VIM4 won't power on after trying to install OS

Technical Support
1

I tried to manually install Arch Linux using the “Manual Installation Example” here. I enabled network access, used ssh to access the prompt in oowow and executed the instructions one by one. When I executed

cat <<-END > system/boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf
label ArchLinux
kernel /boot/Image.gz
initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img
fdtdir /boot/dtbs
append root=LABEL=ROOT rw quiet
END

it gave me a ncurses prompt asking me if I wanted to reboot. The wording of this prompt was

┌─────────────────Shutdown system────────────────────┐
│          To boot into your new system!             │  
│             press Reboot or Poweroff               │
│ - -------------------------------------------- -   │  
│ please eject SD card before for reboot from emmc   │  
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤  
│       < Reboot >    <Poweroff>    <  Back  >       │  
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

I didn’t see any harm in doing so, but after I selected reboot my VIM4 will not boot anymore. The status LEDs also do not light up. Unplugging and replugging the USB-C power cable also does not help. Pressing the reset, power, and function buttons does nothing. When plugging in the power cable it uses <1W of power.

Setup Details:

  • Power Brick: The one recommended by Khadas
  • Extensions: M2X Board, M.2 SSD (Issue persists after removing both the SSD and the M2X board)
    • It did boot with the M2X board before, it just stoped booting after executing the above instructions

Did I brick my VIM4? Can I fix it?

2

@Surferlul Hello,

Sorry to hear your board isn’t turning on, Have you tried putting it back into upgrade mode and force oowow ?

i,e long press function key, short press reset and release the function key shortly after.

3

Hey thank you for the reply,

Sadly this does not help… When I do this (holding the function key up to 10s, short-pressing the reset key, and releasing the function key shortly after) I get no indicator light, and the fan does not spin up.

4

Have you tried connecting it to your computer and triple clicking the function button to enter the tst upgrade mode ?

Bricking these devices is very hard given the fact that it should still be re-flashable from the amlogic usb burning utilities.

5

I used the spi upgrade sd card image and booted from an sd card, which fixed my oowow.

Thanks for the help ^^

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