Radxa Zero Bricked?

#1

I’ve got a zero that I’m pretty sure I bricked, unfortunately.

I run on macOS and have no access to Linux or Windows (which theoretically should not be a problem at all, as there are directions for Mac on the walkthroughs). I’ve tried taking the device through the steps, but the device does not show up in terminal with commands lsusb, arp -a, adb devices, etc.

I’ve tried in usb boot mode, the straight emmc, and also a flashed microsd with both armbian and ubuntu server, but to no avail. The led turns on and stays solid while powered on, but other than that… nothing works or appears on my computer’s end.

Not sure where to go from here, I’ve got a micro HDMI cable shipping out tomorrow and hopefully I’ll be able to view on a monitor what’s actually going on since I can’t adb/ssh in. I’ve setup quite a few local and remote machines in the past, including a few RPI Zero’s, so I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong…

Any insight or help would be greatly appreciated, thank you all!

EDIT: To add more info, I have the 32gb version.

#2

This will be your best friend: https://wiki.radxa.com/Zero/dev/serial-console

#3
#4

This might be of some interest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OFeWILzVF8

Micro Linux put the video together to deal with a busted usb boot button. A relatively unpainful way to erase the bootloader on the EMMC and open up the SD card reader for use. Using the official Armbian image you can also reload the the EMMC with a copy of the SD card using Armbian-config in a running image of Armbian on the SD card.

I followed the minicom approach outlined in the serial cable instructions on the Radxa Zero site

It worked well for me.