Boot Failure with Hifiberry DAC installed (solved)

[spyro]

I just purchased a RPi3 Model B and a Hifiberry DAC+. Flashed the latest version of Runeaudio (RuneAudio_rpi2_rp3_0.4-beta_20160321_2GB.img) and everything works perfectly with the bare board. I made the config changes to enable I2S and the correct overlay for the DAC+. When I actually install the DAC and try to boot it never gets beyond the "rainbow" screen.
I also tried disabling Bluetooth as was suggested for earlier releases, but it made no difference.
This is my first attempt with RPi and also with Runeaudio. Any suggestions for troubleshooting this problem would be appreciated. Thanks.

[hondagx35]

Hi spyro,

does it boot with the DAC removed but configured?

Where did you that you have to configure I2S?
Only enable Hifiberry DAC+!

Frank

[spyro]

It boots fine with DAC settings enabled, but without the DAC installed. Here is the first part of my config file:

# Uncomment some or all of these to enable the optional hardware interfaces
# Params:
# i2c_arm Set to "on" to enable the ARM's i2c interface
# (default "off")
# i2c_vc Set to "on" to enable the i2c interface
# usually reserved for the VideoCore processor
# (default "off")
# i2c_arm_baudrate Set the baudrate of the ARM's i2c interface
# (default "100000")
# i2c_vc_baudrate Set the baudrate of the VideoCore i2c interface
# (default "100000")
# i2c_baudrate An alias for i2c_arm_baudrate
# i2s Set to "on" to enable the i2s interface
# (default "off")
# spi Set to "on" to enable the spi interfaces
# (default "off")
# act_led_trigger Choose which activity the LED tracks.
# Use "heartbeat" for a nice load indicator.
# (default "mmc")
# act_led_activelow Set to "on" to invert the sense of the LED
# (default "off")
# act_led_gpio Set which GPIO pin to use for the activity LED
# (in case you want to connect it to an external
# device)
# (default "16" on a non-Plus board, "47" on a
# Plus or Pi 2)
# N.B. It is recommended to only enable those interfaces that are needed.
# Leaving all interfaces enabled can lead to unwanted behaviour (i2c_vc
# interfering with Pi Camera, I2S and SPI hogging GPIO pins, etc.)
# Note also that i2c, i2c_arm and i2c_vc are aliases for the physical
# interfaces i2c0 and i2c1. Use of the numeric variants is still possible
# but deprecated because the ARM/VC assignments differ between board
# revisions. The same board-specific mapping applies to i2c_baudrate,
# and the other i2c baudrate parameters.

#dtparam=i2c_arm=on
#dtparam=i2c_vc=on
dtparam=i2s=on
#dtparam=spi=on
#dtparam=act_led_trigger=mmc

#dtparam=uart1=off
dtoverlay=pi3-disable-bt-overlay

# Uncomment one of these lines to enable an audio interface
#dtoverlay=hifiberry-dac
dtoverlay=hifiberry-dacplus
#dtoverlay=hifiberry-digi
#dtoverlay=hifiberry-amp
#dtoverlay=iqaudio-dac
#dtoverlay=iqaudio-dacplus

# Uncomment to enable the lirc-rpi module
# Params: gpio_out_pin GPIO pin for output (default "17")
# gpio_in_pin GPIO pin for input (default "18")
# gpio_in_pull Pull up/down/off on the input pin
# (default "down")
# sense Override the IR receive auto-detection logic:
# "1" = force active high
# "0" = force active low
# "-1" = use auto-detection
# (default "-1")
# softcarrier Turn the software carrier "on" or "off"
# (default "on")
# invert "on" = invert the output pin (default "off")
# debug "on" = enable additional debug messages
# (default "off")
#dtoverlay=lirc-rpi
#dtparam=gpio_out_pin=17
#dtparam=gpio_in_pin=18
#dtparam=gpio_in_pull=down

[spyro]

P.S. The notes at the top of the config say to enable the I2S. Are you saying I should not?

[hondagx35]

Hi,

i never did it and works perfect.

Frank

[spyro]

I tried it with the I2S commented out and it still fails to boot. Also, with the DAC installed the green LED blinks 8 times in a repeated cycle.

[hondagx35]

[spyro]

Solved. This is from Hifiberry support and it worked:

Since Linux Kernel 4.x, the Raspberry Pi firmware reads the content of the EEPROM and analyses it before booting the Linux kernel. In rare cases it happens that the content can't be read and the system hangs with a rainbow screen. We haven't exactly found out when this happens, but there is an easy workaround to fix this.

Unplug the HiFiBerry card, boot the system and add the line:

force_eeprom_read=0
to /boot/config.txt (or wherever this file is located on the distributions you're using).