does it matter that the cm5 does not run on the io board as well? or these distros should not work on io boards?
they will work with in io board if you comment out the uconsole line in the [pi5] section of the config.txt
first boot the os will start resize the file system then reboot should take less then 2 mins.
ok it works now but what I did is:
I found this usbboot/recovery5/README.md at master Ā· raspberrypi/usbboot Ā· GitHub
I flashed eeprom, flashed again bookworm and voila, works!
1 Like
@Rex thanks for your time. Running Bookworm all great. except for when inserting any USB-A device causes my keyboard and mouse to disconnect completely. This did not occur prior to installing QMK firmware for uConsole. How can I safely revert firmware or what can I do? best regards.
I havenāt done it myself but in the QMK post the question was asked.
Iād try the instructions @olly laid out.
1 Like
Hi Rex
Just built my new uConsole with 8GB CM5 WiFi and HackerGadgets SDR etc.
I have used Pi Imager to create .34 image on both my Samsung 512GB MicroSD and a Sandisk Ultra 32GB MicroSD.
I plug in the uConsole and the left of the power button shows a very dull green dot. When pressed you get a bigger green light covering perhaps 25% of the left of the power button. I get no screen activity with the image on either card.
I was going to try to eprom update for the CM5 - and this is where I must be being a little dumb - but if I canāt boot the CM5, how can I update the eprom?
Paul
You might need to try a few different cards. Once you edit the eeprom all cards will work. If you have a io board you can use that to edit the eeprom.
1 Like
Thanks Rex, so just to confirm, if it is the same with all the SD cards I have, the only option I have is to buy an IO card and use that to update the eprom, at which point the SD cards will probably work?
What is the expected behaviour when powering up with a new SD, when I plug in, initially the power light is a tiny green dot. If you press power button for a couple of secs you get a slightly brighter green button and after a while you can feel the CPU warm up but even after multiple minutes there is no screen activity.
On one occasion with the 32GB card I saw the backlight come on and a few seconds of scrolling messages but then display went blank and nothing. Since then, nothing.
If I hold power button for 10 seconds or so, the power button light goes back to tiny green dot which I assume is full power down.
Does that give any input into likely behaviour?
Many thanks
Paul
The expected behavior is that on first boot, the OS will boot resize the partitions on the SD card. Then it will reboot and bring you to the welcome/account creation screen.
This card worked for me first boot to be able to change the eeprom and it has worked for several others without issue.
If you canāt find a card that works then editing it on an IO board would work but that teamgroup card should work for you.
Thanks Rex
Iāll battle on. I have ordered an IO board - a little frustrating just to have to get the PI to boot. Is the issue because the Clockwork PI main board MicroSD slot has some timing issues with the CM5 that donāt exist with the IO board?
I have now tried my Super fast Samsung 512 Pro Plus, a 64GB lexar SDXC U3 A1 633x and Sandisk Ultra UHS-1 32GB. Iām now creating image on my final Sandisk Ultra 64GB card - rather out of choices at that point as have pulled cards from other RPi4 and RPi5 builds.
Itās extraordinary that it is so sensitive to cards like this. Never seen that before.
As mentioned, after multiple attempts, I did see the display spring in to life once with the 32GB Sandisk. Iām guessing it got to the expand partitions bit and the tried reboot which failed the following time. That is the only time Iāve seen the backlight on and the only time I saw text on the screen.
I am curious as to why the CPU on the CM5 stays very hot when itās just in a āboot hangā situation. Itās like the CM5 is doing something, just not displaying anything. I did try HDMI to a normal monitor, but that never detected a signal.
Huge thanks for your precious time.
Paul
Something is wrong if youāre not getting any output over HDMI. Either a bad cable or something is not fully seated or put together.
You should get HDMI output without a SD card inserted.
Smaller SD cards work better for getting though first boot and editing the eeprom.
Yes, odd.
I have stripped the entire thing down and started again to ensure I made no mistakes with install inc not seated parts etc.
I have also left aerial off wi-fi on CM5. Everything is now all definitely correctly installed and seated.
Situation is still the same however. I have tried an HDMI cable that I use with my Pi5 and Waveshare screen which I know works and still, with that, on power on, I get no signal to the monitor.
