Pinebook won't boot (from eMMC)

[belfastraven]

I tried to go back to the default install of Debian. However, after dd to the eMMC, the PBP doesn't want to boot. The active LED goes on and flickers for some time, the backlight goes on, then the power LED goes out and after some time the backlight goes out as well. Then everything starts again.
I'm coming from Manjaro if that matters. Any ideas on how to recover from this (SD boot works fine)

When you boot from the SD card now, is the EMMC mounted or available to mount?  If not,  you may need to hit the reset button (28 on the diagram,  and it says reset (in timy, tiny letters :-) )

I assume when you dd'ed it you had a copy of the default image on your ssd card which you used as input?  

I have a MicroSD emmc Reader attachment--I believe  you can also get usb EMMC readers--which makes it easier to use something like etcher on your desktop to write the emmc. I believe that aside from the store having them,  you could get one from Amazon.  Also having a serial cable available makes debugging easier. 

If you are worried that something has happened to the emmc , itself,  you can always reinstall the manjaro, using their emmc installation sd, to make sure the hardware is still working,  then boot from their SD card version, download the default image to the sd card and dd it over  to the emmc...