rpi3b 1.2 & Allo Boss DAC image tribulations

Troubleshooting
1

Had this setup running last years but something went wrong and had to reinstall on new SD.

Download of https://dietpi.com/downloads/images/DietPi_RPi-ARMv7-Bullseye_AlloGUI.7z and burned with etcher on a spare sd (w:14mb/s r:24mb/s need to look for a faster one)
Attached to monitor and power the rpi on
root login
change hostname, pass, keyboard US, Timezone
reboot
disabled eth, kept wifi sources (in some versions of this setup i disabled ETH last)
disabled ipv6
enabled wifi adapter
reboot
setup build in wifi, setup SSID, countrycode, wifi connects
reboot
wifi still connected
change NTP to local router and set NTP check on Boot+Daily
reboot
NTP works
mount NAS Music folder to /mnt/dietpi_userdata/Music/nas/
reboot
Wifi & NTP works & /mnt/dietpi_userdata/Music/nas/ is mounted (on my old install i had to manually ssh and do mount -a so i am pretty happy that this has been sorted out)
so far so good
on another computer browse to the rpi hostname
Allo Boss page shows up
switch Soundcard to Allo Boss DAC
Browser goes into blank page, LEDs on rpi dont show any blinking
Nothing happens after Minutes

In one trial run i managed to switch to Allo Boss DAC in the Browser but then build in WiFi stopped working

I am at a loss, please help

2

Hi,

if you try reboot, anything visible on your screen? Any activities on LED during boot?

3

Hi, i was always able to reboot but the build in wifi is just crap. It dawned me that i had similar problems back then and either stayed with ethernet or used a wifi dongle. Wasted quiet a few Hours on trying to figure out why build in wifi of the rpi3b V1.2 randomly decides to not work any more.

Also it helped using a copy of the /boot/dietpi.txt for fresh setups as this was the only way to get build-in wifi back to work with fresh installs but i would have to report that the dietpi.txt does not take any of the values i fed it, except the

CONFIG_SOUNDCARD=allo-boss-dac-pcm512x-audio

was integrated during first initial boot, which made me happy and cut down allot of testing time.
Also a dietpi-wifi.txt was missing so i created one and added aSSID and key though build-in wifi had to be semi manually setup since it somehow picked up the SSID and pass from the dietpi-wifi.txt i had created.
Hope this info helps to clear out some bugs.

To sum it up, do not use build in wifi of rpi 3b V1.2 for anything as it tends to crap out and don’t forget about this fact two years later!

4

I spoke to soon about /boot/dietpi.txt adding the DAC, turns out there was no sound coming out, i had to switch the Soundcard to none first and then add the Allo Boss DAC for it to work.
Is /boot/dietpi.txt deprecated?

5

nope, /boot/dietpi.txt is one of the main configuration files for DietPi themselves.

Maybe MichaIng could have a look.

6

CONFIG_SOUNDCARD is not something that is applied on first boot, only the AUTO_SETUP_ settings are. To auto setup soundcard on first boot, you need to install ALSA. So this would work:
AUTO_SETUP_AUTOMATED=1
AUTO_SETUP_INSTALL_SOFTWARE_ID=5
CONFIG_SOUNDCARD=allo-boss-dac-pcm512x-audio
And to skip even the license question on first interactive login (just because this is new :slight_smile:):
AUTO_SETUP_ACCEPT_LICENSE=1

Btw for dietpi-wifi.txt you can copy /var/lib/dietpi/dietpi-wifi.db from the old system. It’s just moved out of the /boot partition where it would be readable system-wide due to missing UNIX permission on FAT32, which is not nice for WiFi passwords :wink:.