M4 Died

[pkfox]

One of my boards gave up today - I was just connecting the SATA power cable to the hat and no leds came on - no sound or smoke just nothing - I tried several times to re power it and all I saw on a couple of occasions was a very faint flicker of the leds -so I guess it's dead.

 

[Tido]

What else have you tried, different cable, power supply ?

 

[NicoD]

Are you powering the board with the hat?
Have you tried powering with usb-C? Or with the gpio's?
Without the sata hat?

[Myy]

If you connect your board (only) to a PC through an USB cable, do you see an USB connection ? (lsusb or Windows Device manager)

[chwe]

 

there's your first point to check if your board is still alive (there should be also an debug uart on the m4).

[pkfox]

9 hours ago, Tido said:

What else have you tried, different cable, power supply ?

 

Yes tried all the usual suspects

 

[pkfox]

6 hours ago, NicoD said:

Are you powering the board with the hat?
Have you tried powering with usb-C? Or with the gpio's?
Without the sata hat?

Hi Nico, yes I was powering via the hat, I've tried powering via USB but not the pins - I wouldn't know how

 

[pkfox]

4 hours ago, chwe said:

 

there's your first point to check if your board is still alive (there should be also an debug uart on the m4).

The M4 needs separate power using UART lead so I'm stuffed with that

 

[pkfox]

5 hours ago, Myy said:

If you connect your board (only) to a PC through an USB cable, do you see an USB connection ? (lsusb or Windows Device manager)

Not tried that

 

[chwe]

3 minutes ago, pkfox said:

The M4 needs separate power using UART lead so I'm stuffed with that

normally just power it the normal way and only connect GND, RX and TX works quite well for accessing the debug UART...

 

 

[pkfox]

11 hours ago, chwe said:

normally just power it the normal way and only connect GND, RX and TX works quite well for accessing the debug UART...

 

 

 

11 hours ago, chwe said:

normally just power it the normal way and only connect GND, RX and TX works quite well for accessing the debug UART...

 

 

The problem is I can't power it the normal way it won't accept power

 

 

[martinayotte]

9 hours ago, pkfox said:

The problem is I can't power it the normal way it won't accept power

Why ?

[pkfox]

5 hours ago, martinayotte said:

Why ?

Because I get no led lights - nothing - the board is ( appears to be ) dead

 

[martinayotte]

55 minutes ago, pkfox said:

the board is ( appears to be ) dead

And what is the alternative way that make it works ?

[pkfox]

6 hours ago, martinayotte said:

And what is the alternative way that make it works ?

 

6 hours ago, martinayotte said:

And what is the alternative way that make it works ?

That's my point - nothing makes it work - it's dead

 

[chwe]

11 hours ago, pkfox said:

 

18 hours ago, martinayotte said:

And what is the alternative way that make it works ?

That's my point - nothing makes it work - it's dead 

 

 

and what's the exact point of this discussion?

 

so, reason behind using uart instead of HDMI etc. is that uart is 'a way more talky' in case things don't work properly anymore.. whereas initialization of HDMI needs more things properly working.

[NicoD]

If there's no light while powered then I believe it's dead.
If you did try another cable, psu, sd-card, os, measure voltage from psu, from usb ports?
Then you're going to have to contact your seller or  sales at friendlyarm dot com.
 

[pkfox]

17 hours ago, chwe said:

 

and what's the exact point of this discussion?

 

so, reason behind using uart instead of HDMI etc. is that uart is 'a way more talky' in case things don't work properly anymore.. whereas initialization of HDMI needs more things properly working.

The point of the discussion is to ascertain whether the board is truly dead - which I believe it is

[pkfox]

10 hours ago, NicoD said:

If there's no light while powered then I believe it's dead.
If you did try another cable, psu, sd-card, os, measure voltage from psu, from usb ports?
Then you're going to have to contact your seller or  sales at friendlyarm dot com.
 

Yes I agree Nico - I bought two of these , one from friendly direct and one from Amazon and I don't know which one is which - I don't suppose it matters as it's all from them originally

[chwe]

44 minutes ago, pkfox said:

17 hours ago, chwe said:

 

and what's the exact point of this discussion?

 

so, reason behind using uart instead of HDMI etc. is that uart is 'a way more talky' in case things don't work properly anymore.. whereas initialization of HDMI needs more things properly working.

The point of the discussion is to ascertain whether the board is truly dead - which I believe it is

 

and that's the point.. using a volt-meter to see if power is still on the important powerlines lines with your normal powering setup.. in case yes.. connect the UART and look if you get an output.. in case the main powerrails are dead.. the board is for sure dead as well..

[pkfox]

1 hour ago, chwe said:

 

and that's the point.. using a volt-meter to see if power is still on the important powerlines lines with your normal powering setup.. in case yes.. connect the UART and look if you get an output.. in case the main powerrails are dead.. the board is for sure dead as well..

