What to can't boot from TF card, EMMC system broken - any advice?do guys?
Hey guys,
I’ve been having a bit of a struggle with my Pinebook Pro and could really use some advice. Here’s what happened:
When I got the device here in China, the previous owner had already messed up the system on the EMMC. I downloaded a Kali image, booted from the TF card, and tried to write it to the EMMC—but the process kept freezing with a blinking red light.
A friend here suggested ditching Kali for Debian, so I DD’d Armbian straight to the EMMC. That didn’t boot either, and later even my TF card with Kali wouldn’t boot. I realized I was locked out.
After some searching, I tried DietPi. It actually worked! I got in that night. But the next day, while trying to install xfce4, a package failed and broke apt. I managed a rough fix with some help (thanks DeepSeek), but on the next try, another package failed.
With no spare TF card around, I tried to manually fix apt… and ended up breaking glibc. Now the screen stays blank on boot.
I thought making a new TF card would save me, but the Pinebook won’t boot from it anymore—it just goes to the broken EMMC. I’m pretty stuck at this point.
Has anyone dealt with something like this? Any way to force TF card boot or recover the EMMC? I’d really appreciate any tips!
I’ve been having a bit of a struggle with my Pinebook Pro and could really use some advice. Here’s what happened:
When I got the device here in China, the previous owner had already messed up the system on the EMMC. I downloaded a Kali image, booted from the TF card, and tried to write it to the EMMC—but the process kept freezing with a blinking red light.
A friend here suggested ditching Kali for Debian, so I DD’d Armbian straight to the EMMC. That didn’t boot either, and later even my TF card with Kali wouldn’t boot. I realized I was locked out.
After some searching, I tried DietPi. It actually worked! I got in that night. But the next day, while trying to install xfce4, a package failed and broke apt. I managed a rough fix with some help (thanks DeepSeek), but on the next try, another package failed.
With no spare TF card around, I tried to manually fix apt… and ended up breaking glibc. Now the screen stays blank on boot.
I thought making a new TF card would save me, but the Pinebook won’t boot from it anymore—it just goes to the broken EMMC. I’m pretty stuck at this point.
Has anyone dealt with something like this? Any way to force TF card boot or recover the EMMC? I’d really appreciate any tips!
