For anyone else struggling to boot the Armbian builds on https://www.armbian.com/jetson-nano/
You need to install the newest JetPack packages on your device with the official Nvidia build first (ubuntu 18.04, kernel 4.9), so that the uboot bootloader is upgraded. Especially if you just pulled your Jetson Nano from the closet and you haven't used it in a long time. Here's the upgrade procedure:
You need to open /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nvidia-l4t-apt-source.list and modify the repository to use the lastest version of JetPack. For instance if the file says:
deb https://repo.download.nvidia.com/jetson/common r32.4 main
deb https://repo.download.nvidia.com/jetson/t210 r32.4 main
Then you need to change it into this, as 32.7 is currently the most recent version of jetpack that is still compatible with the old Jetson Nanos:
deb https://repo.download.nvidia.com/jetson/common r32.7 main
deb https://repo.download.nvidia.com/jetson/t210 r32.7 main
You can now do:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get full-upgrade
It will upgrade everything Nvidia related and will also upgrade the bootloader, you should see something like this:
Setting up nvidia-l4t-bootloader (32.7.4-20230608212426) ...
3448-300-0000--1--jetson-nano-devkit-
Starting bootloader post-install procedure.
Update bootloader completed.
Reboot the target system for changes to take effect.
Then reboot once into the old SD so that the bootloader gets upgraded on the next reboot. Then you can flash Armbian to an SD card and it should boot. With the uboot upgrade I was able to boot Armbian_community_24.5.0-trunk.19_Jetson-nano_bookworm_current_6.6.16_minimal.img
I don't seem to have HDMI output but LAN and ssh works. Probably best to have another SD card so you can quickly swap back your old one with the official Nvidia build if you need to.
