Sipeed Lichee Pi 4A questions

[Carl Perry]

Greetings everyone -

I picked up one of the developer edition Sipeed Lichee Pi4A systems (https://wiki.sipeed.com/hardware/en/lichee/th1520/lpi4a/1_intro.html the developer edition is 8GB RAM and 8GB eMMC) and I've been having a heck of a time getting it running. None of the peripherals work: Ethernet drops carriers every few hundred milliseconds, USB cannot be detected, Wi-Fi cannot be detected, and there is no output from HDMI. I also do not seem to be able to update the firmware, attempting to boot into "USB Download Gadget" mode simply gives an error on the serial console and the boosts never enumerates on a host. I'm curious is anyone has any success with alternative upgrade procedures, or any other debugging techniques one these devices? I've been trying to get support via Sipeed but I've only had responses through their AliExpress store and the communication barriers are steep and round trip times very long. Any help would be appreciated.

  -Carl

[td z]

Maybe u can show some more detailed error messeg.
I guess u can try to power off (unplug the power supply) when the flash error occurs.
BTW make sure use the 12V2A power supply when connecting an HDMI monitor

[Carl Perry]

When attempting to boot the system with the boot button depressed the following errors appear on the S0 serial port:

brom_ver 8

[APP][E] protocol_connect failed, exit.

The USB Download Gadget device does not appear on my Linux host. This is the only error I can find. There is nothing listed on lsusb. There are also no errors seen for the ethernet driver, but the link light is constantly turning on and off and the switch reports link loss accordingly. No errors seen in the Xorg.log file for the display, and various connected monitors never see an HDMI device connected, the only way I can communicate with the host is over the S0 serial port. I have tried with both USB-C power and a 12v5A external power supply (but never both).