Hi all,
My Vero 4K (bought 2017) stopped booting after a power surge last week. The same surge killed several power adapters in my house, so I suspect it hit the Vero too. I’ve done quite a bit of diagnosis and could use help with the last step.
Symptoms:
-
Red LED comes on, but no boot: no “Please stand by”, no picture.
-
It booted exactly once during my attempts and showed “hardware faulty”, then went back to red and hasn’t booted since.
What I’ve tried:
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Confirmed clean, stable 5V with a regulated bench supply (current free to rise, draws ~1A, no boot).
-
Powered via the white USB port from a PC: red LED, still no boot.
-
Reinstall attempted from both USB stick and SD card (official OSMC installer, Vero 4K target), toothpick reset method in the AV jack. No result from either.
UART output (115200 baud): endless bootROM loop:
READ:0;CHK:AA;USB:8;LOOP:x;EMMC:800;NAND:81;SD:0;READ:0...
So the SoC is alive, but it can’t load the bootloader from eMMC (EMMC:800), and it keeps offering a USB boot window each loop.
Where I am now:
I have the Amlogic USB Burning Tool installed, the A-A male-male cable connected, and the tool detects the device (“连接成功 / connection success”). The only thing missing is a valid Vero 4K recovery/firmware image to flash.
Would anyone be able to share the Vero 4K recovery image (via PM if that’s better) so I can flash it with the USB Burning Tool? I’ve already emailed OSMC support as well, but I’m hoping to move faster with the community’s help.
Thanks a lot,
Tony
There is no 4K recovery image.
There’s a bootloader image to test if the device is dead.
I’ll pick that up via email in a bit
Sam
Hi Sam, thanks for the quick response. I will test it when i have received it. Hopefully there is a change to get it back to live 
..
It pains me to say but I’m doubtful
Sam
Goede toevoeging, en het is precies het soort constructieve suggestie die op een forum thuishoort. Ik heb er een zin voor toegevoegd die het als vriendelijke wens formuleert, niet als eis of kritiek.
Update: Vero 4K with dead eMMC running again from SD
Hi Sam,
Just to close the loop. You were right, the eMMC has failed (UART shows the bootROM stuck in an EMMC:800 loop, only ever connecting in maskrom).
For the record: I got the board fully usable again by booting the LibreELEC Le Potato (AML-S905X-CC) image 12.2.1 from SD, with the device tree set to meson-gxl-s905x-vero4k.dtb. Boots straight through and runs stable, dead eMMC and all.
UART from a normal cold boot:
GXL:BL1:9ac50e:a1974b;FEAT:ADFC318C;POC:3;RCY:0;EMMC:800;NAND:81;SD:0;READ:0;0.0;CHK:0;
...
Load fip header from SD ... New fip structure!
Load bl30 from SD ... Load bl31 from SD ... Load bl33 from SD
NOTICE: BL3-1: GXL normal boot!
...
U-Boot 2025.07 (Nov 01 2025) libretech-cc
Model: Libre Computer AML-S905X-CC
SoC: Amlogic Meson GXL (S905X) Revision 21:b (82:2)
...
Found /extlinux/extlinux.conf
Retrieving file: /amlogic/meson-gxl-s905x-vero4k.dtb
## Booting kernel from Legacy Image at 08080000 ...
Verifying Checksum ... OK
Starting kernel ...
[ 1.236591] mmc1: Card stuck being busy! __mmc_poll_for_busy
LibreELEC:/ #
Honestly, it says a lot about the build quality that a 2017 board survives a power surge that killed the eMMC and several adapters, and still runs perfectly fine off SD. Rather than being scrap it now gets a second life as a second unit upstairs, while I’ll be ordering a Vero V for the main setup. Nice to see the hardware hold up like this.
It would be great if OSMC itself could one day boot from SD in a similar way, as a fallback for a failed eMMC. Might be a useful pointer for anyone else who bricks one this way. Thanks again for the help.
Tony
Hi Tony,
It’s technically possible.
When we were developing the 4.9 kernel many years ago, we had bootable USB/SD images (but they’re terribly out of date).
It would however be a lot of work and updates would be a pain.
It’s a shame that the device has died from a power surge.
I’ll get your order out for you promptly
Sam