lights but no action

[mystic221]

Hello all, 

I am admittedly a novice when it comes to the rock64. I recently purchased one through the pine64 store along with the recommended power supply.

I am attempting to use it as a little NAS running the stretch-openmediavault-rock64-0.6.44-239-armhf.img.xz. I loaded the image via etcher onto a 32gb sandisk sd card and when I power up the device I get white, red and green lights all solid and unchanging. Ethernet lights never light up (plugged into router lan part via verified working cat5 cable) and no output is displayed via the hdmi port.

I have tried 2 or 3 versions of the stretch openmediavault, the most recent being 0.6.57-270 and the results have not changed.
I tried Armbian Xenial Legacy Kernal 4.4.y flashed with win32diskimager and the result was the same... white, red and green lights, no ethernet, no hdmi output.

I'm not sure where to go from this point and any help would be greatly appreciated.

[MichaelRock]

Hi,

unless there is issues with the images, which I doubt (mostly because one could be flawed, but many versions probably not), the most probable issue source is how do you actually burn the image to the SD card. And do not tell what you think you are doing but what you actually do without thinking of it (as many beginners think of doing something they actually don't do).

Another way to figure out what's wrong is to use the serial console, there is some documents on this forum which may help.

[pfeerick]

It can be a number of things -

a) Image file could be corrupt - although I suspect the tool used to unpack it would pick up the checksum mismatch when decompressing the file. But it is still possible.
b) It may be the rock64 may not like the Sandisk SD card - unfortunately not all SD cards are alike, and some are just not suited for use in SBCs. Try a Samsung EVO card instead... and it'll probably perform better on the rock64 than the Sandisk card anyway.
c) There could be a fault with the power supply. You're using the recommended one, so voltage and amperage shouldn't be an issue... but occasionally there is a lemon... murphys law...
d) The rock64 could have a fault... unlikely, but again, occasionally there is a lemon.

A USB to serial adapter, USB uart, serial console cable, serial debug cable (etc, etc) which is 3.3v compatible would be a good thing to have in your toolbox for when working with SBCs like the rock64. Allows you to access the serial command line interface, and debug what is happening as the system starts up, as well as interact with the system without required a network interface or keyboard/monitor connected.

[Rocklobster]

Another possible thing to look at is your power supply. Yes it the recommended power supply you use but even new power supplies can be faulty. If you had access to an alternative power supply it would help to rule this possibility out.

Also you could measure the output from your power supply to see if you are getting a constant reading under load. This suggestion did help another user who was experiencing similar problems with his board.

[mystic221]

Thank you all for the suggestions.  I am going to order an USB to TTL serial cable, new samsung evo sd card, card reader and power adapter. Once I get those items hopefully through the process of elimination we'll find a solution.