boot Helios4 from SATA without microSD

[laibsch]

I received a Helios4 and was finally able to get it to boot.  As per instructions, I booted from microSD and flashed the latest Armbian image to sda1 via the nand-sata-install command.  This reboots fine now, but only with the microSD-card present and the SW1 dipswitch set to "SD card boot mode".  Is anybody here using "SPI NOR Flash" or "SATA1" boot mode to get rid of the microSD card? I am bit handicapped here since my serial port on the microUSB only comes up maybe 1 in 10 times.  I wonder if it's worn out or if I am simply doing something wrong.

 

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[jimbolaya]

Unfortunately I don't have experience with the onboard flash, but I've never had an issue with the serial port. 

 

You've tried different cables i assume?

[laibsch]

Thank you for your quick answer, Jimbolaya.

Yes, I did try different cables all with the same result.

 

I wonder if there is another way to access the serial console, J13 perhaps?  Albeit with some required soldering, I suppose.  Then remains the question of which headers exactly relate to GND, TX and RX.

[laibsch]

With the latest changes in Armbian and most importantly the update of u-boot to v2025.10 for Helios4, it is now possible to boot SATA and USB from u-boot flashed to SPI NOR flash, with the dip switch set to SPI boot mode.  This even includes booting straight from u-boot to btrfs now.

[Christophe]

Hello,

I ruun an Helios4 myself, and I've been struck by the kernel image size issue some time ago. I managed to recover using an old version, but now need to upgrade... I foolishly tried an 'apt update', which obviously end up in a non booting board. 

I manage to get it boot with the latest version on SD, but can not manage to make it work from SPI...

 

Could you please explain how to get the updated u-boot loaded into SPI ? No try using nand-sata-install I've made make a difference. 

 

 

[Christophe]

small update...

last tries I've made:

with an SD card loaded with armbian 26.2 (from Armbian archives) and DIP on SD, the boot is ok, boot is U-Boot 2025.10_armbian-2025.10-Se50b-P915a-H3623-V44f7-B2eb2-R448a. However, no option to load bootloader in SPI present in nand-sata-install, most probably because no SPI block listed in lsblk output. nan-sata-install complains that the command line is incomplete and request to try option 'help', but I could not figure how to get to the help, any common option passing I've tried did not worked.

I tried to get to the initial install procedure from Kobol, modifying the spi_workaround from off to on in armbianEnv.txt on the SD, but this prevent the kernel to boot from SD.

 

Any help would be appreciated...