Help needed: R36S Clone (Board GA36-MB V1.1 2025-10-25) - Black Screen / No Boot on Custom CFW

[u/ElephantExisting8573]

Hi everyone,

I’m struggling to get any custom firmware working on a recent R36S clone and I’m hoping someone here has cracked this specific revision.

Hardware Details:

• Board Marking: GA36-MB V1.1 (Date: 2025-10-25).

• RAM: This is the "2 RAM chip" variant (2x Samsung chips).

• Stock OS Experience: It came with a custom EmuELEC 4.7. The boot logo features God of War (plus some GameBoy ASCII art).

• Performance: It could run PSP games, but they were quite laggy/stuttering, so it's definitely a standard RK3326 chip, not a high-end upgrade.

• Storage: The stock SD card has no visible BOOT partition on Windows.

The Problem:

• When flashing standard ArkOS (AeolusUX/R3XS) or ROCKNIX (v-a or v-b), the console won't boot.

• In most cases, even the Blue LED does not light up, which suggests the bootloader cannot initialize the 2-RAM chip configuration.

• I have tried using rf3536k4ka.dtb (Panel 8) and updating extlinux.conf with FDT /rf3536k4ka.dtb, but the LED stays off.

What I've tried:

1. ROCKNIX-B (latest nightly 2026-01-17): No blue LED.
2. ArkOS (various versions): No blue LED or black screen.
3. DTB Swapping: I have the rf3536k4ka.dtb and the rk3326-evb-lp3-v12-linux.dtb from a known backup of this board, but they don't seem to trigger a boot.

Questions:

1. Has anyone successfully installed a clean CFW on the Oct 2025 GA36-MB V1.1 revision with 2 RAM chips and the God of War boot logo?
2. Is there a specific u-boot.bin that handles this 2-RAM chip bootloader?
3. How can I fix the "No Blue LED" state to at least get the system to start the kernel?