Active threads

Yes @Nick A. Tried that also. Copilot mentioned this to me: 🟦 If you want to keep fighting this board… I can help you explore: - FEL mode flashing - Using the vendor Android recovery to write eMMC - Dumping the vendor kernel and trying to boot it - Porting the vendor MMC driver (very advanced) But I want to be honest with you: none of these paths are easy, and none guarantee success. Now, I asked it to elaborate on the idea: Let’s unpack this in a way that actually makes sense, Brow — because FEL sounds simple (“just plug in USB and flash it”), but on H618 TV boxes it becomes a whole different beast. I’ll keep it clean, structured, and honest. --- 🟦 Why FEL mode sounds easy On paper, FEL is Allwinner’s built‑in USB recovery mode: - You connect the box to a PC - Press a button or short two pads - The SoC enters FEL - You use sunxi-fel to upload U‑Boot or write eMMC In theory, it’s the “ultimate backdoor” for fixing a broken board. --- 🟥 Why FEL is complicated on your specific device Your Transpeed 8K618‑T is not a dev board. It’s a mass‑produced TV box with: - No FEL button - No exposed pads - No documentation - No schematic - No guarantee the USB port even supports FEL - Vendor boot ROM sometimes disables FEL - USB port may be wired through a hub or switch - Some boxes require opening the case and shorting tiny test pads - Some require holding reset while powering - Some require UART strap pins - Some require a special cable - Some simply do not support FEL at all So the first complication is: You don’t know how to enter FEL on this board. --- 🟥 Second complication: FEL only gives you RAM access FEL lets you: - Upload a U‑Boot binary into RAM - Execute it - Use that U‑Boot to access eMMC But here’s the catch: You must provide a U‑Boot binary that supports your hardware. Mainline U‑Boot does not support: - Your weird SD wiring - Your PMIC - Your DRAM timing - Your eMMC layout - Your HDMI - Your regulators Vendor U‑Boot does, but: - You don’t have the vendor U‑Boot binary - You don’t have the vendor DRAM init code - You don’t have the vendor MMC driver - You don’t have the vendor DTB So even if FEL works, you still need a working U‑Boot image to upload — and we don’t have one. --- 🟥 Third complication: writing eMMC through FEL is slow and fragile Even if you get FEL working and even if you get a working U‑Boot: - Writing eMMC over FEL is extremely slow - If the connection drops, you brick the device - You must manually partition eMMC - You must manually install boot0, boot1, U‑Boot, DTB, rootfs - You must manually fix extlinux.conf - You must manually fix environment variables This is not like flashing a Raspberry Pi. It’s more like doing open‑heart surgery with a butter knife. --- 🟥 Fourth complication: your board’s MMC subsystem is already unstable We’ve already seen: - SD card hangs - MMC controller wedges - Linux freezes on /dev/mmcblk* - Armbian initramfs fails - MiniArch freezes - Vendor kernel is the only thing that works If the MMC hardware is unstable under Linux, it may also be unstable under FEL‑booted U‑Boot. Meaning: Even if FEL works, you might not be able to write eMMC reliably. --- 🟦 So why did I say FEL is complicated? Because on a proper Allwinner dev board, FEL is easy. But on a cheap TV box with undocumented wiring, FEL becomes a puzzle with these problems: | Problem | Why it matters | |--------|----------------| | No FEL button | You don’t know how to enter FEL | | Unknown test pads | You may need to open the board | | Vendor may disable FEL | Some boxes block FEL in BOOT0 | | USB wiring unknown | FEL may not work on the exposed port | | Need vendor U‑Boot | Mainline U‑Boot won’t boot your hardware | | Need vendor DRAM init | Otherwise RAM won’t initialize | | Need vendor MMC driver | Otherwise eMMC won’t be writable | | MMC hardware unstable | Even FEL‑booted U‑Boot may hang | This is why FEL is not a magic fix here. --- 🟩 Could we try FEL anyway? Yes — if you want, I can guide you through: - Checking if FEL is available - Finding the FEL pads - Using sunxi-fel - Dumping BOOT0 - Dumping vendor U‑Boot - Rebuilding a hybrid U‑Boot - Flashing eMMC manually But I want you to understand the reality: It’s a research project, not a guaranteed solution. --- 🟦 If you want to try FEL, I can walk you through step 1 right now Step 1 is simple: Connect the box to your PC via USB‑A to USB‑A cable, then power it on. On your PC, run: ` sunxi-fel version ` If it prints something → FEL works. If it says “no device found” → we need to try hardware tricks. Just tell me if you want to go down this path.

