Yes that is what it seems. But strange that mainline kernel+DTB gets it right and 2026.04 U-Boot not. You need to look into the build-config of this U-Boot for the OP5 then I think. All PCIe NVME needed for boot might be there, but still other factors might determine fail or success. Maybe timing at power on, some power line or other signal not enabled. You could flash https://github.com/edk2-porting/edk2-rk3588 into SPI and see if you can boot mainline based kernel with that with just SPI and NVME. Maybe other things don't work then, but depends on what the board should do. You need to add or already have an extra EFI type FAT formatted partition with that, usually done manually and also installing grub-efi package and installing all that manually. Also you may want to add loglevel=7 to kernel command line, then you see what is happening after 'Starting kernel'

I am trying to enable the VFD display to show the current time. This board came with AiP1628 chip, will be going the posts to make it working. If you got it already working then kindly share the info. 🙂

@davem, I have similar X88 Pro TV box clone which got "X88PRO-RK3566-4D32-V2.1" written on the PCB. I was struggling to boot the system using SD card since the Android image that came with the box was not allowing. Thanks for sharing about the upgrade tool and modified x96x6.dtb. Without your posts I could not made it to work. I got "Armbian_community_26.2.0-trunk.792_Rk3566-box-demo_trixie_current_6.18.24_minimal.img.xz" successfully writte and booted. Later I have installed KDE based Desktop as well on 64GB Micro SD card. My USB 3.0 (the blue one) is somehow not working, Since I have a USB hub its not a deal breaker. Following are working properly as of now. Summary: Bluetooth - Working On Board LAN - 1000Mbps - Working. WiFI - connected to 2.4 Ghz network - Working. HDMI Display - Working. I have not test HDMI audio though. Sound - No 3.5mm Analog jack in this model. However the sound is working via Bluetooth head phone and Speaker with USB input/power. USB 2.0 - Connected Keyboard, mouse and speaker via USB 2.0 Hub - Working. USB 3.0 - This works fine when we boot in Android - Not working. Toss Link - Though the box got a port in the back, I don't have any device that can be connected - Not Tested. Note: I have windows 11 system as my desktop PC. I could not edit the Micro SD card created using BalenaEtcher. I had to use Ubuntu system in order to prepare the SD card and to edit the boot/armbianEnv.txt with fdtfile=rockchip/rk3566-box-X88PRO20.dtb

Generic aarch64 or x86 image has all needed support for most comon virtual environments. On a side we provide cloud images, optimized to run inside KVM / QEMU virtualized environment - super lean kernel. https://armbian.com/boards/uefi-arm64 https://armbian.com/boards/uefi-x86 Look for cloud kernel images. Here it can only be a problem if host (Orangepi) supports qemu or not. I don't run it here but I think it must just work. There won't be any difference compared to standard Debian / Ubuntu. Armbian is more polished in general, comes with several important improvements. Securing support for virtual targets is relatively easy compared to any custom hardware. And this was done long time ago. We use Armbian UEFI and QCOW2 virtual images to drive our infrastructur and also automated testing, but of course we target KVM / Quemu not Virtualbox. Which anyway can run normal image. Our runners and cloud services mainly run Armbian Noble cloud. Our website (dual core x86 vps): www:/boot:% du -h vmlinuz-6.18.10-cloud-x86 15M vmlinuz-6.18.10-cloud-x86 + 17M for modules (normal image has 150-200M for modules, for things you never need in virtualized environment) Yep, that's the best path for this use case.

Running VirtualBox on Armbian is generally not a good fit for what you’re trying to do. Armbian is primarily designed for ARM-based single-board computers, and VirtualBox is built with x86 hosts in mind and relies on kernel modules that are not well-supported (or sometimes not available at all) on ARM kernels like the one in your chosen Armbian image. Even if you manage to install the package, it’s very likely you’ll run into missing kernel module issues or lack of hardware virtualization support, especially on boards like the Orange Pi 5 Plus. If your goal is to run Home Assistant without containers, a more reliable approach would be to either run Home Assistant OS directly on supported hardware, or use a lightweight hypervisor that works well on ARM (such as KVM/QEMU, if your board and kernel support it). Alternatively, if you specifically want VirtualBox, you’ll have a much smoother experience running it on a standard x86 Debian/Ubuntu system rather than Armbian.