Trouble booting in Gentoo

[tdiggitydog]

Sometimes (but not that often) the dtb for a SPECIFIC device is appended to kernel,
but I doubt this is the case here
My pbp is setup this way (still)
using dd, copy 1st sector (mbr) somewhere, give name like emmc.mbr
copy 1st 16 MB somewhere (named as 1st-16.emmc.$DISTRO)
use something like dd if=/dev/emmc of=~/1st-16.emmc.manj bs=1M count=16,,,,, change emmc as appropriate
(that is emmc = mmcblk1 OR mmcblk2 OR maybe mmcblk0)
blank,,, dd if=/dev/zero  of=/dev/emmc bs=1M count=16
restore mbr,,,,, dd if=emmc.mbr of=/dev/emmc  (emmc.mbr should only be 512 bytes
(unless GPT ,, use 34 sectors,,,, dd default bs is 512 bytes so only need count)
So, if you check with fdisk /dev/emmc should all show correctly
Rest of 1st 16 M is /dev/zero,, blank,,,, so only uboot on SD can be used, it is the only one
If you want to restore just dd 1st-16M back to emmc
---edit---
I have never seen (unless very old) an arm device without dtb,
except for specific devices only, appended to kernel,,
so I think the gentoo is broken

Thank you, I will try when I get some more time!

What we need is a minimal & bootable Gentoo image. I too wanted to use Gentoo, but had to give up because of the complexities on ARM64.

Plus, the kernel would be minimal too. Only activate actual hardware and software necessary to boot a Pinebook Pro. With the intent that a user would customize things after, (like adding CIFS support).

That would be great, honestly. Gentoo is my favorite distro, and I really wanted to have it on my pbp, even if it was just to try it out. I love the idea of essentially building the operating system and making it as minimal as possible, only having things you need or want.