Perhaps you need to set the UART baud rate to 115200bps. Original stock firmware and binaries uses 1.5Mbps, armbian bootloader is set to 115200bps for broader compatibility. You should at least get the ddr initialization messages, there are no chances you get no uart output with armbian unless the image is invalid itself.

Version 3.1.0 Has been released! I won't be going into details like last time, this build also includes the fixes for "known issues" from version 3 Alpha build. Bugs Found? Open a ticket in https://github.com/Harleythetech/openauto-rk3229-armbian/issues Download: Github: OpenAuto RK322x - oark322x-3.1.0-beta

@Bones558 I made custom u-boot to fix the boot splash but so far it only works on mico-HDMI.

Two addons: I compiled on another notebook and stumbled over a RAM error message from Armbian compile.sh. Notebook has 8GB, so I added the recommended KERNEL_BTF=no to the ./compile.sh args. A dkms status says, the bcmdhd is built and active. Also, I started an experient to port the Spacemit PVR code drop (GPU) mentioned earlier. This is really untested, but at least builds on my board: https://codeberg.org/sven-ola/mesa-spacemit-k1/releases. Now trying to spice up some cinnamon, but may need a cooking recipe for the binary shared libs...

@marcosdsdba Can you take a picture or just tell us the Wi-Fi chip you have on your board?

I buy a different USB uart Usbuart Maybe I can do what you suggest. I need to wait to the item arrives at my home. When It arrives I post here to the device read uart method.

I am trying to setup Raxda Display 8 HD with Radxa ROCK 3A. On official Radxa OS, I used Rsetup tool to setup overlay for `Radxa Display 8 HD' using official guide. How can I do same on Dedicated applications images with Armbian Linux v6.12 ( Home Assistant ) ? I have read Device Tree overlays guide on armbian docs but I can't find overlay for lcd display in files:

Thank you! That worked like a charm

Thanks for the feedback , i have finally downloaded this version and burn into sd card , put in sd card then reconnect power, the system normal boot i cant see armbian screen, the blue light is on, and nothing on screen or dark screen can someone point me please what is happening.

The drm_prime error is somehow "normal": AFAIR mpv was trying each hardware decoder in turn and, if it does not support the codec, prints the error and tries the next hardware decoder in line. If you try to decode h.265, perhaps it first picks an hardware decoder which does not support such codec with such parameters and prints the error, then tries another decoder which is capable and everything works. Usually rockchip devices have two hardware decoders, Hantro and rkvdec; Hantro does not support h.265 at all on older chips, but rkvdec does.

I now found a workaround, basically adding the following to the top of /boot/boot.cmd setenv usbstoragequirks "0x2537:0x1066:u,0x2537:0x1068:u" and running mkimage -C none -A arm -T script -d /boot/boot.cmd /boot/boot.scr (as shown at the bottom of /boot/boot.cmd However this is not sustainable, and it would still be preferable if the inclusion of armbianEnv.txt could be fixed, ESPECIALLY considering that the download page https://www.armbian.com/odroid-n2/ gives the following (useless due to this issue) advise: On modern kernels adding “video=HDMI-A-1:1920x1080M@60D” to boot /boot/armbianEnv.txt (extraargs=) should force HDMI to 1080p instead of the 4K native resolution.

