Cannot get the roc-rk3399-PC to boot

[smackey]

Hello,

I’ve been trying for several days to boot my ROC-RK3399-PC Renegade Elite, but I have not been able to complete the boot process. I’m wondering whether the board could be defective or whether I may be missing a firmware, power, or boot-configuration requirement.

The board does not have an optional eMMC module installed, so I am attempting to boot exclusively from microSD. I have tested two cards:

• Samsung EVO A1 microSD, which has worked reliably in other SBCs

• Lexar 32 GB A1 microSD, although I understand that this card is not on your recommended list

I have also tested two different 5V/5A-class USB-C power adapters to help rule out a faulty or insufficient power supply. Please let me know if this board requires a particular fixed-output/non-PD supply, since both of mine use USB-C.

I successfully updated the onboard SPI firmware using roc-rk3399-pc-spiflash.img.

I have written the operating-system images using both Raspberry Pi Imager and Balena Etcher. I repeated the process on two separate computers—one running macOS and another running Fedora—with the same result each time.

After writing an operating-system image to the microSD card, the board reaches the blue Debian GNU/Linux GRUB menu. Selecting the normal Debian GNU/Linux entry produces the following sequence.

1. GRUB displays “Booting Debian GNU/Linux” and begins loading Linux kernel 6.1.74-12781-g74961fb0a5d2.

2. The EFI stub reports that it is booting the Linux kernel and using the DTB from the configuration table.

3. It exits EFI boot services and begins loading the initial ramdisk.

4. At approximately this point, the HDMI output briefly becomes garbled or loses synchronization, and the board restarts. It then returns to the GRUB menu and repeats the same cycle.

Based on the screen output, it appears that the SPI firmware is starting correctly, the microSD card and EFI partition are readable, GRUB is loading, and control is reaching the early Linux kernel boot stage. However, I do not see a kernel panic or other readable error before the board resets.

I have reproduced this exact behavior with the following images from the Libre Computer download site:

• Raspbian: 2023-10-10-raspbian-bookworm-arm64+arm64.img

• Debian base: debian-12-base-arm64+arm64.img

• Debian GNOME: debian-12-gnome-base-arm64+arm64.img

All three images fail at approximately the same stage. I can only provide one image so I’ve attached the screenshot showing EFI Stub /boot handoff for your reference.

Given that I have tested two microSD cards, two power adapters, two imaging applications, two operating systems, and three Libre Computer images, could you please advise whether this boot sequence points to a known firmware, power-delivery, memory, or board issue?

If a serial UART boot log is needed to identify the exact failure, please let me know the recommended connection settings and which header pins I should use.

Thank you for your help,

Scott

[foxbeard]

I own a RK3328-CC Renegade, not the elite, but that board has a problem booting with certain displays attached. Maybe the Elite has the same issue?

Troubleshooting Boot Issues on Libre Computer ROC-RK3328-CC Renegade

Please first reference Troubleshooting General Boot Issues . After attaching power, the Green and Red LEDs should light up. This indicates that the board is powered. Nothing will show up on HDMI or CVBS yet. At no point after attaching power should the Red LED blink or turn off. If this happens, it means that your power supply is inadequate. Please make sure that you are using a 5V power supply capable of supplying at least 1.5A (1500mA). Not having enough power could cause spontaneous reboot…

Could you try disconnecting HDMI during boot and then plug it in afterwards? Watch the LEDs to see when it’s booted.

If that still doesn’t work, looking at UART is your next move. Pins are listed here, with the elite at the end of the list:

Libre Computer Board Debug Serial UART Connection and Setup Guide

UART serial cables provide a means to get messages and errors from the board without having a graphical interface. It is critical for the debugging of errors that occur in early boot stages and in headless systems where graphics may not be available. A graphical stack or ssh connections might crash on an error so without this means of getting messages from the hardware, figuring out what went wrong becomes a difficult trial and error problem. Thankfully, UART serial cables are widely available …

The baudrate is 1.5Mbps, so make sure your USB-serial cable supports that. Not all of them do.

Good luck

[smackey]

Thanks for the response-

I used the ‘CP2102 USB 2.0 to TTL Module Serial Converter Adapter Module USB to TTL’ UART at baud rates from 1500000 to 9600 and got mostly gibberish (see screenshot).

As indicated by my first messages i followed all of the suggestions for a successful boot to no avail with multiple distros from the site.

I’m going to try Ubuntu and see if that changes anything but it seems this board might just be bad.

[foxbeard]

The datasheet for the CP2102 lists supported baud rates as 300 bps to 1 Mbps. I have a cable of my own with that chip, and I can verify that it does not work for 1.5Mbps. I had to get another cord based on the FT232RNL to get serial on my board.
Gibberish is at least a sign of life, so there’s hope of getting something useful from the output if you can read it.