Well, that was fun. Got that fixed, ended up having to rebuild the boot loader from the OEM sources.  Not hard to fix but still damned annoying they are so sloppy and don't give a flying F that they 'hurt' peoples hardware.

But, while getting the file link on their page i happened to notice the current prices..  its now over 200 bucks, for a 8 gb RK SBC.. even before tariffs..   Man this chip eating machine of the AI data-centers really needs to be stopped.

Sat May 30 2026 20:47:45 EDT from Nurb432

Not sorted this out yet, but seems if you install Armbian on several models of SBC, you can no longer boot the OEM SD cards.. you are basically trapped forever.. After some searching, a few people have had the same issue, and their response " not our problem ".  Not real sure what the hell they did, but even trying to do a factory reload to get the proper boot loader back, fails.

Wanted to build a backup router out of one of my RK boards, and it has 3 Ethernet ports for this reason... so got the latest vendor supplied OpenWRT installer, and it would not even boot... i put Armbian on it long ago to play with it a little, with the intent to do this very thing later on.  grumble.  

No, not a fan of either company, but,its the only game in town.  Who is going to step up and buy me one of these desktop machines.  Only be around 200k.    ( currently the high-end NVIDIA hardware + nearly 800gb shared ram )

Now, joking aside, NVIDIA is making their own desktops ( and way over priced IoT devices ) with this stuff..  And while they are making the underlying core chips for both, and i get that Dell has a larger market, it just seems odd they would have Dell make their own version, instead of just selling a re-banded version of theirs

https://www.techradar.com/pro/hp-announces-the-most-powerful-windows-ai-pc-ever-built-nvidia-gb300-workstation-can-handle-one-trillion-parameters-thanks-to-its-784gb-unified-memory-but-it-wont-be-cheap

Well, that is neat. My "desktop" ( its a mini box, but not NUC sized..somewhere in the middle, thus quotes ) decided that on boot yesterday: "Your CPU fan is not connected or has failed". Yet it was spinning at a normal speed.  Since it was still going, decided to boot anyway. Then it kicked on 100%..  Really? Clearly its not "Dead". Stupid machine.  

A day later, nope, too much freaking noise. Move the drive to the one spare i kept while i wait for a new fan to show. ( the rest are long gone from the last purge, but kept one buried in the closet, 'just in case', as i still need something to do 'office work' with on the few days im still 'there', and didn't want to be stuck using my tablet, even if it does have usbC and supports 2 extenral monitors via it. )