Nothing boots on my 1GB A5E

Cubie Series
1

Well I just spent an entire day trying to get this board to boot.

Tried different SD cards, Kingston 32GB, SanDisk 16GB. Tried every Radxa image I could find. Even the T6 one.

The only thing I have acheived today is getting mu UART dongle connected up to see some uart boot messages following power on of the A5E.

I even tried the Ambian image I saw in another post in here in case that worked… it didn’t - it did even less output than the others before hanging. —>

U-Boot SPL 2026.01_armbian-2026.01-S127a-P60fe-Hc6a9-V2b7c-Bd0d2-R448a (Jun 01 2026 - 06:29:39 +0000)

DRAM: 1024 MiB

2

There is a glitch in Arbian for 1GB. Here is a fix that worked on mine.

3

Hello… Thank you so much for this…. it still isn’t working but its getting further LOL.

I unxz that file and Balena Etchered it to my SD Card.

Connnected to my A5E I have… My laptop USB serial dongle Rx\Tx\Gnd connected to UART0.

A 256GB eNMC card (ebay, unknown if working as yet) plugged into m.2 socket.

The SD card plugged into the SD socket.

and I am using a USB C mains adapter PSU. Not yet proven if it has enough amps to supply the A5E but I would think so.

I have a HDMI monitor but its not plugged in to the A5E as yet (trying to reduce all the unknowns at the moment trying to get it to boot).

1st power on attempt…

Gets as far as “Hit any key to stop autoboot: 1”… and it hangs. I think it is stuck because I don’t have a USB keyboard plugged in.

2nd attempt (with a USB keyboard plugged in)

Gets as far as “Failed to load ‘/boot/dtb/allwinner/overlay/sun55i-a527-fixup.scr’“… and it hangs.

Here is the full UART0 output –>

U-Boot SPL 2026.01_armbian-2026.01-S127a-Pd40e-Hc6a9-V2b7c-Bd0d2-R448a (Jun 22 2026 - 14:26:24 +0800)

DRAM: 1024 MiB

Trying to boot from MMC1

NOTICE: BL31: v2.13.0(debug):armbian

NOTICE: BL31: Built : 12:53:41, Jun 18 2026

NOTICE: BL31: Detected Allwinner A523 SoC (1890)

NOTICE: BL31: Found U-Boot DTB at 0xa0bd3d8, model: Radxa Cubie A5E

INFO: Configuring SPC Controller

INFO: BL31: Platform setup done

INFO: GICv3 without legacy support detected.

INFO: ARM GICv3 driver initialized in EL3

INFO: Maximum SPI INTID supported: 287

INFO: BL31: Initializing runtime services

INFO: BL31: cortex_a55: CPU workaround for erratum 1530923 was applied

INFO: PSCI: Suspend is unavailable

INFO: BL31: Preparing for EL3 exit to normal world

INFO: Entry point address = 0x4a000000

INFO: SPSR = 0x3c9

U-Boot 2026.01_armbian-2026.01-S127a-Pd40e-Hc6a9-V2b7c-Bd0d2-R448a (Jun 22 2026 - 14:26:24 +0800) Allwinner Technology

CPU: Allwinner A523 (SUN55I)

Model: Radxa Cubie A5E

DRAM: 1 GiB

sunxi_set_gate: (CLK#35) unhandled

Core: 88 devices, 25 uclasses, devicetree: separate

WDT: Not starting watchdog@2050000

MMC: mmc@4020000: 0

Loading Environment from FAT… Unable to use mmc 0:1…

In: serial@2500000

Out: serial@2500000

Err: serial@2500000

Net: eth0: ethernet@4500000

starting USB…

USB EHCI 1.00

USB OHCI 1.0

USB EHCI 1.00

USB OHCI 1.0

ERROR: USB-error: DATAOVERRUN: The amount of data returned by the endpoint exceeded

either the size of the maximum data packet allowed

from the endpoint (found in MaximumPacketSize field

of ED) or the remaining buffer size. (8)

ERROR: USB-error: DATAOVERRUN: The amount of data returned by the endpoint exceeded

either the size of the maximum data packet allowed

from the endpoint (found in MaximumPacketSize field

of ED) or the remaining buffer size. (8)

ERROR: USB-error: DATAOVERRUN: The amount of data returned by the endpoint exceeded

either the size of the maximum data packet allowed

from the endpoint (found in MaximumPacketSize field

of ED) or the remaining buffer size. (8)

ERROR: USB-error: DATAOVERRUN: The amount of data returned by the endpoint exceeded

either the size of the maximum data packet allowed

from the endpoint (found in MaximumPacketSize field

of ED) or the remaining buffer size. (8)

ERROR: USB-error: DATAOVERRUN: The amount of data returned by the endpoint exceeded

either the size of the maximum data packet allowed

from the endpoint (found in MaximumPacketSize field

of ED) or the remaining buffer size. (8)

ERROR: USB-error: DATAOVERRUN: The amount of data returned by the endpoint exceeded

either the size of the maximum data packet allowed

from the endpoint (found in MaximumPacketSize field

of ED) or the remaining buffer size. (8)

Bus usb@4101000: 1 USB Device(s) found

Bus usb@4101400: 1 USB Device(s) found

Bus usb@4200000: 1 USB Device(s) found

Bus usb@4200400: 2 USB Device(s) found

scanning usb for storage devices… 0 Storage Device(s) found

Hit any key to stop autoboot: 1

Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0<0x1b>[K

PCIe: Acquiring resources…

PCIe: All resources acquired. Starting power-on sequence…

PCIe: Toggling external device reset (PERST#)…

PCIe: Hardware power-on sequence successful.

