Radxa rock-3c stuck at login & no hdmi

[socrates018]

Hello, I just flashed the latest minimal img  from the github releases (Armbian_community_26.2.0-trunk.7_Rock-3c_trixie_current_6.12.58_minimal.img.xz) but I see no output on hdmi and it gets stuck at login, nothing I type works.

[eselarm]

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*).

Edited Tuesday at 09:32 AM by eselarm

[socrates018]

Thanks for replying, I hadn't noticed the android thing, I have two sd cards one with the radxa android 14 and the other with the debian bullseye from radxa. I didn't mess with the SPI flash because both work correctly, does android flash the spi when booting, I don't understand how it works with the default debian but not here?  I will try to maskrom mode and update. Btw here is the whole boot sequence in case it helps (I tried an older armbian build here but still the same). 

serial_log.txt

[eselarm]

From the serial_log.txt I can conclude that your SPI-flash must be empty, as it uses the u-boot version that is on the SD-card. So if you also don't have an eMMC attatched, that is now more simple. It is that older legacy based U-Boot, so should work with kernel 6.1.x. But kernellogging level is default set to 1, so I cannot see from the txt file what kernel it is, it might be older 6.1.x, I had lots of trouble with those. At least the 6.1.115 runs very solid on my ROCK3A now; it does all I/O I want: SPI, NVME, SATA (and SD-card as well but slot normally empty). This U-Boot:

 

root@rock3a:~# strings  /dev/mtdblock0 | grep "U-Boot SPL 20"
U-Boot SPL 2017.09-armbian (May 20 2024 - 00:46:51)

 

You can set loglevel to 7 in armbianEnv.txt (or directly on kernel commandline is more generic), then you see much more what is going on, it even might spit out info about crashing itself.

A key thing for ROCK3A is to have proper PSU: Mine is never stable with whatever 5V only PSU, so also not the RPI5 PSU for example. Various U-Boot versions don't support USB-C PD, so I just soldered my own USB-C  cable/connector that I connect to a 12V old car battery or some random 12V PSU that can do 2A or so. Then the onboard DC-DC converter is used to create a stable 5V etc.

 

I don't remember how the ROCK3C should be powered, also not sure if it has own DC-DC converter onboard, so in that case it is just 5V and you are quite dependent on the quality of your PSU. If only an SD-card, it should be fine, but when PCIe is used fort NVME, I think expect freezes.

 

Also think what you want with the ROCK3C; If you want a generic Arm64 Linux computer, you might be better off with 'edge' (both u-boot and kernel). You can't use quite some specific RK35xx features, but should be stable and easier to maintain. You can always compile/build an image yourself.