Hey everyone! I’m hoping someone here has seen this before and can point me in the right direction.
I’m running a CM4104000 (4GB RAM, 0GB eMMC) on the uConsole mainboard.
Symptoms:
Holding the power button for ~2 seconds causes the screen to flash very briefly (like a single frame), then goes completely black
The machine never boots, just stays dark
The green LED stays on solid (not blinking)
The CM4 chip is warm to the touch, so it seems like it’s receiving power
No orange charging LED appears at all when plugging in the charging cable
What I’ve already tried:
Reseated all components (CM4, battery, ribbon cables) multiple times
Removed the battery and ran on USB power only, same result
Flashed several different images: official Raspberry Pi OS for CM4, official uconsole images, and various custom images from Rex
Tried different microSD cards, all flashed with different images
Update 1: I’ve tried flash Trixie by Rex, not working
Update 2: I’ve used a micro-HDMI cable, no output
Since the CM4104000 is the Lite variant (no eMMC), it should be booting purely from the microSD, so I’m confused why none of the cards/images work. The missing orange charge LED is also making me suspect something might be wrong with the power board.
I’ll attach photos and a short video so you can see the behavior.
If charging light does not turn orange, it could either be an issue with the battery board or perhaps main board.
(Or if you battery is 100%, maybe the charging doesn’t happen then? I haven’t paid attention but I am charging it to see if the light turns green when battery is 100% and I’ll let you know.)
However, there could be another issue, the screen is broken.
So I would suggest to get a micro HDMI and test it out with an external monitor to see if anything shows.
Or maybe use a flashlight to shine on the screen to see if it is the LED panel that is broken. It happened to one of my handheld. Usually, you can see the screen actually is showing patterns, just the LED is not working.
PS: I recall that I have had an issue like this before because i didn’t stick the carrier board (adapter board) all the way down deep enough. Since you have reassembled it multiple times, I would say it is not likely the case. But since you are already here, why not push it all the way deep into the mainboard and see what happens.
Also, the first boot for me took about 40 seconds before the screen show anything, but I suspect you have already left it alone long enough so I would rule that out too, but just so you know.
Make sure the power board contacts are fully seated in the slots. The first time I built a uConsole, I screwed the power board all the way down but the system was flaky. I saw the contacts were raised in their slots even though the board was screwed down. I seated the contacts better and the system started responding normally.
Thanks for the advice. I just tried removing and reinserting the adapter board deep into the motherboard, but that didn’t help either. I’m ordering a micro-HDMI cable to test further.
sad. seems like you are doing everything right and I do not see what else could be wrong (I trust everything seated properly and CM4 module “clicked twice” when was inserted into adapter")
at this point I see two options:
you can buy a “Compute Module 4 IO Board” (or one from waveshark) to test if your CM4 is actually working and not fried (but not sure you should do it)
Dont worry i’m in Vietnam and technically we can fix anything here with the price of a starbucks. Tomorrow I’ll hauling this thing to a phone repair shop and letting the professionals figure out what dark magic they can pull off
I bought a new board and tested my CM4 Lite, found my CM4 has been died.
I just bought a new CM4 Lite and verified that it works with that new board; now I’m going to try flashing an image to it and see if it work with uConsole.