Thanks for the info I'm pretty sure it's dead and I've just sent an email to FriendlyElec - will keep you all posted

[pkfox]

On 4/18/2019 at 12:44 PM, pkfox said:

Thanks for the info I'm pretty sure it's dead and I've just sent an email to FriendlyElec - will keep you all posted

Hats off to Amazon I told them the board had died ( via their online chat ) and they refunded me in full and presumably dealt with the seller

[Oleksii]

My NanoPC T4 seems also died today with same symptoms  Yesterday it stopped booting from MMC with only red power-on light and no other attempts to boot... Then I inserted sd-card and managed to boot from it in MASKROM mode. So I decided that main image is corrupted and planned to play with recovery today. This morning, it couldn't boot at all, neither MMC nor even SD - still the same red light only and that's it. Then I connected the board to PC via type-c port. It was detected as MASKROM device, but attempt to clear internal flash simply failed. I tried different proven to work PSU (works fine with M4), another SD card, detached SSD, HDMI etc. Now I see picture which is even worse: led slightly blinks one time and no power .... damn it 

[RussianNeuroMancer]

On 6/8/2020 at 5:35 PM, Oleksii said:

My NanoPC T4 seems also died

One of my NanoPC T4 also died a four months ago for no apparent reason, some symptoms was similar to description from Oleksii post. Initially it always printed long stack trace to serial console during rockchip_drm initialization, and then reboot on emmc initialization attempt. Later it stopped booting from emmc as if it's empty, but attempts to boot from microsd always lead to same outcome - boot loop. And finally it stopped even trying to boot from microsd with only red light.

 

FriendlyARM send replacement for this board, but making them doing so certainly wasn't easy - when all troubleshooting steps doesn't help, they decided to stop answering until I tried to place a new order via sales e-mail and asked them to put replacement board into this order.

[Oleksii]

14 hours ago, RussianNeuroMancer said:

FriendlyARM send replacement for this board, but making them doing so certainly wasn't easy - when all troubleshooting steps doesn't help, they decided to stop answering until I tried to place a new order via sales e-mail and asked them to put replacement board into this order.

 

I wrote the e-mail to their tech support. No answer, indeed. Then posted my question to them via "Contact Us" form on website. No feedback ... I saw some other people complaining about boards dying with the same symptoms (one can even find some posts in the FriendlyARMs dedicated forum). I worked on mainline fusb302 controller driver extension in order to gain some missing functionality crucially needed for Rockchip's DisplayPort and Type-C drivers. I managed to get DisplayPort working properly on T4 in mainline 5.6+ kernels. My SBC simply died right in the middle of kernel sources compilation  I haven't finished all the planned work and essentially wasted two weeks of my own spare time. I also described this situation to the FARM, and it looks like, they simply do not give a shit about community contribution. Neither them, nor Rockchip as a company in general  I tried to complete the work in progress making use of my another M4 (also has the same Fairchild FUSB302 controller for PD), however it is useless, because USB3.0 and DP related pins are not wired at all  Btw., this M4 of mine is also kind of faulty: HDMI port stopped working in the very beginning of its life, now it is completely headless   Seems, I have very bad luck with this company and I don't see any reasons to buy their products anymore or even invest my time into Rockchip's based stuff. 

[guidol]

2 hours ago, Oleksii said:

FriendlyARM.

Seems, I have very bad luck with this company and I don't see any reasons to buy their products anymore or even invest my time into Rockchip's based stuff. 

Just my perosonal cents:
I got some NanoPis from FriendlyARM with Allwinner-Chips like H2+, H3 , H5 and A64 and they do work alll very well and since years 24/7 - but I got some Rockchip devices from other companys and they are the "black sheeps" of my SBCs - so Iam do not buy Rockchip-devices anymore.
So when try to buy Allwinner devices from FriendlyARM - but isnt that easy anymore without new H5-devices and no real successor in the near future

[Oleksii]

12 hours ago, guidol said:

Just my perosonal cents:
I got some NanoPis from FriendlyARM with Allwinner-Chips like H2+, H3 , H5 and A64 and they do work alll very well and since years 24/7 - but I got some Rockchip devices from other companys and they are the "black sheeps" of my SBCs - so Iam do not buy Rockchip-devices anymore.
So when try to buy Allwinner devices from FriendlyARM - but isnt that easy anymore without new H5-devices and no real successor in the near future

 

From what I read: "You own some RK based devices and they do work! But you stopped treating them seriously". In my situation all 100% of my RK-based SBCs are faulty "black sheeps"

[RussianNeuroMancer]

Try to contact sales from different e-mail, say you would like to place new order, ask them if something (for example if NEO2 Black is available for order directly from their store, or if K1 Plus fits into RPi3 cases, etc.; but don't copy this blindly, come up with your own questions) when sales answer, continue asking them about other items for your new order.

Then say that before placing your new order you need to resolve issue with board from previous order (mention order number here) describe how board died, attach video of attempt to power on the board, describe troubleshooting steps (that you tested different PSU, etc.) and so on.

 

If they stop answering at this point, start conversation with sales again from different e-mail, and after few e-mail mention order with faulty board again. When I did so, they gave up, and agreed to put replacement into new order.

 

Yeah, it's hard to make them replace faulty board, but I assure you that it's possible - I did this. (But, yeah, maybe I was just lucky, but it didn't hurt to try, right?)

[Oleksii]

5 hours ago, RussianNeuroMancer said:

If they stop answering at this point, start conversation with sales again from different e-mail, and after few e-mail mention order with faulty board again. When I did so, they gave up, and agreed to put replacement into new order.

 

Yeah, it's hard to make them replace faulty board, but I assure you that it's possible - I did this. (But, yeah, maybe I was just lucky, but it didn't hurt to try, right?)

Thanks for advise! However, even this process will eat my time which I can more productively spend to make money for another SBC and preferably not FriendlyArm product this time  I'm really disappointed and do not want to deal with a company like this anymore  I gave them enough time and information to resolve the issue in a "Friendly" manner. I also spent my spare time trying to contribute to the mainline linux in order to make their boards more "Friendly". And now, it seems to me, I should look for another friends

[RussianNeuroMancer]

A bit of offtopic, but if anyone is interested Hardkernel is more open about RMA.