Probably because nobody had use for those until today. Feel free to send a PR adding whats missing.

https://www.armbian.com/download/ https://github.com/armbian/os/releases https://github.com/armbian/community/releases

Thanks @Sanjay, are you running Trixie? I was trying new driver (r8152) the other days as well, I tried your approach on a fresh install and still having the same issue (I can write to an OMV share with around 220MB, but reading back crashes the 2.5 interface); as far as I read some additional network & power management settings are needed, just didn’t find the right combination so far. Out of curiosity I dusted off the old SD card that still had my initial setup on buster, booted from it and on the same tests I get around 180MB write and 220MB read without any crash. Will spend some more time on it and if not I’ll just leave it as is, I can use the 1g network with no issue, the nas will not be running 24x7 anyway, it’s just for some backups every now and then. Just that my OCD wants the 2.5 interface to be there as well.

Update on NanoPi M4v2 ... I pulled the most recent Armbian build, and manually ran the build for the M4v2, and it fails on kernel patch "general-gpio-driver-no-sleep". See pastebin at https://paste.armbian.com/puvorasuco for failed build. Checking upstream at https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git, it looks like branch 6.18.y already has the subject patch, and was pushed today. Since both the rockchip and rockchip64 families use mainline kernel, I just submitted a PR that kills that patch for both. See https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/9368.

some things are happening at the bleeding edge https://lore.kernel.org/u-boot/?q=a733 pay attention to u-boot, the most important thing are dram controller, pmic, mmc/sd etc then of course kernel as well https://lore.kernel.org/linux-sunxi/?q=a733

Take some time but I was able to identify the CLK pin. Shorting the marked pins (CLK and GND in this case) was able to switch MaskRom mode. Note: in early boot stages the eMMC CLK only working in legacy mode (24Mhz).

