TuringPi 2 on Nico Maas

Turing Pi 2 - Retrofitting an EMC2301 Fancontroller

Sat, 16 Nov 2024 19:39:50 +0000

The Turing Pi 2 (v.2.4) has actually some secrets that just start to get uncovered. Looking closely at the board, you will find the red marked area with what seems to be an unpopulated 4-pin fan header (J16) and an unpopulated IC spot (U109).

These spots were, as found out by Sam Edwards (CFSworks) actually a place to install Molex 47053-1000 4-pin fan connector and a Microchip EMC2301 fan controller. It is not clear why they were left out of the production model, probably for cost savings, but without that the Turing Pi 2 lost a nice smooth fan controller. However, thanks to Sam Edwards work, the chip is now supported by the Turing Pi 2 BMC, so that after retrofitting, this will just work out of the box!

Install a bootloader onto Turing RK1 eMMC memory

Fri, 13 Sep 2024 16:45:45 +0000

The Turing RK1 is a new Compute Module, made for the Turing Pi 2 board and with compability to the Nvidia Jetson cards in mind. While the board has some impressive specs ( https://docs.turingpi.com/docs/turing-rk1-specs-and-io-ports ) it had one small issue: The used Rockchip RK3588 needed a bootloader on its eMMC to be able to boot from an attached NVMe drive. As no isolated bootloader was available, most people flashed a whole OS onto the eMMC - just to be able to use the attched NVMe drive. This process can take quite a while via the Turing Pi 2 board ( e.g. 60 - 90 minutes: https://docs.turingpi.com/docs/turing-rk1-flashing-os ) it was never a good option.

Repairing a Turing Pi 2

Sun, 03 Dec 2023 17:56:27 +0000

Intro

In April 2023 I finally got my Turing Pi 2 - happy to finally got it into my hands I plugged it in, headed over to the Turing Pi 2 Github ( https://github.com/turing-machines/BMC-Firmware ) got myself the latest BMC firmware and started to flash it. Thats when things got wrong: The power supply coils started to screech - and seconds later I was greeted with blue smoke and a dead Turing Pi 2. The firmware update actually flashed the board into a paper weight.