New M4 Will Not Boot Up

[brettsh]

Is my new M4 faulty?

Just received the following hardware from Friendly Arm:

NanoPi M4 (2 GB)
SanDisk 16GB EDGE A1 U1 Class 10 Micro SD SDHC MicroSD Memory Card
4 Amp power adapter
Heatsink

However, I cannot boot the damn thing up.

When I plug the power supply in, the red LED goes solidly on, and the green LED starts flashing, but I see nothing on the screen.

Have tried the following, but to no avail:
- Different (reasonably powerful) USB power supplies.
- Different USB C power cable.
- Different HDMI cable & monitor.
- Removing keyboard, mouse and ethernet cable.
- Samsung class 10 32GB Micro SD
- Booting without micro SD in the hope that I'll see an error message

Unless anyone has any other suggestions, I'm included to think the NanoPi M4 is faulty.

Should I return it?

Cheers

Brett

[igorp]

Is my new M4 faulty?

Just received the following hardware from Friendly Arm:

NanoPi M4 (2 GB)
SanDisk 16GB EDGE A1 U1 Class 10 Micro SD SDHC MicroSD Memory Card
4 Amp power adapter
Heatsink

However, I cannot boot the damn thing up.

When I plug the power supply in, the red LED goes solidly on, and the green LED starts flashing, but I see nothing on the screen.

Have tried the following, but to no avail:
- Different (reasonably powerful) USB power supplies.
- Different USB C power cable.
- Different HDMI cable & monitor.
- Removing keyboard, mouse and ethernet cable.
- Samsung class 10 32GB Micro SD
- Booting without micro SD in the hope that I'll see an error message

Unless anyone has any other suggestions, I'm included to think the NanoPi M4 is faulty.

Should I return it?

Cheers

Brett

Blinking LED is a good sign, but its possible that file system is corrupted and booting Linux stops at some point.HDMI is initialized late A serial console log would tell more ...

Read common problems and follow:
https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Getting-Started/

Tested image:
https://dl.armbian.com/nanopim4/Ubuntu_ ... desktop.7z

[brettsh]

Hi igorp,

Thanks for your reply. I've read thru several pages of the link you supplied but couldn't find anything on obtaining logs serially. Any other links I could look at?

Anyway, I will try some of the other suggestions.

Thanks again.

Cheers

Brett

[igorp]

Hi igorp,

Thanks for your reply. I've read thru several pages of the link you supplied but couldn't find anything on obtaining logs serially. Any other links I could look at?

Anyway, I will try some of the other suggestions.

Thanks again.

Cheers

Brett

You need a serial console which you attach to serial console pins (next to USB ports). The only strange/special setting is the UART speed which is 1500000

[brettsh]

Sorry, looks like my problem was with the OMV image I copied from here:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/openme ... Computers/

Just tried the Ubuntu image you suggested and that works fine.

Cheers

Brett

[alexf]

Is my new M4 faulty?

Just received the following hardware from Friendly Arm:

NanoPi M4 (2 GB)
SanDisk 16GB EDGE A1 U1 Class 10 Micro SD SDHC MicroSD Memory Card
4 Amp power adapter
Heatsink

However, I cannot boot the damn thing up.

When I plug the power supply in, the red LED goes solidly on, and the green LED starts flashing, but I see nothing on the screen.

Have tried the following, but to no avail:
- Different (reasonably powerful) USB power supplies.
- Different USB C power cable.
- Different HDMI cable & monitor.
- Removing keyboard, mouse and ethernet cable.
- Samsung class 10 32GB Micro SD
- Booting without micro SD in the hope that I'll see an error message

Unless anyone has any other suggestions, I'm included to think the NanoPi M4 is faulty.

Should I return it?

Cheers

Brett

What I found out is that the recent 4.4 RK3399 kernels will crash hard if the TypeC input is connected to anything that is type C aware. Such as Google Type C charger or a laptop type C port. This happens somewhere in the FUSB302 driver. My solution was to use a USB2 to USB-C cable to power the board

[Nicmaq]

Same here. I just received the board. Powered the board with an apple iphone charger and a usb-b to usb-c cable.
None of the following images were working. Same behaviors, red, then green blinking, then nothing.

rk3399-sd-friendlydesktop-bionic-4.4-arm64-20190511.img
rk3399-sd-friendlycore-bionic-4.4-arm64-20190511.img
rk3399-sd-lubuntu-desktop-xenial-4.4-armhf-20190511.img

I was able to make the buildroot image work.
rk3399-sd-buildroot-linux-4.4-arm64-20190510.img

Then, connected the board to my mac pro with the same cable. It works.

Thanks for the tip.

N

[v8dave]

Same here. I just received the board. Powered the board with an apple iphone charger and a usb-b to usb-c cable.

What is the current capability of your Apple iPhone charger and what voltage does it actually put out when on load? Most phone chargers have a significant voltage drop when you load the output. They are not the ideal supply for any of the boards.

Even a so called 5V 4A supply I recently purchased to power a Jetson Nano failed and the board would reset or hang. I stuck it on my DL3021 digital load and found that it had poor voltage regulation at anything over 1A. At the 2A load, around what the board was taking, it was too load and the board would crash.

PS. A serial debug cable is well worth in your tool box. Seeing what is on this can let you work out what is happening.