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Looks like U-Boot is having trouble with the SD card speed and detecting the partition. On H3 boards, sometimes just switching to a different SD card or manually lowering the bus speed in U-Boot can fix this. Definitely worth trying those steps. For more helpful guide and information should follow: https://forum.armbian.com/

Thank you

Thanks for posting! Sounds like a great opportunity for anyone looking for a Helios64 backup battery, especially since it’s basically unused. Appreciate that you included the age estimate and shipping/pickup options; it makes it much easier for interested buyers to reach out.

If you want something reliable, low-power, and well-supported, it’s hard to beat the newer x86 mini-PCs with Intel N100/N305 CPUs. They sip power, easily handle gigabit+ NAT and WireGuard, and work great with Debian/OPNsense/OpenWrt. Boxes like Protectli, Topton, or the CWWK/Kingnovy N100 units often come with 2.5G or even 10G ports and proper serial/BIOS support. Not as “fun” as ARM SBCs, but way less hassle and rock-solid for router duty.

Still waiting in January 2026. LOL What happened @ROOD I was just given an H96 PRO+ (like your photos, but with v2.1 of motherboard). I want to put it to work doing something... so I am ready to install armbian, with whatever your final instructions are. -Thanks!

Dear SteeMan, thank you for your answer. I checked Android info, and it shows 8 GB / 128 GB, Android 15, so the advertisement was not real. I investigate it forther.

@quaSimba: Thanks for your remarks and the link to the guide on Github. Hopefully I'll one day have a RPi to work with so I can support it in my script and tutorial. @fxkl47BF: The completion packages were removed because they can be horribly laggy on low-powered SoCs and I find them annoying in general. They can be easily reinstalled if desired.

I have a question about booting from sd card. While with empty emmc (erase with rkdeveloptool), the board falls back to maskrom mode even the sd card (with working os) is inserted. It can boot armbian into sd card if I flash miniloader and u-boot in to emmc. I wonder how can we get it to boot fully from sd card.

Thanks @robertoj I had a quick look at your link. It talks about introducing patches into the Ambien build (which I already do in terms of c code, module source code and the linux .config file). HOWEVER, when I attempt to create a patch from my cpio binary file and use that as the initial ramdisc during the build, it fails (I did it a couple of weeks ago & I can't remember exactly what the problem was). Nevertheless, if you think I can create a patch from the cpio file, please give me detailed instructions and I'll try it again--- maybe I did something wrong?

Unfortunately i do not have this board to compile/test on

by the way i can ssh into armbian while it’s stuck on a black screen so i can provide any logs you want

Appreciate the quick replies! Turns out im just an idiot, and completely forgot to freeze the kernel. have a great evening!

moved

ok

You use a Desktop/Xfce installation, and it is for a low-power ARM64 computer. So I would not be surprised if in modern Xfce, the Power Management default to suspends after 30 minutes or so. Last time I used Xfce was when Debian Buster, also then in then I remember in the GUI there should be some system setting where you can configure power settings. So there you can make sure that it never enters suspend state. I do not know how to configure that from command line, but that should also be possible, maybe search internet. You can also look into the journal and see what happened, maybe something is wrong. 7 Watts is way too high for suspend state at least, but maybe things connected on USB still draw power and is it only the CPU that is halted. Other option is not to use a Desktop image/installation, but a CLI for server/IoT variant. Those images should have suspend disabled.

This might help you: https://github.com/nyecov/roobi-config-anyOS It details how install basically any OS via Roobi

Just confirmed. Running bookworm on the same RockPi-S, it "just works". Any suggestions on what happened in Trixie and if there's a fix?

I missed the fact that you have an orange pi zero 2w... I think there's a success experience with that orange pi in this thread or in this Allwinner section. Please share if you have success

That's the version I'm running as well, and I have no issues either. I think replacing the device tree (.dtb) at this point only helps with the onboard flash speed?

Ethernet should be working (after rebooting), but wifi doesnt work out of the box.

I currently have a X96 Air S905X3 4GB/64GB box that has 1Gbit ethernet and a USB 3.0 port that works well with Armbian. This was bought 5 years ago for only 35 USD. I would like to find another box for Armbian that also has 1000M/1Gbit ethernet + USB 3.0. The same or similar boxes are selling for 50-60USD at the moment which is a lot for an old box. Are there any other boxes with 1Gbit ethernet at a low price that work with Armbian? Not bothered about other features, wifi quality, performance otherwise - just Gbit ethernet and USB 3. Open to all processors - Amlogic, Allwinner, Rockchip etc

mxq pro 4k maybe "shortpin" Hope it is useful

Maybe are you experiencing the same issue ? https://forum.armbian.com/topic/56946-h3-reboot-issue/

Today I needed to reboot one of the Orange Pi which is at a remote location.... It did not come back to life.... Maybe some update removed the extraargs=reboot=warm parameter ....

No standard way to do what you want. The Armbian images from this site depend on the original android bootloader on the emmc to boot. Since you don't have working emmd these images wont boot. Theoritically if you found a working boot loader for your box and it was put on the SD card, then you would have more options.