edk2-rk3576

Flashing

Prebuilt images are on the Releases page. If you build your own, scripts/package.sh writes the same files under out/.

Release file Built as Board Goes on
ROCK4D-spi-edk2-<ver>.img out/ROCK4D/ROCK4D-spi.img Radxa ROCK 4D 16 MB SPI NOR
CM5IO-sdcard-edk2-<ver>.img out/CM5IO/CM5IO-sdcard.img ArmSoM CM5-IO SD card
CM5IO-emmc-edk2-<ver>.img out/CM5IO/CM5IO-emmc.img ArmSoM CM5-IO eMMC, with a data partition
CM5IO-emmc.sfdisk out/CM5IO/CM5IO-emmc.sfdisk ArmSoM CM5-IO the eMMC partition table on its own

Byte offsets inside each image are in SPI_LAYOUT.md.

From the browser

flash.gahingwoo.com runs rkdeveloptool in the browser over WebUSB. Use Chrome or Edge.

  1. Download the image for your board from the Releases page.
  2. Hold the MaskROM button, plug in USB-C, then release.
  3. Pick the board, click Flash Custom Image, choose the file, and pick the Rockchip device from the browser prompt.
  4. After the loader is sent, click Reconnect Device and pick the device again.
  5. Wait for the flash to complete. The board reboots on its own.

No driver is needed on Linux or macOS. On Windows, install WinUSB for the device with Zadig first.

Source: github.com/gahingwoo/edk2-webflash

ROCK 4D: SPI NOR with rkdeveloptool

  1. Put the board in MaskROM: hold the MaskROM button while powering on.
  2. Connect the USB-C OTG port to your host.

  3. Run:

    rkdeveloptool db   rk3576_spl_loader.bin      # an RKLD loader, see below
rkdeveloptool wl 0 ROCK4D-spi-edk2-<ver>.img
rkdeveloptool rd

The UART shows TF-A, then the EDK2 banner, then the UEFI front page.

CM5-IO: SD card

The CM5-IO carrier’s SPI NOR is 64 KB, far too small for the firmware, so the firmware lives on the SD card or the eMMC.

dd if=CM5IO-sdcard-edk2-<ver>.img of=/dev/sdX bs=1M status=progress
sync

Insert the card and power on.

The BootROM tries the eMMC before the SD card. If the eMMC already holds a bootloader, the board boots that and ignores the card. Either flash the eMMC instead, or erase the start of the eMMC first.

UEFI variables persist on the SD card: the image carries a variable store at 0x1600000.

CM5-IO: eMMC with a data partition

CM5IO-emmc-edk2-<ver>.img is the firmware with a partition table in front, so the rest of the eMMC stays usable. The image is 32 MiB; the data partition is declared, not populated.

Partition Start Size Contents
p1 firmware sector 64 64 MiB idblock, FIT, variable store. No filesystem.
p2 data 64 MiB rest of the eMMC unformatted 
rkdeveloptool db   rk3576_spl_loader.bin
rkdeveloptool wl 0 CM5IO-emmc-edk2-<ver>.img
rkdeveloptool rd
# then once, on the board:
sudo mkfs.ext4 -L data /dev/mmcblk0p2
sudo sgdisk -e /dev/mmcblk0

The image stops at 32 MiB, so it carries the primary GPT but not the backup copy at the end of the device. Linux warns about the missing backup; sgdisk -e writes it.

Flashing the plain SD-card image over a partitioned eMMC wipes the table, because that image starts with 32 KB of zeros and Linux will not read a GPT without a valid protective MBR. The data survives, and CM5IO-emmc.sfdisk writes the table back:

sudo sfdisk --wipe always /dev/mmcblk0 < CM5IO-emmc.sfdisk

The loader rkdeveloptool db wants

db takes a Rockchip loader: a container whose first four bytes are LDR , such as rkbin’s rk3576_spl_loader_*.bin. It is not in this repo.

binaries/rk3576_ddr.bin is the raw DDR init blob. It starts with an AArch64 instruction, and handing it to db fails with

Opening loader failed, exiting download boot!

which is easy to read as a USB or permissions problem. It is neither.

After db, the board takes several seconds to come back on USB, and ld keeps reporting Maskrom the whole time, so there is nothing to poll for. And a failed wl does not stop rd from rebooting the board into whatever was already on it, so check that wl reached 100% before resetting.

Recovery

MaskROM lives in the BootROM, which nothing here writes to, so a board can always be put back into MaskROM and reflashed.

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