PCIe: Disabling DBI write protection…

PCIe: DBI region: 0x04800000-0x04c80000

PCIe: IO region: 0x21000000-0x22000000

PCIe: MEM region: 0x22000000-0x30000000

PCIe: CFG region: 0x20000000-0x21000000

PCIe: Lanes: 1, Max Speed: Gen2

Link Status: 0x00000004

RDLH_LINK_UP: 0

SMLH_LINK_UP: 0

LINK_SPEED: 0

LINK_WIDTH: 0

Link Status: 0x00000004

RDLH_LINK_UP: 0

SMLH_LINK_UP: 0

LINK_SPEED: 0

LINK_WIDTH: 0

Link Status: 0x00100017

RDLH_LINK_UP: 1

SMLH_LINK_UP: 1

LINK_SPEED: 0

LINK_WIDTH: 1

pcie link up success

PCIe: Link active at Gen2

Device 0: Vendor: 0x1e95 Rev: 25301115 Prod: TW0M3TJT9DH00217008O

Type: Hard Disk

Capacity: 244198.3 MB = 238.4 GB (500118192 x 512)

… is now current device

** No partition table - nvme 0 **

Couldn’t find partition nvme 0:1

switch to partitions #0, OK

mmc0 is current device

Scanning mmc 0:1…

Found U-Boot script /boot/boot.scr

4641 bytes read in 3 ms (1.5 MiB/s)

## Executing script at 4fc00000

U-boot loaded from SD

Boot script loaded from mmc

190 bytes read in 2 ms (92.8 KiB/s)

Load fdt: /boot/dtb/allwinner/sun55i-a527-cubie-a5e.dtb

37462 bytes read in 6 ms (6 MiB/s)

Working FDT set to 4fa00000

Failed to load ‘/boot/dtb/allwinner/overlay/sun55i-a527-fixup.scr’

So it seems like that OS hangs without a USB keyboard plugged in.

4

I believe Armbian is still a work in progress for the A5E. I dont believe HDMI is supported. I’m connecting with SSH. The bootloader in the SPI flash is for the Radxa OS. I had to erase it using the radxa rsetup utility. I had no problem installing the Radxa OS, but it didn’t have NFS support, so that is why I switched to Armbian. I used the CLI version of Radxa OS agan using ssh. I would recommend flashing the Armbian OS and using ssh to test if it booted.

5

Hi, thanks for the suggestions. ARM is not something I use a lot so I’m just getting into it, also not too familiar with all the boot loaders and sequences etc. I’m doing a headless device anyway (file server) so the HDMI monitor was just for seeing if anything was happening or not during boot testing. At least with the UART I can see something happening. Will do some more reading up on ARM stuff and playing around with it today.

6

If you don’t nead a desktop the easiest choice is to stick with the Radxa CLI. It’s not listed on the Radxa site.The hdmi works as well. Here is the link:

7

I tried the r7 cli version before and that just hangs…. output log ends as follows –>

12][mmc]: 50000000 Hz

[315][mmc]: 29676 MB

[317][mmc]: ***SD/MMC 0 init OK!!!***

[328]boot param - magic error

[331]DRAM BOOT DRIVE INFO: V0.67

[336]DRAM_VCC set to 1100 mv

[462]DRAM retraining ten

[588]DRAM retraining ten

[606][AUTO DEBUG]32bit,1 ranks training success!

[635]Soft Training Version: T2.0

Continuing with the Ambian image, I did some SDCard filesystem bodging and made a little more progress.

I editied “/boot/boot.cmd” —> “setenv overlay_error “true”

I then did “mkimage -A arm -T script -C none -d boot.cmd boot.scr”

On power up it now thinks it has a overlay error and restores the original DT, thus avoiding the .scr file not found. So it seems to get thru that initial phase now without hanging until the very end.

Not sure if that got me anywhere but at least I know how to edit the “boot.cmd” file.

Latest update - Using your repo source files I rebuilt the OS image myself but with same result (which is kind of good, at least I know I can replicate the OS image).

8

After another day wasted on this thing I have discovered 2 things.

1 - The PWKOK signal from the PMIC is either too short or occurs too quickly after power on for a reliable processor start up. This signal is at TP11 (pin 1 of the PMIC). If you spoof this signal just after USB C power on you get a more consistent attempt at a boot up.

2 - Booting up using only 5v power from the GPIO connector is different from powering up via the USB C. Using a 5v 5A PSU direct into pins 4 & 6 never succeeds in getting past the bootrom sequence. I believe the PMIC is shutting down the CPU thinking it has no USB C plugged in.

The hardware might be nice, but without reliable out of the box software and config control its useless.