Le Potato Cannot Boot

Start Boot
1

Hello everyone. I got Le Potato for christmas this year and I cannot get any images to boot. I’ve tried two different class 10 SD cards, multiple power supplies, win32DiskImages, Etcher, Pi Imager… nothing works. I’ve tried the raspbian, armbian, ubuntu, and lakka images. All I ever get are a solid red and blue light no matter what I try. As you can imagine this is extremely frustrating and disappointing. As far as I can tell I am following all of the best practices.

I can confirm that I am downloading the correct images for the aml-s905x-cc and am unzipping the images before flashing. When I put the SD card in and plug in power all I get is solid red and blue lights. Ethernet shows no activity. I have tried pressing the u-boot button, but nothing different happens.

Can anyone please help?

2

The green light should come on if the bootloader is properly flashed on the MicroSD card around 3 seconds after power on.

You don’t have to press the u-boot button.

What brand and model for the MicroSD card? Did the verify cycle complete for Win32DiskImager?

3

I have a 2.5A power adapter connected and have tried others as well. I have followed the exact instructions for properly flashing and am using a Sandisk Ultra. Win32DiskImager verification fails for all images, however no other flashing tools fail verification.

4

Disable automount. Windows Flashing MicroSD Cards Guide with Win32DiskImager for Le Potato or any SBC - YouTube

Red light should never blink. If it turns off even for a split second, the power supply is not adequate.

Make sure filename of the download ends in +aml-s905x-cc.img.xz and verify checksum

Make sure you don’t hide file extensions and are flashing aml-s905x-cc.img and not aml-s905x-cc.img.xz

If Win32DiskImager passes, the green LED should light up.

5

I had not seen disabling automount in any of the instructions before, so I gave that shot. Still not working. Even with auto mount disabled I am receiving a verification error from win32DiskImager.

I am confident I am using the .img file, not the .xz file. The red light does not ever blink, it is a solid red light when powered on.

6

Change your MicroSD card if verification fails. It means that data read back does not match data written.

Something is tampering with the data or the MicroSD is corrupt.

What sector is it failing at?

7

It’s failing at sector 8192 on both SD cards that I have.

8

Tomorrow I’ll buy a new SD card and if that doesn’t work I’m returning the board. The product really shouldn’t be this difficult to boot your supported images.

9

I have the same problem my potato cannot boot, I cann’t see my shell when I plug in my screen do you have any ideas ?

10

I try now with another SD card I while say if It’s work

11

Okay I’m pretty Happy, because Now it’s work so it’s a problem for me with my sdcard

12

Sector 8192 is the starting sector of Raspberry Pi image’s boot partition. Our Ubuntu and Raspbian image boot partition start sector is 2048. There is definitely something wrong with your MicroSD card or flashing.

Look through the message history. We get 3 complaints a day about not booting and it is either inadequate power supply, bad MicroSD card, or improper flash.

13

I constantly get verification errors at 8192 so much that I ignore them. Cards still work fine. Also need to disable PC based Google Drive.

14

That is usually because the partition is still mounted when you are trying to flash the new images. See our YouTube video regarding disabling automount.