Rock 5B Boot Loop

#41

exact same issue on my board too,tried multiple images, and power adapters, i even bought the official raspberry pi usb power supply, and same issue

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i have been trying to boot this board from the past 6 months, but it doesnt work,
i have a variable power supply with me, can anyone suggest if i can send 12v power through the 5v gpio to check if it boots??
i guess some boards have an inherent issue, where any power supply doesnt work, some one on the forum suggested me to get raspberry pi power supply and that didnt work, i even have their official penta hat which is powered by the 12v 5Amp supply even that didnt boot the board, i even spoke to the admins, and they are clueless as to why it isnt booting.
i guess this is a failed investment, and radxa is not going to solve this. they arent ready to get the outputs from the users and try to debug as to why it isnt working or providing a fix.

#42

https://wiki.radxa.com/Rock5/FAQs

Q: My new ROCK 5B can not boot / stuck in infinite boot loop

ROCK 5B supports USB PD power negotiation to higher voltage such as 9V, 12V, 15V, 20V to meet the total system power load requirements(around 30W with WiFi, SSD, USB peripherals etc). Currently the PD negotiation is implemented in the kernel driver, we need to boot to the kernel to start negotiation, however some Power Supply can not wait the ROCK 5B to negotiate and cut the power off when timeout, which cause the infinite boot loop. We provide the following suggestions:

  • Use official Power Supply - Radxa Power PD 30W. (Strongly recommended) The Radxa Power PD 30W is tested with all conditions on ROCK 5B.
  • Use faster SD card or eMMC module and disable the bootloader/kernel serial console
  • Use a dummy 12V USB C power supply
  • Check the other Power Supply status reported by the community.
  • Wait for Radxa’s porting of the PD negotiation to the bootloader(u-boot)
#43

Hi All,
I followed this link below and everything works except mouse pointer disappears but mouse action still works.
To get mouse pointer back I have to power-off and restart.
Mouse pointer disappears when:
1 - on blank screen - power saving (no set to never)
2 - if no screen activity (have to check this further)

Anyone have this issue ?

Link: https://www.learningtopi.com/category/sbc/rock5b/

#44

hi darkevil mate, just got the 45W samsung adapter, still getting the same issue, which os did you use?
also is this the same adapter you have tried?

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#45

Im using armbian for rock 5b. Can you please try an Emmc instead ? If you dont have one try Armbian Image on your Micro SD https://www.armbian.com/rock-5b/

Try flashing with rpi imager if it doesnt work try balena.
If it doesnt work with both let me know.

#46

At this point I think its your MicroSD failing so my best suggestion is for you to try EMMC

#47

Just to add my boot loop (BL) discoveries:

  • had intermittant BL, sometimes booted couldn’t figure out the variability
  • messed around for ages thinking it was something to do with spi images and OS - not at all, my intermittant BL independent of all that.
  • discovery: the SBC needs to be warm to reliably boot from any old ‘in spec’ PD USB-C power supply
  • the only way I can start it from cold is to plug in the allnetchina USB-C 65W PD power supply recommended with a short nimaso cable usb-c
  • yes: any longer cable will cause intermitant BL
    …so I’m guessing there’s some high in rush current when cold that trips something on the board
#48

then you got very bad cables

#49

crappy, surely.

#50

I bought a Samsung PD (45W PD power adapter) as suggested from someone, no way, always boot loop with Armbian image, Reborn image, and so on; the only one images that works is the raxda ubuntu.
It’s absurd, inconceivable: so much money to have a board that is unusable in that way, I think to do some other attempts, after that I want to sell my board.

#51

did you try warm and cold starts? I didn’t observe any variation between images.

#52

No, I haven’t tried it yet, but it sounds strange…

#53

In case this is helpful for other folks. I bought a combo usb-A / usb-C charger from Ameridroid. I already had a quality usb-A to usb-C cable, however I would get random reboots. The usb-A output is rated up to 18W (9V@2A, 12V@1.5A).

I tried a quality usb-C cable (supports up to 65W charging) with the same power block and haven’t had any issues since. Of note, the usb-C on this charger is rated to 30W (12V@2.5A).

The Rock5b has a NVMe boot drive + small 5V fan which is underdriven at 3V but no wifi as it’s plugged into ethernet.

#54

I am no longer understanding anything: with the official radxa distros everything works, with the custom ones it doesn’t. For example with armbian there is no video signal, I discovered that the system does not go into a loop, in fact I can connect via ssh, even the ping it is stable. I can’t figure out why it doesn’t start the GUI, it’s incomprehensible.

#55

Im paying more attention on discord than here but.
I have found this today:

"So I finally understood why my armbian image doesnt boot on nvme itself…
Basically it doesn’t booth if my keyboard is plugged / goes into bootloop.
If I unplug it and then start the board and then plug it - all good.

Otherwise to make it work is everything plugged but emmc in-it.
To make it boot just with the nvme… I can’t have my keyboard plugged…
How silly can this be "

#56

I have that 45w samsung and armbian openfyde rebornOS batocera all them work fine.
May I suggest you do a firmware update on the image you say u can boot? Funny enough people are saying radxa ubuntu image is broken and not working…
how come it works for you? :see_no_evil:
Anyway this board is full of mysteries.

My suggestions and please clear this out for me because Im pretty sure I am the one who suggested you the samsung brick which again works for me.

MicroSD is not the best option for booting the rock 5B at least from my experience however since the latest openFyde image it has been working 100%.

Armbian works via emmc no problem for me.
But when moved to the nvme via sudo armbian-config… well… I cant start the board with my keyboard wired to it.

if you can boot it to any image do update and upgrade and then do a clean spi flash. Spi flashing worked for me when on the previous openFyde image (which needed rkdev to ‘install’) was constantly booting after 5 minutes on the system.

#57

So the samsung charger works but you get no output image? Can you like reduce the resolution some-how?
Yesterday I was having the image blinking a lot so all I did was… reduced the refresh rate from 60 to 59 and… it was magical.

#58

The screen appear only with Ubuntu or Debian images available from radxa download page and only if I don’t do any upgrade or kernel update. In fact after that the screen is not available too.
Screen is always black with all other distros not officially supported.
The system is up because ping in ok and ssh too but without screen, no update or upgrade solve the problem.
My monitor is an Asus 1080p 60Hz connected by hdmi.

#59

Any chance u change the display to 1080 @ less than 60hz before you do sudo update n upgrade?

#60

when it goes black if u unplug the hdmi and plug it wont show again?