Rock Pi 4B v1.3 can't boot

Hello all, I am new in here, so I am trying to boot my Rock Pi 4B on the board the version is v1.3 .

I tried few sdcards and linux images, and none of them can boot. I set up minicom as I have the PL2303 cable and I got this from minicom:

sasa@goopix:~$ minicom -w -t xterm -l -R UTF-8 -s
Lockfile is stale. Overriding it..
Welcome to minicom 2.11.1

OPTIONS: I18n                                                                
Compiled on Feb 28 2026, 15:30:19.                                           
Port /dev/ttyUSB0, 19:34:23 [U]                                              
Using character set conversion                                               
                                                                             
Press CTRL-A Z for help on special keys                                      
                                                                             
DDR Version 1.30 20230417                                                    
In                                                                           
channel 0                                                                    
CS = 0                                                                       
MR0=0x19                                                                     
MR4=0x3                                                                      
MR5=0x6                                                                      
MR8=0x0                                                                      
MR12=0x72                                                                    
MR14=0x72                                                                    
MR18=0x0                                                                     
MR19=0x0
MR24=0x8
MR25=0xFF
channel 1
CS = 0
MR0=0x19
MR4=0x3
MR5=0x6
MR8=0x0
MR12=0x72
MR14=0x72
MR18=0x0
MR19=0x0
MR24=0x8
MR25=0xFF
channel 0 training pass!
channel 1 training pass!
change freq to 416MHz 0,1
Channel 0: LPDDR4,416MHz
Bus Width=32 Col=10 Bank=8 Row=14 CS=1 Die Bus-Width=16 Size=512MB
Channel 1: LPDDR4,416MHz
Bus Width=32 Col=10 Bank=8 Row=14 CS=1 Die Bus-Width=16 Size=512MB
256B stride
channel 0
CS = 0
MR0=0x19
MR4=0x3
MR5=0x6
MR8=0x0
MR12=0x72
MR14=0x72
MR18=0x0
MR19=0x0
MR24=0x8
MR25=0xFF
channel 1
CS = 0
MR0=0x19
MR4=0x3
MR5=0x6
MR8=0x0
MR12=0x72
MR14=0x72
MR18=0x0
MR19=0x0
MR24=0x8
MR25=0xFF
channel 0 training pass!
channel 1 training pass!
channel 0, cs 0, advanced training done

CTRL-A Z for help | 1500000 8N1 | NOR | Minicom 2.11.1 | VT102 | Online 0:0 | ttyUSB0                                                                        


The board has a green led lit up and nothing gets out from the HDMI.

Can you please help and suggest what could be the issue ?

Rgds

Sasa

Good that you share the bootloader log from the serial cable. I see it stall already pretty early. I would check things with respect to:

DDR Version 1.30 20230417

I don’t have this SBC myself, but it seems OK version. I have noticed problems with other versions, but forgot the details.

So if RAM seems OK, it could be a power or something related to SD-card. That is something you need to figure out yourself. Related to SD-card can also an USB SD-card adapter that is the cause of the problem.

Hi radrocks, many thanks for the answer. So, this board is new, never used. I know this doesnt mean 100% ok, but one expects it.

So if I understand correctly I can connect the USB card reader/writer to one of the USB ports and see if it boots from the reader instead from the onboard microsd reader ?

Do I need to do any kind of setting set up before ?

No Rockchips cant boot from their USB just using the ROM in the SoC

I mean while writing the SD-card, what SD-card writer did you use?

I wrote the SD card on my Slackware linux pc, downloading the image from https://github.com/radxa-build/rock-pi-4b/releases/download/rsdk-r4/rock-pi-4b_bookworm_kde_r4.output_512.img.xz , xz decompress it, and then used dd to write it to the sdcard.

The reader I used is a USB-c reader from Mediacom MD-S405 , here is the link Type-C Card Reader - Connettività - Mediacom

How the exact boot process for ROCK Pi works ? I mean, does the SOC looks for a specific partition at startup ? I know some SoC boards must have a FAT partition on a SD card to readt initial stuff from there. Is there some documentation on the radxa wiki ?

It just ab binary starting ate sector 64 from SD-card or eMMC (or SPI-flash is that is there)

See for example Partitions - Rockchip Wiki

You can write the U-Boot binary to and empty SD-card at sector 64. So just blind/fixed location. The SoC reads that and that U-Boot contains code to read from USB stick. But that U-Boot already hangs in your case. That is rare, so only options I know of is that the contents on the SD-card are not the same as in the image. Is rare, but I have seen it on Armbian forum. The person who got that issue did binary compare image and the SD-card contents (before boot) and did not match. Was a problem with USB and/or card writer.

Other is PSU. Might dip below 5V too much, then SBC hangs. As I mentioned, you need to check yourself. I have had some strange issues with with my ROCK3A because I fed it with 5V (RPI5 27W PSU, but looking in detail, the ROCK3a should be fed with higher voltage. I do that now, and all strange issues gone.

Or your board is just broken. Then send it back and ask money back.

I see from Radxa ROCK 4B that it has SPI-flash, so there could be a corrupt variant of U-Boot in there, but unlikely as it is new board you say end then it should be empty. But maybe wipe it in maskROM mode.

Dear radrocks, many thanks for this tips. I will be playing a bit with the other OS´s and see if this makes a change. Will also make sure I get a good power for it, altough I bought a package with cable and power adapter which came from Radxa, so I suppose they know what they ship.

Ok, that should not be my case as my board is v1.3 and one of things I read is that it does NOT have the SPI chip on it, if I understood it correctly. There is a pplace for it, but you have to solder it by yourself.

OK, that makes it easier to pin-point hopefully.

You could also try to use an external (Armbian) image with very latest U-Boot and kernel. And use their Imager, it does auto verify, so bit easier I would say. But the Radxa build show work.

But if real HW problem, it won’t make a difference I would say, you might see slightly different serial log then, maybe that gives a hint.

Great, ok. Will try to play a bit with it in the next days and see what I can get. BTW, can I only put the uboot on the sdcard to see if it works ? Where can I find the correct uboot ?

Yes

Latest is here as .deb packages, you need to extract the bin/blob file then manually

look for linux-u-boot-rockpi-4bplus-edge

Hi, from this page here Partitions - Rockchip Wiki i see the location start and end address is there some specific type of partition that is needed ? I mean in gfdisk you can set up the exact type of partition. Should it be which one Linux EF00 or 8300 or which type ?

As for the u-boot you mention to look for look for linux-u-boot-rockpi-4bplus-edge

but my rock pi is 4b not 4b plus.

You do not need partitions, I usually write SD-card in an RPI4 that runs from SSD so SD-card slot is free. Then just brute force wipe:

sudo blkdiscard /dev/mmcblk0

and then dd with correct sector offsets to write the U-Boot blob/binary

I mixed-up 4b and 4bplus due to some other topic I responded to I think.

Ok, great, thanks.