February 5, 2022

Orange Pi 4 (Rockchip 3399) U-Boot and USB booting

I just tripped over this and got curious about it.

Apparently it is possible for U-Boot to boot from USB media like a flash stick. I have no idea how to set up such a thing (yet anyway), but it could be an interesting alternative to using SD cards.

If you type "help" to the U-Boot prompt, you will see: 

usb       - USB sub-system
usbboot   - boot from USB device
You can then type "usb tree" to see: 
USB device tree:
  1  Hub (480 Mb/s, 0mA)
     u-boot EHCI Host Controller

  1  Hub (480 Mb/s, 0mA)
     u-boot EHCI Host Controller
The first of these is the USB-2.0 host port that is "stood on edge".
The second of these (also USB-2.0) is the lower of the two USB host ports with blue plastic. (The top blue one is a USB-3.0 host that U-Boot knows nothing about).

There is also the USB 3.0 "OTG" port with a USB-C connector. U-Boot does not know anything about it either. In particular, U-Boot has no support for making the RK3399 a device that can download boot images via a cable to this port.

Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's electronics pages / tom@mmto.org