Hello,
I have an orange Pi5, i had installed armbian a few years ago and everything was working fine. Roughly one year ago i turn it off and kept off until now. A few days ago I tried to turn it on again and i've inserted a new sd card containing armbian but it doesn't boot.
I've re created the sd card a few times and also used another sd card because i was thinking something was wrong with the card.

The board turn on but i got only the red led, and is stable.

Searching on internet i found that maybe the Orange Pi is bricked, so i tried to use the MaskRom and Recovery button, but nothing happen. Also i'm not able to see the board inside the RKDevTool, neither windows detect it.

 

Honeslty i do not think it is something hardware.

 

I've searched on internet, but i'm stuck, the best post i've found is this one:

But do not contain a solution.

 

How can i proceed? What should i do as a next step?

 

We had same case on Discord earlier with Orange 5. We re-tested latest images and they do work. What was the problem? Hardware of course, cheap / broken SD card ... more then three people confirmed that images are ok. I tested Debian Trixie minimal.

Do you see anything on UART log in case you connect OPi to PC with USB-TTL converter?

@Igor Thanks, i'm believing that the image are ok, i was asking some suggestion to debug the root cause, if there are other way to have more information about the board, some logs. Just to be sure that the board is not recoverable

 

@Efe Çetin Thank you, i need to buy the cable. I will check and keep you updated

Hmm, i got the same... Does have a orangepi 5 running for a few years now i think from NVME SSD. Runs without problem. Just want to try a boot from the SD card. Installed the SD card and exactly the same like Simo happend. Tried different SD cards and images. Also DietPi wont boot from SD card. But when i remove the SD card and run from the SSD everything works well.

 

What i discovered what maybe could be a reason is the SD card is detected as mmcblk1 instead of mmcblk0? 

 

orangepi5:~:# lsblk   
NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
mtdblock0    31:0    0    16M  0 disk 
mmcblk1     179:0    0  59.6G  0 disk 
└─mmcblk1p1 179:1    0   1.6G  0 part 
zram0       252:0    0   3.9G  0 disk [SWAP]
zram1       252:1    0    50M  0 disk /var/log
zram2       252:2    0     0B  0 disk 
nvme0n1     259:0    0 953.9G  0 disk 
└─nvme0n1p1 259:1    0 944.3G  0 part /var/log.hdd
                                      /

 

FWIW, I'm running into the exact same issue.  Tried with both Trixie and ubuntu, as well as both vendor and community kernel levels.   System isnt even recognizing the flashed SD card at all.  If I try to boot off of it, I get nothing over the serial uart.  I can flash the stock ancient image from orangepi themselves on the same SD, boots fine.

 

Another item that may be of value:  If I boot off the boards NVME drive and insert the SD card into the boards mmc reader, it isnt recognized at all.  dmesg doesnt even indicate it tried to scan it.  Total black hole.  I CAN mount it if I put it in a USB sd reader though.

 

I burned it with balena etcher.  Wondering if there's a problem with current images in conjunction w/ Balena and they dont write correctly?   

4 hours ago, JumboAg said:

Wondering if there's a problem with current images in conjunction w/ Balena and they dont write correctly?

 

At one point Balena Etcher failed to burn .xz images correctly. We reported bug but it has been two years since. More then that we can't do.

 

Today we have our own flash program which is a class better. Use it: https://imager.armbian.com/ and in case you ran into the same problems, report back. PS I flashed Orange 5 today and it boots just fine.

Welcome to minicom 2.10

OPTIONS: I18n
Port /dev/ttyACM2, 18:53:53 [U]

Press CTRL-A Z for help on special keys

DDR 69ce204132 kwin.chen 26/08/03-14:25:25,fwver: v1.24
ch0 ttot10
ch1 ttot10
ch2 ttot10
ch3 ttot10
ch0 ttot16
LPDDR4X, 2112MHz
channel[0] BW=16 Col=10 Bk=8 CS0 Row=16 CS1 Row=16 CS=2 Die BW=16 Size=2048MB
ch1 ttot16
channel[1] BW=16 Col=10 Bk=8 CS0 Row=16 CS1 Row=16 CS=2 Die BW=16 Size=2048MB
ch2 ttot16
channel[2] BW=16 Col=10 Bk=8 CS0 Row=16 CS1 Row=16 CS=2 Die BW=16 Size=2048MB
ch3 ttot16
channel[3] BW=16 Col=10 Bk=8 CS0 Row=16 CS1 Row=16 CS=2 Die BW=16 Size=2048MB
Manufacturer ID:0x1
DQS rds:h1,h1
CH0 RX Vref:28.5%, TX Vref:21.8%,22.8%
DQ rds:l0 l0 h1 l0 l1 h3 h3 h3, l0 l0 h1 h2 h2 l4 h5 h1, l0 h1

DQS rds:h3,l1
CH1 RX Vref:30.2%, TX Vref:22.8%,21.8%
DQ rds:h2 l0 l0 h1 h1 h1 l0 h4, h3 h1 h5 h2 h5 l2 h1 h7, h1 l1

