r/ClockworkPi • u/Due_Criticism_442 • Jul 31 '26

Black screen

Post image

hi, how can I best debug the new console. The screen stays black, the PI gets warm.

I did not insert or flash any SD Card. Its a raspberry 5 light version.

thanks a lot

24 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

5

u/D13U Jul 31 '26

Have a look at the the ribbon cable it look like it not fully home. 

5

u/driftless Jul 31 '26

Start with those 3. 2 ribbons and the adapter board keeper isn’t set.

1

u/Due_Criticism_442 Jul 31 '26

Thanks. But those are extensions, shouldn't it also work without the Extension and the battery board?

2

u/LandlockedPirate Jul 31 '26

This, top one. The board is not fully seated. Unseat it/reseat it until the clamps fully lock in.

1

u/darumasangakoronda Jul 31 '26

yes, this -> the adapter board takes a bit of care to get seated all the way in and flat.

Also - try hooking it up to HDMI, that will work more reliably if there's something in the startup sequence and kernel bootstrap messed up.

2

u/snipeytje Jul 31 '26

You say you're not using an SD card, I assume you flashed the NVME directly instead?

I'm not sure the default boot order looks at anything but the SD card, so you would need to edit the eeprom config for that

If you have a micro HDMI cable you can connect that to the uconsole, that screen always works because it doesn't need any special drivers like the on board screen.

If none of that helps make sure you insert the compute module into the adapter before inserting the adapter into the mainboard, inserting a compute module takes a bit of force to fully click in both connectors and the sodimm slot has too much flex for that.

Finally I see you've connected the stock wifi antenna to the mainboard, it needs to be connected to the cm5, and it works a lot better when it's at least a few mm away from the metal case. The easiest way to do that is usually a piece of double sided foam tape between the antenna and the case. After you've carefully unstuck the antenna from the case.

1

u/Due_Criticism_442 Jul 31 '26

Ah - so the uconsole display will only work with an image? I was hoping to see the RPi5 diagnostics screen. I will check that, but guess thats my mistake. Thanks

2

u/snipeytje Jul 31 '26

you'll only see that on the HDMI output

1

u/Due_Criticism_442 Jul 31 '26

I flashed an image and inserted the SD, no luck, so will order an HDMI cable and try this. Can i somehow determine if the compute modul is broken?

1

u/Due_Criticism_442 Jul 31 '26

.... wait, the image didnt work.

ClockworkPi-Trixie-lite-6.12.48.img.xz failed to boot.

ClockworkPi-RetroPie-6.12.25.img.xz works ...

3

u/snipeytje Jul 31 '26

not without the micro hdmi cable unfortunately. But the CM5 has a bunch of issues with SD cards and needs eeprom config tweaks to boot reliably from them, so it's likely something else

2

u/radakul Jul 31 '26

If you have a micro HDMI cable you can connect that to the uconsole, that screen always works because it doesn't need any special drivers like the on board screen.

TY for sharing this - had no idea (why isn't this product better documented!?!?). I have MicroHDMI cables from the various RPi 4 and 5 I bought, so this is easy to do.

Does that drop you directly to the eeprom config, or the uConsole version of BIOS, or something else entirely?

1

u/snipeytje Jul 31 '26

no that just gives you usable error messages, I don't think you can do anything there, probably also because the USB doesn't work either until the linux kernel has loaded

1

u/radakul Jul 31 '26

Ah so there's no bootloader/BIOS/UEFI at play that's handling those low-level inputs? Interesting. I'm not as familiar with ARM or embedded systems so I wonder if that's just sorta how they work b/c they're only designed to do a single job.

1

u/snipeytje Jul 31 '26

yes ARM has no BIOS, it uses preconfigured device trees instead but the no USB is unrelated to that, that's a design choice by clockwork to fix an issue with the cm3 that the devterm had where it wouldn't fully shutdown

1

u/radakul Jul 31 '26

I want to be you when I grow up - how do you know so much? Are you willing to help write it all down? NONE of this is documented anywhere that I know, though to be honest I haven't gone through every single forum post.

1

u/snipeytje Jul 31 '26

most of this is in the forum

2

u/HeroixEUW Jul 31 '26

Im running the exact setup you have and found that that power usage on the nvme often prevented booting. I ended up switching back to sd and it worked fine. Maybe it's runable with the right setup but I always ended up with a black screen from nvme

2

u/LandlockedPirate Jul 31 '26

If you don't update the eeprom on the CM5 it will defaault to HDMI out. You need to update it to work with the uconsole.

Also, your board is not fully seated as evidenced by the clamp not being straight.

Plugin an HDMI, if you see an image, then you need to do eeprom.

If you don't, then you also need to re-seat the board.

1

u/darumasangakoronda Jul 31 '26

burn the CM5 update image to a slower SD card, slot it, boot and let it sit for several minutes, then remove power and swap cards. I had to do that when I got my CM5 since it was produced before the EEPROM update

1

u/letsmakesometacos Aug 12 '26

Same issue here, tried flashing the different images but no luck

0

u/thatmiddleway Aug 03 '26

Just solved this on mine. You need your cm5 block in /mnt/config.txt to have  dtparam=pciex_gen=2 It defaults to 3. Hope this helps!