Good that you posted serial console output. A bit more and text (starting at power on when U-Boot starts) would be clearer, but I think the 2 top lines with 'Android' mentioned already indicate what is wrong I think; ROCK3C has SPI-flash where also the bootloader (U-Boot usually) can be stored and this has priority over SD-card bootloader. So it seems older/incompatible Android U-Boot variant in the SPI-flash loads Linux and as you use mainline Linux kernel, this won't work correctly as you see. On my ROCK3A, almost similar SoC I get all sorts of strange crashes/hangs in that situation. So use MaskROM mode to wipe SPI-flash or write a correct U-Boot version to it; see https://docs.radxa.com/en/rock3/rock3c/low-level-dev/3c-maskrom?host_os=Linux_MacOS Other option maybe is to boot with an image that has vendor kernel (I use 6.1.115 on my ROCK3A with legacy U-Boot) so then the board can be operated via serial console and from there write the SPI-flash with dd or flashcp (see /dev/mtd*).

Thank you @KhanhDTP. I think I have a pretty good handle on how (and your post on that thread was in particular very helpful, thank you). It looks like a lot of people here are desktop optimized. My plan is headless, so expectation is 25.11.1 / 6.1 and libMali route but with RKNN (XFCE only for occasional desktop, Gnome is too hungry, XFCE + X11 + software rendering is fine on rare occasions I'd need it). I think the question I was trying to ask is more along the lines of understanding what to expect for the default, and if it made sense to enable one of the drivers by default, but I'm realizing there are proprietary dependencies and enough obscure use cases that this gets more challenging. Thanks to everyone for all of the thoughts, hard to imagine navigating all of this without your contributions.

Noble image didn't boot on Orange pi 4A

I have a unit that I am unable to boot from SD card as it has no such physical device. Using a terminal emulator in Android I can see partitions being loaded, and have managed to get several "partitions" (mmcblk01p01 to p20) copied off to a flash drive. These turn out to be data files, so I can't load/modify them on a VM. I had hoped to find the boot.scr/boot.cmd file and modify it to force it to mount from USB in the first instance. The unit has 2 USB ports. There is a push switch that I had to unglue. It runs Android when pushed in, and I get a black screen when it is in the OUT position, so I'm assuming that the OUT position puts the unit into USB burning mode, or whatever. I have ordered UART header pins and adapter so will be able to do more research once those are in place. From your analysis above, can you recommend a way of forcing a boot from USB using the UART serial interface (I don't see a recover-from-usb U-Boot command)? I have an armbian s905x image all ready to go. Ideal situation would be that I get the Armbian running from USB then flash the eMMC. Any help gratefully received, Best, John

I did a new build this time removind BTRfs from kernel but I still get stucked on ... Begin: Running /scripts/local-premount ... Scanning for Btrfs filesystems I dont see how can I remove that FS since I never use it in my TV Box?