Sorry in advance, but this is a bit of a dive. But, I haven't seen this fully captured and explained anywhere, and think this would be a useful thing to know for anyone who's doing arm64 development on a PC, which seems very relevant here ... I started pulling this thread when moving some software from Ubuntu Jammy to Noble, where the arm64 build process went from 20 mins to 50 mins. When I was done, it below to 15 min, and all I did was poke some flags for qemu's emulated CPU. The TL;DR version is that setting the environment variable QEMU_CPU to something like "cortex-a53" or "max,pauth-impdef=on" or even what I settled on, "max,pauth=off" saves massive amounts of time, and should be used anywhere you are running debootstrap, apt, or python in an emulated environment. However, you can't blindly set it everywhere because these flags are not defined for other architectures and will cause a hard stop when emulating PC or RISC-V. This has also shown up in the Armbian Build System. If you want to see this first hand, use the example here. Just save the following in test.sh: echo -n "testing... " for i in $(seq 2 10000); do is_prime=1 j=2 while ((j*j <= i)); do if (( i % j == 0)); then is_prime=0 break fi ((j++)) done if (( is_prime == 1 )); then echo $i > /dev/null fi done echo "done" And then run it in docker after ensuring a few things are installed ... ~ $ sudo apt install binfmt-support qemu-user-static ~ $ time docker run --rm -it --platform linux/arm64 -v .:/test ubuntu:noble /test/test.sh testing... done real 0m37.620s user 0m0.013s sys 0m0.022s ~ $ time docker run --rm -it --platform linux/arm64 -v .:/test ubuntu:jammy /test/test.sh testing... done real 0m4.700s user 0m0.011s sys 0m0.023s And we can wrestle that performance back by fiddling with QEMU flags ... ~ $ time docker run --rm -it --platform linux/arm64 -v .:/test --env QEMU_CPU=max,pauth=off ubuntu:noble /test/test.sh testing... done real 0m4.694s user 0m0.011s sys 0m0.024s So qemu bug? Not quite. The qemu emulator is a host application, and is the same both jammy and noble docker images, and I think the root cause was found here, and first appears in Ubuntu Lunar (23.10). The short version looks like gcc's stack protection logic wasn't operating as expected as the stack layout is a little different than it is on PC, a CVE was filed, and the "fix" is now stressing a slow code path in qemu. For the record, my heart goes out to "steev" and his slow, hours-per-bisect march to the answer. Pulling that thread a bit more, the QEMU Documentation has the following to say on the subject of arm64 pointer authentication: The qemu docs also suggest that the qemu impdef algorithm is the default, but I've not seen this on my version. It's possible this may be addressed in a much newer version of qemu, but that's not available in the Noble repos. It could be overridden via tonistiigi/binfmt (but I've not yet tested that). For what it's worth, it's not possible to just add a simple wrapper to qemu fix this either, as seen in this Github Example, and that's due to the Linux Kernel Binfmt Interface. The 'F' flag forces the kernel to store a handle to the specified emulator, and make it available in chroot and Docker contexts, and that doesn't help if it's only the wrapper it grabs and not the emulator binary. Similarly, it's not possible to pass additional flags via this interface, so without a change to the qemu binary, the QEMU_CPU environment variable may be the only way to work around this immediately. The other curious bit is what does QEMU_CPU=cortex-a53 enable to recover qemu speed? The answer is absolutely nothing. it just turns CPU features off. At a glance, I'm not sure if that something qemu is doing indirectly, or glibc conditionally enables at runtime. If anyone knows better than I here, please drop a comment. The curious can check can via: ~ $ docker run --rm -it --platform linux/arm64 ubuntu:noble cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 model name : ARMv8 Processor rev 0 (v8l) BogoMIPS : 100.00 Features : fp asimd aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32 atomics fphp asimdhp cpuid asimdrdm jscvt fcma lrcpc dcpop sha3 sm3 sm4 asimddp sha512 sve asimdfhm dit uscat ilrcpc flagm sb paca pacg dcpodp sve2 sveaes svepmull svebitperm svesha3 svesm4 flagm2 frint svei8mm svef32mm svef64mm svebf16 i8mm bf16 rng bti mte mte3 sme smei16i64 smef64f64 smei8i32 smef16f32 smeb16f32 smef32f32 smefa64 mops hbc CPU implementer : 0x00 CPU architecture: 8 CPU variant : 0x0 CPU part : 0x051 CPU revision : 0 ~ $ docker run --rm -it --platform linux/arm64 --env QEMU_CPU=cortex-a53 ubuntu:noble cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 model name : ARMv8 Processor rev 4 (v8l) BogoMIPS : 100.00 Features : fp asimd aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32 cpuid CPU implementer : 0x41 CPU architecture: 8 CPU variant : 0x0 CPU part : 0xd03 CPU revision : 4

@billymore I was able to detect my transpeed box using the toothpick trick. Here are some links that might help figure it out. Maybe even going on irc and asking the sunxi guys. https://oftc.catirclogs.org/linux-sunxi/search?q=tx1 https://groups.google.com/g/linux-sunxi/c/OrktE3duFDA

Hello, I'm stuck as well. I tried to boot on different version of Armbian made for H313 (X96Q) but without success (burning image on USB drive, booting with AV FEL button pressed during boot). LED remains RED and no booting. I tried miniarch. I tried to enter fel mode via USB and Debian virtual Machine witout succcess (the TX1 does not appear as USB peripheral during my USB FEL attempts).

@Nick A Thank you for your excellent work! I managed to compile it myself and shared it with someone who has the same board (IK316-EMCP_V1.0). 1. Changed kernel preemption mode from full preemption to voluntary preemption. 2. Added MediaTek Wi-Fi drivers (MT7601U etc). 3. Embedded kernel headers. https://github.com/cdhigh/armbian_build/releases/tag/v20250306

Hello Orima, Thank you for asking. I am doing well. I've been mainly distracted by an online drawing class. I will try to make a complete written guide in the weekend. It will be a new project in my github, and I will make a new thread here.

i had to do it on my own, no worries but it surprised me about it.

This recipe does not work for me. Could you please explain in more detail which exact Armbian image you are using and what exactly needs to be done to get the sound working?