Ok makes sense, just thought maybe someone has some secret sauce...  Just for the sake of posterity here is what I was able to achieve so far:

I am able to get to the install screen using the iso after after installing UEFI on the board but then it blanks out

I am also able to make it work using .dtb following the debian instructions here: https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/96Boards/HiKey960 (using the reference kernel in the bottom in order to make stuff work - so I guess not mainline...) and then transplanting centos aarch64 rootfs to that, i.e. only userspace tools (I think that's the term used?). 

Finally, I can't donate a board :( but being creative,  I may be able to set up remote access to mine if that would be helpful.  I could have you ssh into a system that is connected to its serial console (via usb).

Cheers




On Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 3:30 PM Johnny Hughes <johnny@centos.org> wrote:
On 10/25/2018 04:50 PM, Skorpeo Skorpeo wrote:
> Has anyone been able to install centos using iso on a Hikey 960?  The
> wiki says "The Hikey from 96boards mostly works, but setup is complex.
> The installer currently cannot be used as one would traditionally expect."
>
> Any guides out there on how to get it to work?  I am only able to get it
> to the initial installation menu but no further, I tried playing with
> various kernel parameters but to no avail.
>
> Any guidance or suggestions would be appreciated!

I have no idea .. if someone wants to donate a board, I'll try to figure
it out and put the info on the wiki.

There could be several sticking points .. are all the drivers in the
mainline kernel.

The main issue here is those machines are armv8 (aarch64) but they do
not have uefi support .. that means that the standard CentOS-7 aarch64
installer will not work.

What you would instead need to do is BASICALLY either use armhfp (32bit)
install .. OR create a 64bit image similar to or armhfp 32 bit images
and then use a 64bit uboot.

I have no idea if our uboot has 64 bit compiled software for that board
.. and we would need to create a 64bit image (which we need to try to do
anyway).

One thing to keep in mind is our armhfp distro is designed for the hobby
type boards .. BUT our aarch64 distro is designed to run on large 64bit
UEFI arm servers, but hobby boards that don't follow the UEFI standard
and have limited RAM (that board as 3GB), etc.


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