I've since tried a couple more images, and so far it seems to be the consequence of a change post 0.6.27.
xenial-minimal-rock64-0.6.34-213-arm64.img.xz failed on the 4GB rock64 - https://pastebin.com/GikCB3kF
The same image you tried, the xenial-minimal-rock64-0.6.33-211-arm64.img.xz, failed on both the 4GB and the 1GB rock64s. https://pastebin.com/J7mE13fe
I then tried xenial-containers-rock64-0.6.27-196-arm64.img.xz and it was fine (https://pastebin.com/x9nX8fig), so I'll keep working forwards till I find which version breaks things first, and then try it against both the v2.0 4GB rock64 board and the v1.1 1GB rock64 boards. Changing the memory cards didn't make any difference, so the Samsung Evo+ isn't the culprit. The issue does seem power/thermal related, as when it locks if I don't power the board down it gets pretty toasty... I'm expecting to see it all go wrong at 0.6.29 due to those cpuburn tweaks...
Edit - nope, it's looking like it's solely the memory speed tweaks in 0.6.28... xenial-minimal-rock64-0.6.28-197-arm64.img.xz just borked - https://pastebin.com/1YLrZtmS and https://pastebin.com/xpte3v5B
xenial-minimal-rock64-0.6.34-213-arm64.img.xz failed on the 4GB rock64 - https://pastebin.com/GikCB3kF
The same image you tried, the xenial-minimal-rock64-0.6.33-211-arm64.img.xz, failed on both the 4GB and the 1GB rock64s. https://pastebin.com/J7mE13fe
I then tried xenial-containers-rock64-0.6.27-196-arm64.img.xz and it was fine (https://pastebin.com/x9nX8fig), so I'll keep working forwards till I find which version breaks things first, and then try it against both the v2.0 4GB rock64 board and the v1.1 1GB rock64 boards. Changing the memory cards didn't make any difference, so the Samsung Evo+ isn't the culprit. The issue does seem power/thermal related, as when it locks if I don't power the board down it gets pretty toasty... I'm expecting to see it all go wrong at 0.6.29 due to those cpuburn tweaks...
Edit - nope, it's looking like it's solely the memory speed tweaks in 0.6.28... xenial-minimal-rock64-0.6.28-197-arm64.img.xz just borked - https://pastebin.com/1YLrZtmS and https://pastebin.com/xpte3v5B