Rockpro64 doesn't boot

[SteveJ]

I recently received a Rockpro64 board and am having difficulty getting it to boot. I've searched through the forum and haven't found quite the same issue. The board itself is the 4GB version with a 20 mm heat sink, no eMMC module installed, powered by a 12V-5A power supply. and labeled V2.1 2018-07-02. The keyboard and mouse are both USB and an HDMI monitor is attached, as well as an Ethernet cable.

I used Etcher to try the following images: bionic-minimal-rockpro64-0.7.9-1067-arm64.img.xz, bionic-lxde-rockpro64-0.7.9-1067-arm64.img.xz, and stretch-minimal-rockpro64-0.7.9-1067-arm64.img.xz, but none has booted. When power is applied, the green LED comes on but no other LED lights up, not even the Ethernet one, and nothing appears on the monitor.

I've tried several microSD cards, all with the same result. I do have experience burning system images, having worked with Raspberry Pi systems. In fact one of the microSD cards I tried was previously used in a RPi2 both before and after the Rockpro64 attempts.

Does anyone have an idea of what to try next? Are there any checksums available for the download images?

Thanks.

[Luke]

How are you flashing the images ? did you unarchive the .xz first ?

[dukla2000]

Are there any checksums available for the download images?

Sadly no. But unlikely that is the problem.

I would suggest plugging away with the simplest setup you can, which means stick to bionic minimal until you get some progress.

I have never used etcher, but have flashed images (for multiple Arm SBCs starting with an original Pi) just fine with dd. Whether you start with an SD created by etcher, or do it manually as per steps 1-4 here, I would spend plenty of time on step 4 with the SDcard in your Pi.

lsblk should show it has 7 partitions - if not do steps 1-3 properly! You should be able to fsck especially p6 (a DOS partition) and p7 (the rootfs). You can even mount them, browse about and get some confidence that the card looks like it should work.

For step 5 I would go with just monitor and keyboard (mouse and network not necessary yet so eliminate from argument). RP64 should boot a couple of secs after power applied - when power applied green light on immediately, white LED should come on after 3-5 seconds once the OS load starts from the SDcard. Within 30 secs you should have had plenty of excitement on your screen, from what you say you have been here several times before without any excitement on your screen!

You can try a press on the reset button or to try the power button. It is hard to know if the power button is doing much on an unresponsive system, the low level indicator is probably just the lights on the RJ45 socket - it you are getting this desperate can always try plug the cable in and watching the light on your router as well! Last attempt to try elicit some response from your RP64 would be to try OTG mode. This is only a diagnostic to see if there is any life in there - I would guess if you do try this you can assume you do not have a bootable image and so I wouldn't expect any RP64 lights, only a new USB device on the other end of a cable plugged into the USB-C port of your RP64.

Otherwise I fear it has gone to meet its maker. Yeah a serial console may help, but my 6p says the pain of trying to work out how to setup/use it on a possibly dead board is vastly not worth the gain. Similarly you would need an eMMC and USB dongle to load it to bypass the SDcard socket a a point of failure. If you can get into OTG mode this becomes more relevant.

Good luck

[SteveJ]

How are you flashing the images ? did you unarchive the .xz first ?

I was using xzcat and piping it to dd until I saw all the references to Etcher and that's what I've been using since. I did unarchive the images, but after doing some tests it looks like Etcher will even do the unarchiving - at least for the zip and xz files I've tried.

[daimon]

I recently received a Rockpro64 board and am having difficulty getting it to boot. I've searched through the forum and haven't found quite the same issue. The board itself is the 4GB version with a 20 mm heat sink, no eMMC module installed, powered by a 12V-5A power supply. and labeled V2.1 2018-07-02. The keyboard and mouse are both USB and an HDMI monitor is attached, as well as an Ethernet cable.

I used Etcher to try the following images: bionic-minimal-rockpro64-0.7.9-1067-arm64.img.xz, bionic-lxde-rockpro64-0.7.9-1067-arm64.img.xz, and stretch-minimal-rockpro64-0.7.9-1067-arm64.img.xz, but none has booted. When power is applied, the green LED comes on but no other LED lights up, not even the Ethernet one, and nothing appears on the monitor.

I've tried several microSD cards, all with the same result. I do have experience burning system images, having worked with Raspberry Pi systems. In fact one of the microSD cards I tried was previously used in a RPi2 both before and after the Rockpro64 attempts.

Does anyone have an idea of what to try next? Are there any checksums available for the download images?

Thanks.

try stretch-minimal-rockpro64-0.7.11-1075-arm64.img.xzWhen I received rock64pro and tried to boot it, I tried the 4G, 16G, 32G SD card. The combination of the 32G SD card and the stretch-minimal-rockpro64-0.7.11-1075-arm64.img.xz can now be started. I am using dd to copy IMG under linux.

[SteveJ]

lsblk looks good:
sdb      8:16   1  29.7G  0 disk
├─sdb1   8:17   1   3.9M  0 part
├─sdb2   8:18   1    64K  0 part
├─sdb3   8:19   1     4M  0 part
├─sdb4   8:20   1     4M  0 part
├─sdb5   8:21   1     4M  0 part
├─sdb6   8:22   1   112M  0 part /media/steve/boot
└─sdb7   8:23   1   1.9G  0 part /media/steve/linux-root

fsck on /dev/sdb6 and /dev/sdb7 shows no errors

But there is no "excitement" when power is applied! No blinking lights on the RJ45 socket when a cable is attached to the router. I'll try the OTG route, but I fear the board may be toast.

[tux_on_tour]

lsblk looks good:
sdb      8:16   1  29.7G  0 disk
├─sdb1   8:17   1   3.9M  0 part
├─sdb2   8:18   1    64K  0 part
├─sdb3   8:19   1     4M  0 part
├─sdb4   8:20   1     4M  0 part
├─sdb5   8:21   1     4M  0 part
├─sdb6   8:22   1   112M  0 part /media/steve/boot
└─sdb7   8:23   1   1.9G  0 part /media/steve/linux-root

fsck on /dev/sdb6 and /dev/sdb7 shows no errors

But there is no "excitement" when power is applied! No blinking lights on the RJ45 socket when a cable is attached to the router. I'll try the OTG route, but I fear the board may be toast.

Try a differrent sdcard sometimes the cards do not boot even if written correctly, I have a cuple here that have the same problem, Samsung works fine most of the time.

[dukla2000]

But there is no "excitement" when power is applied! No blinking lights on the RJ45 socket when a cable is attached to the router. I'll try the OTG route, but I fear the board may be toast.

Me too  

Just ran a test on my board - absolutely nothing connected (no SD card, no eMMC, no PCIe, nothing in USB, nothing in RJ45, no HDMI).

Plug in power - green (Power) LED comes on. As do both (green & yellow) lights on RJ45. All stay on until I get bored.

If I push the reset button both LEDs on RJ45 flash off and come back on again. In fact as long as I hold the reset button down the RJ45 LEDs are off, and come back on as soon as I release the reset button.

If I push and hold the power button (for more like 5 seconds) both LEDs on RJ45 go out, green/power LED stays on. If I push power button again (about 1 second) both LEDs on RJ45 are back on.

So according to me the LEDs on RJ45 socket are good indicator of a bit of action after the initial excitement of the power LED. (And before the white LED indicates some OS progress.)