Fixed: Balena Fin CM3+ Fails to Boot or present USB (rpiboot needed on new CM modules)

I am attempting to flash our new Balena Fin with anything at this point. It fails to present anything via the USB plugged into 3 different Linux laptops and a MacOS laptop. I have tried the following steps:

  1. With CM and without
  2. RTC battery pulled out and reset
  3. Barrel and Phoenix Connector
  4. Multiple laptops
  5. USB before and after power on.

We are using the power block from Balena with the dev kit. Per the documentation, the lights are IAW the directions with the 5v/3v/act. It gets as far as the splash screen, but nothing else even after 10-15 minutes of waiting.

From the dmesg:

[59441.375847] usb 1-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 9 using ehci-pci
[59441.473306] usb 1-1.2: config index 0 descriptor too short (expected 55, got 32)
[59441.474056] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0a5c, idProduct=2764, bcdDevice= 0.00
[59441.474062] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[59441.474066] usb 1-1.2: Product: BCM2710 Boot
[59441.474069] usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: Broadcom

Did we get a bad board?

I use Arch and had pulled the balena-cli tool via yay, but also went back and did a clean install:

x No available drives were detected, plug one in!

Interestingly if I run the rpiboot code it comes up with this:

Waiting for BCM2835/6/7
Sending bootcode.bin
Successful read 4 bytes
Waiting for BCM2835/6/7
Second stage boot server
File read: start.elf
Second stage boot server done

It appears to then provide some further information within dmesg showing the emmc:

[61045.222294] usb 1-1.2: reset high-speed USB device number 13 using ehci-pci
[61047.446302] usb 1-1.2: USB disconnect, device number 13
[61047.652258] usb 1-1.2: new full-speed USB device number 14 using ehci-pci
[61047.749350] usb 1-1.2: not running at top speed; connect to a high speed hub
[61047.750881] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0a5c, idProduct=2764, bcdDevice= 0.00
[61047.750884] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=1
[61047.750886] usb 1-1.2: Product: BCM2710 Boot
[61047.750887] usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: Broadcom
[61047.750889] usb 1-1.2: SerialNumber: Broadcom
[61050.006201] usb 1-1.2: USB disconnect, device number 14
[61050.288928] usb 1-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 15 using ehci-pci
[61050.387632] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0a5c, idProduct=0001, bcdDevice= 0.01
[61050.387636] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=1, SerialNumber=3
[61050.387638] usb 1-1.2: Product: Compute Module
[61050.387639] usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: Raspberry Pi
[61050.387641] usb 1-1.2: SerialNumber: c65f8aa6
[61050.388125] usb-storage 1-1.2:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[61050.388758] scsi host6: usb-storage 1-1.2:1.0
[61051.400210] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access RPi-MSD- 0001 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[61051.400551] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[61051.402022] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] 61071360 512-byte logical blocks: (31.3 GB/29.1 GiB)
[61051.402912] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
[61051.402914] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 0f 00 00 00
[61051.403652] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn’t support DPO or FUA
[61051.420595] sdc: sdc1 sdc2 sdc3 sdc4 < sdc5 sdc6 >
[61051.426491] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk
[61051.928692] audit: type=1130 audit(1549377379.689:236): pid=1 uid=0 auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 msg=‘unit=systemd-hostnamed comm=“systemd” exe=“/usr/lib/systemd/systemd” hostname=? addr=? terminal=? res=success’
[61052.521932] FAT-fs (sdc1): Volume was not properly unmounted. Some data may be corrupt. Please run fsck.
[61052.687060] EXT4-fs (sdc2): recovery complete
[61052.696308] EXT4-fs (sdc2): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
[61052.800613] EXT4-fs (sdc5): recovery complete
[61052.807224] EXT4-fs (sdc3): recovery complete
[61052.814090] EXT4-fs (sdc5): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
[61052.839872] EXT4-fs (sdc3): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
[61052.860289] EXT4-fs (sdc6): recovery complete
[61052.862589] EXT4-fs (sdc6): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)

Pulled the latest etcher AppImage to test with. Without running rpiboot first the device never shows up.

Hi there, I confirm the current version of etcher does not support the CM3+ and we are working on adding support for it. In the meantime, rpiboot + etcher is the right workaround :slight_smile:

Regarding balenaOS, it also does not currently support CM3+ either (it needs updated Raspberry Pi firmware). Support for it is added on v2.29.2+rev2 that will be released soon

Okay great!

I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t going crazy. I might have missed it, but does the documentation point this out somewhere?

Hi @oneguynick, following up on this, the latest version of Etcher supports the CM3+.

Cheers,
Nico.