I am curious about the power LED. There appear to be two LEDs around the power button - D102 and D101.
With batteries in but no power to uConsole Type-C USB, neither LED is on.
With batteries in and live USB power in, nether LED is on.
With batteries in and no Power to USB C, after pressing power button for 2 seconds, you get D102 lighting up. If you press power button for 10 seconds, D102 goes out.
With batteries out and USB C power on (27w RPi5 supply), again no light.
If you then press power button for 2 seconds, D102 lights up.
If you press power button for 10 seconds, D102 goes off.
With batteries in and USB power in, again, not light.
If you then press power button for 2 seconds, D102 lights up.
If you press power button for 10 seconds, D102 goes off.
So, very consistent.
D101 doesnāt every light up - I havenāt ever seen it lit. Should it?
Through all of this, with MicroSD in or out, I never get any activity on the built in display or the HDMI connected monitor.
Iām assuming this means some bit of hardware was dead on arrival?
Where do I start? I will get the CM5 IO board next week, so can test that. I assume that would mean the Clockwork Mainboard is faulty?
Whenever the D102 LED is on, the CM5 processor gets hot - never too hot to touch, but hot, so power is getting to it, but itās not talking to the outside world via the Clockwork Mainboard.
Anyone got any other tests I can do to rule things out or in?
Paul
D101 would be the amber charge light, it will only come on when powered on and charging or when you start charging completely flat batteries.
Something else might be wrong if you canāt get signal over HDMI. Even without a SD youāll see the bootloader over HDMI.
Iām enjoying this image but i donāt know how to increase text size on rpi standard splash text screen and password input gui box. Can anyone teach me how to do that?
Hi Rex
Sorry to keep bothering you. I ordered a CM5 IO board, a second CM5 and a CM4, all to try and diagnose what issue is. With the CM4 in the Clockwork, it boots and runs fine.
With the second CM5, the first boot showed Clockwork logo and then scrolled a screen or so, then went blank - this happened once after several boot attempts with the first CM5 - at which point I assume it tried to reboot to expand the FS but never rebooted - even after 30+ attempts with different SD cards.
I then tried the original CM5 in the IO board with eMMC boot disabled. I have never played with this so am probably doing it all wrong, but I ran RPi boot, then RPI imager and found the SD card on the IO board. I then wrote the standard RPI5 64 bit image. When complete, with a USB keyboard connected to the IO board and the HDMI monitor connected, I hit return and got a root prompt ā#ā. When I ran vcgencmd versionI got ā2025/01/24 10:37:28 Copyright (c) 2012 Broadcom version 53b30550 (release) (embedded)ā. This is where my knowledge (20 years ago I was a Unix admin but Iāve forgotten so much) - when I type the sudo rpi-eeprom-update, I just get '-bash: sudo: command not found'.
I guess the good news is that the CM5 is working even though it wasnāt even showing bootloader over HDMI in the ClockworkPI. The ClockworkPI is also working as seems fine with the CM4.
I clearly need to update the eeprom,. but canāt work out how to set the paths etc to access sudo and the rpi-eeprom-update.
Can you offer this very rusty guy a pointed to get me over this hurdle?
Paul
are you booting the io board or trying to do this though rpi-boot?
flash the image to the sd boot the CM5 in the io board, create a user. once at the desktop open the terminal and update and edit the eeprom.
Just shows what a dope I am right now.Just before your reply I realised I was in the USB gadget diag console. I repeated the RPIboot / RPI imager using your image this time. I then unplugged from my PC and plugged USB power into the IO board. Now the red light is on the board but there is no sign of a boot. Pressing the power button on the IO board does nothing.
Am I correct in saying that because RPI boot worked and the image wrote and allowed diag mode - the CM5 is fine? If so, what am I missing to enable it to boot the SD card image?
Paul
did you remove/flip the jumper/switch that puts the io board in flash mode so it can boot normally?
1 Like
How embarassing. The only jumper I had on was the disable eMMC boot - because I have CM5 lite. What other jumpers should I be using to allow boot. I couldnāt find any real manuals on using the IO board so a bit lost.
remove that jumper the emmc and sd are on the same bus thatās why if you have emmc the sd wonāt work. youāre stopping the sd from working too. the disable emmc boot is just to flash the emmc or sd.
1 Like