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I'm as new as it gets to the RPi world. Trying to set up a retro-gaming (yep, I'm one of those). I'm on a RPi4 2GB and I have an image flashed to my drive and when trying to boot, I get the following (along with all the rest):

Firmware: 99d9a48302e4553cff3688692bb7e9ac760a03fa Jan 27 2021 22:20:57
0x00b03115 0x00000000 0x0000003f
start.elf: is not compatible
This board requires newer software

My logic is telling me that the software on the image I am trying to use is outdated (even though it is set up for a pi4) and can't boot with the current bootloader.

I've tried all I can to roll back the bootloader to older versions and can only go back so far before I need to use the raspberry pi imager to create a bootloader restore disk and go back to the "start"

So I guess my main question is how do I get this image to boot? I'd like to just roll back the eeprom and firmware to about a year ago so that way the image I have can work (it was only made about 6 months ago by the original creator)

So... How do I downgrade my hardware eeprom (bootloader) form one of the older stable builds found on raspberry pi's github (https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom/tree/master/firmware) without bricking the thing and having to start over (which is been my result so far)?

Thanks!

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    You'd probably be better off putting a newer version of start.elf etc in the image, just don't replace any of the kernel.img files (since these are paired with modules in the root fs). That may (but probably will not, I'm just guessing it is possible) cause a conflict with the kernel, but it is at least worth a try (by doing it on a card and testing that).
    – goldilocks ♦
    Mar 27, 2022 at 14:53
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    start4.elf, start4x.elf, start4cd.elf, and start4db.elf are firmware files specific to the Raspberry Pi 4 - it does not use start.elf
    – Milliways
    Mar 27, 2022 at 22:51
  • As suggested in comments, I replaced the start.elf and this didn't quite work. I'd get past the boot error, but it would then just go to blank screen and I couldn't ssh into it either. I did, however, find that creating a fresh new image of "recalbox" and copying all the contents of it's "RECALBOX" share into my original image's "RECALBOX" share got it to work. I am going to do a bit of fine tuning, but I think this will eventually get it working. Thanks for your suggestions @goldilocks & others.
    – allen8r84
    Mar 28, 2022 at 6:41
  • @allen8r84 If this turns out to be a lasting solution, please consider writing it up in detail as an answer yourself; I believe you should be allowed to do that 24 hours after the question was posted.
    – goldilocks ♦
    Mar 28, 2022 at 13:24

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