DQS rds:h1,h1
CH2 RX Vref:29.4%, TX Vref:22.8%,22.8%
DQ rds:h5 h1 h2 h2 l0 h2 l0 h1, l0 h7 h3 l0 h3 h6 h2 h1, h1 l0

DQS rds:h1,l1
CH3 RX Vref:30.2%, TX Vref:22.8%,20.8%
DQ rds:h1 h3 h1 l0 l0 h1 l0 l0, h1 h1 h1 h1 l0 h2 h5 h1, h1 l0

change to F1: 528MHz
ch0 ttot10
ch1 ttot10
ch2 ttot10
ch3 ttot10
CH0 rx vref:28.5%
CH1 rx vref:30.2%
CH2 rx vref:29.4%
CH3 rx vref:30.2%
change to F2: 1068MHz
ch0 ttot12
ch1 ttot12
ch2 ttot12
ch3 ttot12
CH0 rx vref:28.5%
CH1 rx vref:30.2%
CH2 rx vref:29.4%
CH3 rx vref:30.2%
change to F3: 1560MHz
ch0 ttot14
ch1 ttot14
ch2 ttot14
ch3 ttot14
CH0 rx vref:28.5%
CH1 rx vref:30.2%
CH2 rx vref:29.4%
CH3 rx vref:30.2%
change to F0: 2112MHz
ch0 ttot16
ch1 ttot16
ch2 ttot16
ch3 ttot16
stride=0x2, ddr_config=0x4
hash ch_mask0-1 0x20 0x40, bank_mask0-3 0xa00 0x1400 0x2800 0x0, rank_mask0 0x401000
out
U-Boot SPL board init
U-Boot SPL 2017.09-orangepi (Aug 20 2026 - 04:00:19)
unknown raw ID 41 18 20
Trying to boot from MMC1
Trying fit image at 0x4000 sector
## Verified-boot: 0
## Checking atf-1 0x00040000 ... sha256(7612223b82...) + OK
## Checking u-boot 0x00800000 ... sha256(8b0566a1dd...) + OK
## Checking fdt-1 0x008d5ae8 ... sha256(7b2c4c6dbe...) + OK
## Checking atf-2 0x000f0000 ... sha256(b2af21b504...) + OK
## Checking atf-3 0xff100000 ... sha256(70505bb764...) + OK
Jumping to U-Boot(0x00800000) via ARM Trusted Firmware(0x00040000)
Total: 470.441 ms

Using the trixie current minimal image with the Armbian flasher, I definitely get more back than using balena etcher, but I still hang.  This time I do at least get some feedback from uboot: 

2 hours ago, JumboAg said:

U-Boot SPL 2017.09-orangepi (Aug 20 2026 - 04:00:19)

This is not Armbian.

You need to wipe it. Boot the SBC with an (older) working Linux variant, overwrite SPI-flash/MTD storage with zeros.

Then you can boot with Armbian and use its armbian-config to write the Armbian U-Boot bootloader into the SPI-flash/MTD.

 

I am assuming the OPi5 has SPI-flash chip, it would help if you can tell if it has or not.

Edited August 31Aug 31 by eselarm

25 minutes ago, eselarm said:

I am assuming the OPi5 has SPI-flash

It has. And from what it looks like it is dirty on OP board

Wiping the SPI allowed me to boot the Armbian SD card. Thank you.   SPI-Flash updated to current armbian:

 

U-Boot 2026.04_armbian-2026.04-S88dc-Pb430-H2ebc-V3dc7-B5da4-R448a (Jul 24 2026 - 14:21:45 +0000)

 

Model: Xunlong Orange Pi 5
SoC:   RK3588S

 

Hi guys, finally the USB TTL cable arrived. I've read the OrangePi 5 user manual.

I connected the cable to the board, but unfortunately i tried with Putty and also with minicom, but i don't get any information, into the terminal i got a black screen (like the screenshot attached).

Does this mean that my board is dead?

 

I think i should expecting an output like the one that @JumboAg posted before on this thread, am i right?

rockchip soc standard baud rate is 1500000. 115200 is used for allwinner and amlogic.

 

And RX/TX must be crossed. 

Probably is my USB TTL cable, i need a new one with better baud rate

Edited September 5Sep 5 by Simo

FT232R, CP2104 or CH340G chip based should be good. cp2102 is good for aw/aml only due to lack of high baud rate.

I fried my original orangepi5 ages ago.  Similar symptoms. If you try it with a PC using rkdevtool, does the PC even recognize it at all?  

 

Are you sure its USB0? What does dmesg (linux) or device manager (PC) show you when you plug it in? 

 

@JumboAg@Werner Is the CH343G fine? it is 6Mbps

 

I'm trying 

sim@p: ls /dev/ttyACM*
/dev/ttyACM0
sim@p: lsusb | grep -i 1a86   
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 1a86:55d3 QinHeng Electronics USB Single Serial

 

I've tried also with the rkdevtool on windows, but it never recognize the orange pi 5.

But i got the same results, do you have other suggestion?

Edited September 14Sep 14 by Simo