Can't Enable SPI on DietPi Radxa zero

Troubleshooting
7

To apply device tree overlays in general:

  1. Check /boot/dtb/*/overlay for actually available overlays.
  2. Check the overlay_prefix variable in /boot/dietpiEnv.txt.
  3. Apply the filename of the overlay without the prefix and first dash, and without the .dtbo file extension.

For the Radxa Zero, the overlay prefix is meson, and these are the available overlays:

image
image445×785 9.49 KB

You hence need to set overlays=g12a-radxa-zero-spi-spidev to enable SPI. Those parameters cannot be applied here, I guess you would need to apply them via /etc/modprobe.d config as kernel module/driver parameters.

Although, I just checked the source code of that overlay, and weirdly it explicitly disables two SPI nodes: build/patch/kernel/archive/meson64-6.6/overlay/meson-g12a-radxa-zero-spi-spidev.dts at 9ce005ff2a56859a22fb952377e501c690a24994 · armbian/build · GitHub

No idea why, probably they are enabled OOTB on Radxa’s own kernel builds, and Armbian did not check whether it hence makes sense like that. There is however an alternative device tree as well, which enables at least SPI1: build/patch/kernel/archive/meson64-6.6/dt/meson-g12a-radxa-zero-spidev.dts at 9ce005ff2a56859a22fb952377e501c690a24994 · armbian/build · GitHub

Can you try this: Remove the overlays= line again (and the param_ line anyway, and instead:

G_CONFIG_INJECT 'fdtfile=' 'fdtfile=amlogic/meson-g12a-radxa-zero-spidev.dtb' /boot/dietpiEnv.txt
reboot