Bug? SATA hard drives do not boot on Hardkernel Odroid HC4 (Amlogic S905X3)

[Lucas]

I am trying to use the odroid HC4 with Armbian Linux and two 3.5 inch SATA
HDDs physically inserted. I believe I have traced a bug to uboot code at
the start of the boot process.

The issue is documented here:
https://github.com/armbian/build/issues/9532

I have two versions of Armbian, one works and one doesn't:
Armbian_26.5.1_Odroidhc4_trixie_current_6.18.33_minimal.img.xz - fails
Armbian_25.8.1_Odroidhc4_bookworm_current_6.12.41_minimal.img.xz - works

Both versions boot fine with no HDDs inserted. Some SATA devices boot fine.
These are powerful WD Red enterprise drives. When I interrupt boot by
pressing any key, I can run `scsi scan` and `boot` and have it boot
successfully on both versions. I also see HDMI visual artifacts during the
scsi scan sequence (the text becomes garbled on a few lines) that always
means the boot will be successful.

I tried compiling edits to /boot/boot.cmd. These edits did persist (I saw
my echo commands) but did not fix the problem. There is part of the boot
sequence that happens before the compiled boot.cmd runs.

I tried setting preboot flags without recompilation, but can't figure out
if this is supported on Armbian / HC4.

I believe this preboot portion is controlled by uboot.

I made some edits to the armbian code and ran a `compile.sh` command that
seems to create a new uboot. I wrote that to the SD card and the board no
longer boots with that card.

In order to diagnose further, I could use some help confirming that this
portion of boot is controlled by uboot.