I recieved my Megrez 32G variant yesterday and loaded it into a case, added a NVMe drive on a PCI-express adapter, and installed the included m.2 SATA drive, and then flashed ROCKOS onto an 64GB SanDisk Ultra SD Card. I powered the system with a 12V/5A supply from the barrel connector. The system booted without issue the first time. I then attached a USB drive with an image to dd onto the SATA SSD. Several hundred MB into the transfer the machine hung and the power LED turned off but the display was still showing the desktop yet no longer responsive. I power cycled the system but it will no longer boot.
I have also re-flashed the ROCKOS image to the SD card and removed all the peripherals (save a USB mouse and keyboard) and it still will not boot. I switched to an ATX power supply and still not booting. The board will power up, the LEDs come on, and the CPU fan spins at full speed. I cannot get any output from the Debug USB-C port’s serial interface or the UART port header on the motherboard in NORMAL or RECOVERY boot mode (tried 115200n8 on both serial ports).
What are the requirements for making a recovery USB device? Just put the ROCKOS image on a USB drive? Does it need to be in a specific port? Can I re-flash the SPI Boot ROM from the DEBUG port? If so, how? Are there any other recovery processes I can try?
Wrote and verified the OS image directly onto the M2 SATA drive using a USB3 adapter, installed in the system and it booted fine first time, had a quick play restarting several times all OK.
Then connected to the network and did a sudo apt update and it completed fine. ran sudo apt upgrade, it started downloading updates turned my back and the screen went black, system would not reboot.
Flashed image onto SD card and verified, tried booting from that, you could select the SD card in Uboot and start a book but it would hang part way through.
I was using an external M2 Sata drive enclosure to write the image to SATA drive so I tried the WD Green 120GB drive that was in the enclosure, installed in the Megrez and everything started working fine.
I can’t even boot the board with just an SD card at this point. I’ve removed everything and only have a keyboard, mouse, and monitor attached. Still nothing.
Yes I have tried those. There is no output from the Debug USB-C or the UART header on the motherboard during power on. I would expect at least a FSBL or some U-Boot. It also doesn’t matter if the boot switch in NORMAL or RECOVERY - no output.
If you power up the board with nothing attached and the recover switch active then plug into a computer via USB dose anything show up on your PC (storage device or unknown)?
The Megrez motherboard has a built-in CH340 chip. By default, connecting the Type-C port to a PC enables debugging, and a new device tty.usbserial-1220 will appear on the PC.
As long as it gets power (from your host PC, that is), it doesn’t matter whether the rest of the board works or not.
Basically, it means you don’t have to hook up any other USB-TTL converter to the DEBUG serial line, the board already has this CH340 chip for your convenience.
I myself would power the board up and listen to what it says over UART. But I got no idea what would I try next, I don’t have any boards for any experiments.
Thank you @hoka and apologies for starting a thread in two places. Please pass my appreciation on to setq as well. You’ve been extremely helpful in resolving my issue. I’m waiting for Arace to send me return instructions for the failed board.
