over WiFi using ssh, but perhaps no one is able to understand method of getting IP address described in the manual.

Fortunately, I found a simple solution on the Orange Pi forum for the 2G IOT board.

As soon as you log in for the first time (i.e. while the terminal is communicating with you) you must remove the “alza” sound support package using command:

sudo apt-get purge alsa-utils

If yo do it, system will communicate with you via the diagnostic console on all subsequent boots.

Explanation? Do not ask me …

As for "PL2303HXA Phased out since 2013”, see
https://granasat.ugr.es/2017/10/prolific-usb-to-serial-fix-official-solution-to-code-10-error/

Best solution is to buy just FT232 based adapters …