Radxa Rock 4C+ unable to boot using latest nightly LE13

    Hi all,

    I recently bought OKDO Radxa Rock 4C+ board. When tried to boot it using nightly I was not able to do so.
    After opening a bug report, I was instructed to first post in forum.

    Here is C/P from the bug report:
    Describe the bug

    Using latest nightly build of LibreELEC 13 I'm unable to boot. There is only green light, and blue light that should indicate activity is off. Pressing reset button, turning it on/off, changing hdmi port - noting helps

    How to reproduce

    Steps to reproduce the behavior:

    1. Download latest nightly
    2. Use Balena Etcher to transfer image to SD card
    3. Turn on board

    Information

    • LibreELEC Version: LibreELEC-RK3399.aarch64-13.0-nightly-20250611-4d467a6-rock-4c-plus.img.gz
    • Hardware Platform: OKDO Radxa Rock 4C+

    Log file

    No log available.

    Context

    According to #8887 this board should be supported.
    I'm more than happy to try to get logs or anything that might help to boot this, but at the moment I don't know how.
    I'm able to boot the board using DietPi v9.13.2 and get any info needed about the board


    What are next steps to do and what information is needed to be able to either resolve this or update bug report?

    For what it's worth there appears to be two versions of this board, the earlier v1.2 with the M2 slot, and a latter 1.41 without the M2 slot. Not sure if this impact compatibility etc.

    Wuk-jvi please share pic of the board.. unfortunately radxa is unreliable because with the same revision of this board it mounts different rams that are not compatible with the uboot currently used in libreelec. unfortunately it happened to me too. the only solution if this is the problem is to go back to the proprietary bootloader

    Sorry for not answering sooner, I had to get serial cable, and then I did not have time.
    Now I'll have some time to play with this.

    It's later version of the board - v1.41.

    For some reason I cannot upload bottom picture of the board, I'll try in another message.

    Serial output latest LibreELEC (LibreELEC-RK3399.aarch64-13.0-nightly-20250725-f0482de-rock-4c-plus.img.gz):

    Code
    U-Boot TPL 2025.07 (Jul 25 2025 - 02:19:09)
pddr4_set_rate: change freq to 400MHz 0, 1
Channel 0: LPDDR4, 400MHz
BW=32 Col=10 Bk=8 CS0 Row=16 CS=1 Die BW=16 Size=2048MB
Channel 1: LPDDR4, 400MHz
BW=32 Col=10 Bk=8 CS0 Row=15 CS=1 Die BW=16 Size=2048MB
lpddr4_set_rate: change freq to 800MHz 1, 0
Trying to boot from BOOTROM
Returning to boot ROM...

    Serial output of DietPi:


    Word trainng is disallowed so I changed it in output.

    dietpi_dmesg.txt is attached

    You have the same problem as me. As described here, unfortunately a fake version of the board is being sold (I can't tell you if it's due to Radxa or the distributor). In fact, some voltage regulators are missing (I presume) and the RAM is different. Rockchip's proprietary bootloader recognizes them and in fact, from the serial port output, the clock set in the distro that works(dietpi) is 666MHz. The Libreelec bootloader (which is the upstream one) for this board sets it to 800MHz as it should be if everything were according to the official specifications.

    Unfortunately, this board doesn't work at this frequency. There's no solution at the moment, or at least the legacy bootloader should be used in Libreelec as well.

    I was hoping that you won't say that. I got my board from RS - https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/okdo-rock
    Although I read somewhere that boards are same, and that there is no difference between Radxa and Okdo, but it seams that there is (or RS is actually selling fake boards).

    Do you have a link to documentation where I can find how to compile LibreELEC with proprietary bootloader? Or anything else that I could do to try to make it work.

    Quote

    The Okdo ROCK 4C+ is authorised and manufactured by RS Group previously. So it's a legal clone. For the boot issue, do they use the rkbin loader or the mainline u-boot SPL?

    From Radxa ^ .. so if the board specs are slightly different we (and upstream) probably need a separate "okdo-rock-4c" device so that u-boot can be built with the correct specs or tooling and/or someone needs to submit support upstream.

    In case it's not obvious, i've only recently taken an interest in Rockchip boards and I'm still learning what tooling and juju is needed to boot them.

    chewitt the truth is that while Rockchip's upstream support is decent, for RAM management purposes, it's currently preferable to use the proprietary binary (rkbin miniloader). Libreelec supports this type of bootloader where tpl/spl are proprietary and the uboot proper upstream is used.

    I don't use this board daily. I bought it to help with support, but I solved the problem by adding that flag.

    So Wuk-jvi , if you want to compile a version that works, these are the generic instructions, change this script https://github.com/LibreELEC/Libr…r#L347C1-L350C9 adding the flag I indicated earlier and run the build as shown here