Pogoplug V4 - no SATA or USB (no replies)

Hello gents,

First off, happy New Year 2020 to everyone and their families. May it bring joy and happiness.

I am puzzled by this issue: whenever a USB or a SATA drive is plugged in, nothing happens. There are no messages on the screen, the Pogo seems to be unaware of any devices plugged in.
I tried two known working USB sticks and two SATA drives, one spinner (ext4) and one SSD (this one has NTFS filesystem on it).
The SSD is not mine and is not intended to be used in the Pogo long term.

TBH, I never plugged in the drives before wiping the stock uboot/OS.
Uboot has been upgraded to Bodhi's latest and Debian 5.4.2 has been installed.

Perhaps the USB/SATA is bad on this computer?

Thanks and best regards.
Olek