how to make it run?

[KNERD]

Even with the SOEdge baseboard, still would not boot? Maybe defective?

Confirmed.  The baseboard did not help at all. 

The part that I could not figure out at all was the "image" provided on the wiki (as well as the resulting image when I used the SDK to build one from source) was not like any other SBC image that I have ever seen.  I tried various methods of writing them onto SD cards and eMMC modules.  No matter what I tried, the resulting image (now on an SD card or eMMC module) did not have any partitions.  Usually, there is at least something like /dev/mmcblk0p1, and possibly /dev/mmcblk0p2 and /dev/mmcblk0p3 depending on the boot partition scheme.  However, every time I wrote the SOEdge test "image" to a card (yes, even using a USB-A male-to-male cable and a Rock64 like the instructions said to do), all that would ever result was a /dev/mmcblk0, the same thing you would get with an *unformatted* card.  I could never get beyond that point.  No partition meant nothing to mount or inspect.  Nothing would ever boot, no boot messages would pop up.  It was as if I was booting it without a card even installed, or worse.  I never even got any error messages to come across the serial console. 

I might have done something wrong, but I ran out of ideas.  Defective?  Possibly.  Not my call to make though.  I just gave up, ran out of ideas, moved on to something else.  That does not mean it is defective without a doubt, it just means that it was a nut that I was not able to crack.  I would not be surprised if a working image came along in the next few weeks/months, if for no other reason than Murphy's Law to make me look stupid and impatient.

I am just surprised that nobody else has chimed in here except disappointed owners.  Maybe if other devices start to get based on the same SoC, a working image will eventually emerge, or at least a fresh SDK that does not *require* Ubuntu 16.04, for crying out loud. 

Have you contacted their sales support email to ask them what is going on?
I would expect a better written wiki for something they are selling.

I was looking at buying, but not now with all the complaints, and lack of input from them on what is going on. Even on the monthly posts, they would mentioned very little about the SOC.