It gave you a uboot in ram of board,so afrer mtk_uartboot exits open minicom or screen on same uart to enter this temporary uboot to flash any of the accessible storages (nand/nor,emmc)
no dice good sir.
@frank-w hi sir, any thoughts on why all sends to ram just when i open the serial through putty or others its just blank and hitting enter doesn’t bring up the commands prompt?
Which files have you used? You need special bl2 to get it working…when both (ram-bl2 and fip) are transferred your board ahould be in uboot…depending on autoboot maybe further,but you should see anything on uart with minicom except it hangs and does not print something after you switched…so maybe you have to hurry after fip was transferred
based on video it looks good so far…but noticed ch340…is this the internal usb2serial on r3mini or an external one? remember ch340 can be 5v which may damage the board
external on r3… not the mini… i did use your files but saw they were for the mini… do you have for the non mini? also… i have the switch hot glued so no way it can switch to 5v. plus… if i had it on 5v… I wouldn’t have gotten as far as i did… load up the terminal faster after its loaded… will try momentarily…
No,not yet needed as r3 has sd slot. But basicly it is same soc so it should basicly work (but pinctrl could be different,so maybe no peripheral,but uart should work).
You can build ram with my repo using ram as device in mtk-atf. See my github pipeline for steps to build all. You should disable bootcmd in uboot-builtin env (uEnv_bpi-r3.txt).
Have added ram build to last version in my repo (2025-01),but not tested yet.
edit: last ci-run missed the bl2.bin for ram, sorry, updated it
oh my thanks! when I attempted it, got far then it errored… will try now!
EDIT: no luck both emmc and nand says
Waiting for BL2. Message below:
==================================
==================================
Timeout waiting for specified message.
should the bl2 files be .bin or .img? I only see .img while the r3-mini files are bin.
For ramboot you need bl2.bin
Img is for flashing as it contains additional header
to confirm if i load the emmc file then the switches should be set to emmc as well? using the files youve provided, same thing happens, no uboot prompt when I load putty
Had not yet time to test ramboot on r3 using the generated binaries,sorry
ah, I understand. by when would you say your time would be open to investigate?
I try asap as i also need to test RSS on r3,but can’t give you exact timeline 
used files from this release: Release Build for branch 2025-01-bpi (2025.01) · frank-w/u-boot · GitHub
and it works for me:
$ ./mtk_uartboot -s /dev/ftdi_r3 --aarch64 --payload ~/Downloads/bpi-r3_ram_bl2.bin --fip ~/Downloads/bpi-r3_ram_fip.bin
mtk_uartboot - 0.1.1
Using serial port: /dev/ftdi_r3
Handshake...
hw code: 0x7986
hw sub code: 0x8a00
hw ver: 0xca01
sw ver: 0x1
Baud rate set to 460800
sending payload to 0x201000...
Checksum: 0xaf88
Setting baudrate back to 115200
Jumping to 0x201000 in aarch64...
Waiting for BL2. Message below:
==================================
NOTICE: BL2: v2.9(release):4a09cff84 ram
NOTICE: BL2: Built : 12:50:15, Mar 21 2025
NOTICE: WDT: Cold boot
NOTICE: WDT: disabled
NOTICE: CPU: MT7986 (2000MHz)
NOTICE: EMI: Using DDR4 settings
NOTICE: EMI: Detected DRAM size: 2048MB
NOTICE: EMI: complex R/W mem test passed
NOTICE: Starting UART download handshake ...
==================================
BL2 UART DL version: 0x10
Baudrate set to: 921600
FIP sent.
==================================
NOTICE: Received FIP 0x433b1 @ 0x40400000 ...
==================================
and after mtkuartboot exits i opened minicom and see this (you need to do this quickly to see that much, else you have to press enter and see only the prompt):
��NOTICE: BL31: v2.9(release):4a09cff84 ram
NOTICE: BL31: Built : 12:50:20, Mar 21 2025
U-Boot 2025.01-bpi-g3934839f01ec-dirty (Mar 21 2025 - 12:49:47 +0000)
CPU: MediaTek MT7986
Model: BananaPi BPi-R3
DRAM: 2 GiB
Core: 46 devices, 22 uclasses, devicetree: separate
MMC: mmc@11230000: 0
Loading Environment from MMC... mmc fail to send stop cmd
*** Warning - !read failed, using default environment
In: serial@11002000
Out: serial@11002000
Err: serial@11002000
=> board_late_init...
Net:
Warning: ethernet@15100000 (eth0) using random MAC address - be:59:98:c7:cf:e5
eth0: ethernet@15100000
BPI-R3>
mmc error is right because ram is using the emmc defconfig/dts and my board has hw-switches to sdcard 
okay, will give it an attempt here shortly. you see, id expect when i press enter the prompt to load and that wasn’t happening for me throughout this entire exercise.
wait… how in your example are both files .bin and yet on the link you provided to download, there is only .img file? I bet you this is what’s my hiccup!
where can I get the files you specifically used.
interestingly enough… I started going through each bl2 file I had and for the first time I received a response basically loading the terminal really fast after but… system halt. ill wait for your file, I feel whatever is on the files you have in that downloads folder are the key! I am using the bpi-r3_emmc_fip.bin file i pulled just this morning and the r3-mini file I pulled I pulled back on the 17th
You have to use the ram files…not emmc and of course r3 not r3mini,not powerdown/reboot. You get a console in uboot console instantly in RAM and then you need to flash your system…else you are on same state after reboot
ahhh… first attempt no prompt, gonna try again and hope its a timing issue on connecting at the right time that’s preventing this from working. also… no reboot/poweroff either, literally making connect right after program ends.
Why reconnecting? Just start putty on same com-port adter mtkuart ends