The just released RockPi 4C+ will not boot slarm with the following image
https://dl.slarm64.org/slackware/ima...220223.img.zst

The 4c+ is relatively new and it does not have onboard SPI out of the box.
https://shop.allnetchina.cn/products/rock-pi-4-model-c

Anyone else have any experience with this device?

Slackware ARM (SA64) does not support the RockPi 4C+ currently. SPI flash is not strictly necessary to boot any hardware model in SA64. As an example, the raspberry pi does not boot from SPI flash. The Slackware installer boots from an SD Card on all hardware models. You can modify your installation after the fact in a chroot to boot from the eMMC.

Ya even on SD Card I get no display via microHDMI.. no response at all
Ubuntu server works fine

Using the ubuntu kernel and bootloader on the SD card I was able to point it at the slackware root partition on the NVME I loaded it on. After modifying the extlinux/extlinux.conf file to point the root at the nvme.

This seemed to work well

I asked this question in another thread though it's better here. When a new board is released can the DTB from a different board be used for it? How does the DTB/kernel relate to each other. This is my first go at ARM boards so I really have no idea how that works.

Short answer: You should use the dtb that is meant for the board you want to light up. The kernel relies on the dtb to identify the hardware and load the correct/required drivers (kernel modules).

Long and fuzzy answer: A DTB is a device tree blob. It is used to describe the hardware it is meant for. Generally, it isn't a good idea to use a dtb for a different board than it was meant for. In some cases it can help you get an unsupported/bleeding edge board up and running. An example is Orange Pi R1 Plus (rk3328 chipset) that uses an include in the dts (device tree source) from the nano pi r2s (if memory serves me right) dts during build time. It is recommended that this be done with similar hardware and especially the same chip set.

I do not have any experience with the Rock Pi hardware models. You may be able to use a dtb from a previous Rock Pi model, but there are no guarantees. This is a guess based on many assumptions. The main things you need to boot the Slackware installer are the storage driver (sd card, hard drive, SSD), ethernet port driver, generic keyboard driver, and the serial or display driver. If those are present, you can install Slackware, then rebuild the kernel/dtb file with support for your board.

2 members found this post helpful.

I have the Slackware system booting under 4.4 kernel that radxa provides with their Ubuntu distro dtb. I simply provided the NVME as the root in kernel options and booted from the SD.
However, the wifi doesnt work for some reason. Since I'm booting with their kernel/dtb I figured all would be well. Very strange.
I'd like to use a pure latest Slackware kernel. How would I do the rebuild?
Thanks for your great explanation as well mrtalk3!

Well... I figured it out ...
The wifi worked under ubuntu with the same kernel so I figured there must be something on the root filesystem missing on slackware which caused this. I've spent a week trying to figure this out but I finally realized after I walked 'dmesg' that there is a '/system' on the root of the ubuntu filesystem that contained a bunch of .hcd and .bin files. Those filenames matched the wifi card. I copied over that directory to the slackware root and bam.. boot was fine. I think something (vmlinuz?) is pointing at that directory path to load those files.

Anyway it's fixed now. I'd still like to get a later kernel running but at least now I have wifi

Hope this helps someone else, somewhere else.

how long does it take to load?

when using slarm64 images, you need to change the dtb name in /boot/uEnv.txt fdtfile=rk3399-rock-pi-4c.dtb.

added support

Thank you sndwvs!!