I don't understand 'beyond repair'?
The hardware is damaged by a kernel upgrade?
It's not impossible, merely unheard of.
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Rock64s had several issues with emmc slots, however one way I had to circumvent it was flashing the SPI allowing me to boot from usb, following the official guide: https://github.com/ayufan-rock64/linux-build/blob/master/recipes/flash-spi.md
The issue here is that with the recent updates on u-boot, some older models have issues with old u-boot systems, and while I can flash again to the previous working SPI and u-boot, I can't make it work with the latest lts kernel.
Could it be solved? Sure, if I invest time solving the issue and compiling my own kernel version, I guess.
Is it worth it? My time is more limited than my money. I'll rather some cash on three rpi5 or similar, than wasting more time on a set of cards that have been failing on several things for the past five years. (lattepandas and rock 64 pro had no issue during the same amount of time)
At the end of the day, I like selfhosting services but I also like having free time :)
The only Radxa I'd bother with is the Rock 5 and for the price, I'd probably just go with rpi5 (unless you like to tinker... a lot). That's coming from someone that owns 3 Rock5's. The new Orion board looks interesting, but if it's like any other Radxa products it'll be 2+ years before it gets decent software support.
Thanks, that is one of my biggest concerns. Rpi5 is on my radar, despite the supply situation that often plagues rpies
Not on topic but do you mind explaining the Pine64 breakage?
I am running a lot of their products and a soquartz cm module broke for me as well, I am hoping the rest will hold on for a long time.
I gave a bit of a heads-up on a different thread, but the TLDR is that I use usb for the main disk and there's an issue with usb in the latest uboot for rk3328. I tried flashing the SPI to an early version but as soon as I would update a kernel to LTS, I would start having problems.
To be honest, I feel that this is a solvable issue, but also that I'm done trying to make these cards work on my own. (I wasted a lot of time and money fixing the eemc modules and the sockets).
At this point I reached a conclusion that I would use my selfhosting time to focus on software and networks, and just use reliable hardware, even if it means doing less and paying more, and leave soldering for my diy projects.
That said, the Rock64 pro sbcs I have are still going strong despite being used non-stop for the last 5-6 years.
Thanks for sharing! Thats good to know info.