My pbp is a sleek, black, flat brick, and won't boot from any kind of media

[user18130814200115]

Hiya PBP folks,

My new pinebook pro will not give any indication of booting regardless of media. Now before you tell me the PBP isn't brickable, let me say that I've searched the forums here and found lots of answers describing non-booting PBPs, but none of them match the behavior I'm seeing. Let me also run down what I've tried:

- I tried to power on with an SD card flashed with this image: https://github.com/nadiaholmquist/archiso-pbp/releases
(With a nice long hold on the power button.)

- I tried to power on with a USB drive flashed with that same arch linux image (on the opposite-side USB port from the SD card to eliminated the chance that it was something wrong with the mini-board).

- I tried removing the eMMC and disabling with the eMMC switch on the board and powering on with an SD or USB drive.

- I tried  disconnecting the battery and connecting the bypass cables and tried to power on using the eMMC, SD, and USB.

- I tried re-seating the mini-board connector cable.

- I tried pushing the reset button. A lot.

In all cases the only life of any kind the PBP will show is a red light for the battery indicator when the power supply is plugged in. (So _some_ kind of power is going through the system.)

Here's some background that may or may not be relevant:

I got this unit a month or two ago. From the very first time I booted it the keyboard didn't work correctly. It seems it was an unusual hardware problem with the keyboard, see this thread for details: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=11300

The PINE64 folks replaced the keyboard and shipped it back to me. Manjaro booted and the keyboard worked perfectly at that point. The first thing I did was try to boot it off the SD card with that Arch image because I wanted to install Arch. But the SD card would not boot and would not be recognized by Manjaro. _Before_ the keyboard was replaced, I had booted this same SD card with the same Arch Linux image (and when the keyboard didn't work correctly in Arch on the SD I knew it wasn't a software problem with the keyboard.) 

So I pacman -Syu updated Manjaro, including the uboot flash because I was hoping this might fix my SD card not reading. It was after that update that it would never boot again.

My guess:

I suspect there's probably two things going wrong at the same time (the really tricky problems are always compound like that!) I suspect the SD card reader (and possibly the mini board) is not working (hardware). And at the same time I toasted the eMMC with the uboot flash (software). But then why I can't I boot my USB drive? Is there a way to move USB up the boot order so the PBP wants to boot from it first?

I contacted PBP support about this, but since it (initially) sounds so much like the normal toasting of the eMMC, they sent me back to the forum to get your opinions on whether this is purely a software issue.

Let me know if you have any insights! And thanks for reading!

My sympathies go out to you, I have had similar problems on my machine.
The pinebook pro does not support USB boot.
I (and other users) could not get a live system to boot from certain SD cards.
Personally, I only got a SanDisk 16GB to work, I recommend you try this with the eMCC switch turned off.

PS. This may not be relevant, but I will still put it here.
I used a mackbook air to make my recovery sd using the default Disks program.
THIS NEVER WORKED! I only got a proper sd on windows using etcher and on linux using literally any disk burning utility such as Gnome Disks, dd and Unebootin.