Advanced Topics

A computer is a complex system where hardware and software interact, and sometimes, unpredicted problems may appear. Should you experience issues with MNT Pocket Reform, please use our online troubleshooting guides via https://support.mnt.re. If your issue isn’t listed you can submit a custom message to us via the same link.

Updating the Firmware

If there’s trouble related to charging or power, or the functionality of the keyboard and trackball, you can try to update the System Controller Firmware and the Keyboard Firmware.

The recommended way to do this is using the GNOME Firmware application. If you’re unsure, refer to https://support.mnt.re.

For reference, the source code of the firmware is here:

Serial Console

If you need to do low-level console debugging, there is a pin header with serial ports (UARTs) on the motherboard.

You can wire up a 3.3V USB-to-UART adapter to 3 of the pins of connector J16, depending on the correct serial port for your Processor Module (see the following tables). Assuming that the ports of the motherboard are on the right, the serial port connector is on the top left of the board, and the pins are numbered from left to right.

Pin

Function

1

S2 GND, connect to GND of your adapter

2

S2 UART2_RXD, connect to TX of your adapter

3

S2 UART2_TXD, connect to RX of your adapter

4

S1 GND, connect to GND of your adapter

5

S1 UART1_RXD, connect to TX of your adapter

6

S1 UART1_TXD, connect to RX of your adapter

Module

Port

Baud

RK3588

S1

1500000

i.MX 8M Plus

S2

115200

RCM4-BPi/A311D

S2

115200

Then, use a terminal program such as tio on your host computer:

# See table for baud rate
tio /dev/ttyUSB0 -b 1500000

Please note that kernel output could be suppressed by the kernel parameter loglevel=3. Override this parameter if you need to see more output.