Flashing of eMMC on Radxa Zero 3W fails

#1

I am trying to flash the eMMC on my brand new Radxa Zero 3W, but have failed so far.
I have installed and compiled rkdeveloptool following instructions from Radxa [1].

And I am able to see the device:

$ sudo rkdeveloptool ld
DevNo=1    Vid=0x2207,Pid=0x350a,LocationID=104    Maskrom

Unfortunately, every other command seems to fail:

$ sudo rkdeveloptool rci
Read Chip Info failed!

$ sudo rkdeveloptool wl 0 ~/Download
Write LBA failed!

I have also tried upgrade_tool, but receive the same error messages.
Has anyone had more success? What am I missing?

Any advice appreciated!

Cheers,
Bernd

–

[1] https://docs.radxa.com/en/zero/zero3/low-level-dev/rkdeveloptool?host-os=debian

#2

I still have not found a way to flash the Radxa Zero 3W via USB. The Radxa support team has not been able to fix the issue either.

However, I have found a workaround that allows me to flash the eMMC via an alternative route with reasonable effort:

  1. Flash linux image onto SD card
  2. Boot Radxa Zero 3W from SD card
  3. Configure network
  4. Copy image to Radxa Zero 3W via SSH
  5. Flash image to eMMC using dd command:
$ sudo dd if=<image> of=/dev/mmcblk0

Afterwards you can remove the SD card and the Radxa Zero 3 should boot from eMMC.

#3

Hey @langweiler I’m trying to follow your instructions with my Radxa Zero 3E, but I get " No space left on device" what image are you writing to the EMMC?

#4

Are you sure the Radxa Zero 3E is equipped with eMMC? I believe I read somewhere that it does not come with eMMC. I am using a Zero 3W with 2 GB of eMMC. The eMMC needs to be explicitly selected as option when buying the device.

#5

Can confirm above method works to get Debian image to emmc

#6

You mean 2GB ram and 16GB emmc?

#7

4GB ram 32GB Emma.

any idea how to erase the emmc and bring back to factory setting? doing this more to learn about the device, but haven’t been able to figure out how to erase the Emma on this.

#8

As I read conflicting things about the Zero3W, I get the “inference” that in order to boot onto eMMC, you need a minimum device of 2GB Ram and 16 GM of eMMC. Is that correct? I don’t remember that being mentioned anywhere in the sales documentation when I made my purchase of (2) Zero 3W: 1GB ram & 8GB of eMMC.