@MMGen yeah, that's where mbr keeps its stuff. I guess my question is why skip copying the first 32KiB even if it's empty? In form of time saving, we are talking microseconds. Even if it were to be mbr that you convert into gpt, the conversion would remove the first 32KiB turning it into zeroes and put the gpt partition table on the last 34 x 512k blocks... Is there any other reason to skip it? Is it due to the encryption? Would this process not work if I don't skip the first 64x512 blocks?

Well I don't know what is that firmware and I'm not going to touch it even with a 6 meters stick, sorry. Random software from the internet is not a wise idea, even more if it is a software you are going to install onto a computer laying in your private network. About the serial adapter, I don't know, you should post logs or something useful to give you sensible guidance; giving you blind instructions won't help. If you're a newbie, probably it is better to wait for someone telling you a way to get maskrom mode on your board. I just want to ask you if you tried to put the multitool on a sdcard and boot the board with it.

I just installed Armbian_community_26.8.0-trunk.170_H96-tvbox-3566_resolute_edge_7.0.12_gnome_desktop on an original board HCY-RK3566-1X32-V13 2021-03-27 I wanted to confirm the WiFi chip visually but could not do so as pulling the shield off the HCY6335 was not possible, it's very likely actually soldered so don't try. With this image out of the box: What works: LAN Display What doesn't work: WiFi Bluetooth Unknown: SPDIF Hardware video decoding Afterwards, I installed brcmfmac4335-sdio.bin and brcmfmac4335-sdio.txt from https://github.com/LibreELEC/brcmfmac_sdio-firmware/tree/master to /lib/firmware/brcm/ as per https://green.bug-eyed.monster/armbian-on-the-h96-max-v56-android-tv-box/ but I don't think you need any symlinking. This made Bluetooth and WiFi work but the speed it gets is very poor (20mb/s) so I recommend using wired connection which did get ~500mb/s. I started looking to into hardware video acceleration and this seems to be a bit of a mess. AFAICT MPP (Media Process Platform) and RGA (2D Raster Graphic Acceleration) are needed for this to work. The two options I saw were ffmpeg-rockchip and jellyfin-ffmpeg but both mention needing Rockchip BSP/vendor kernel. Does anyone have any experience here as I was hoping to turn this into a media PC? Given component costs now an that I originally paid ~$42 for the 8GB model I do think this board + armbian runs quite smoothly.

Hah. I switched to using the cheapest one I had and that worked. But thank you for the validation. This was indeed the correct strategem.

I would suggest using a better SD card. G12B:BL:6e7c85:2a3b91;FEAT:E0F83180:402000;POC:F;RCY:0;EMMC:0;READ:0;0. bl2_stage_init 0x01 bl2_stage_init 0x81 hw id: 0x0000 - pwm id 0x01 bl2_stage_init 0xc1 bl2_stage_init 0x02 L0:00000000 L1:20000703 L2:00008067 L3:14000000 B2:00402000 B1:e0f83180 TE: 53694 BL2 Built : 19:23:21, Sep 18 2020. g12b g9fde858 - gongwei.chen@droid11-sz Board ID = 12 Set A53 clk to 24M Set A73 clk to 24M Set clk81 to 24M A53 clk: 1200 MHz A73 clk: 1200 MHz CLK81: 166.6M smccc: 00011aa2 eMMC boot @ 0 sw8 s board id: 12 Load FIP HDR DDR from eMMC, src: 0x00010200, des: 0xfffd0000, size: 0x00004000, part: 0 Get wrong ddr fw magic! Error!! fw parse done PIEI prepare done 00000000 emmc switch 1 ok 00000000 emmc switch 2 ok NO find ddr boot_info from eMMC fastboot data verify result: 255 Cfg max: 12, cur: 1. Board id: 255. Force loop cfg LPDDR4 probe LPDDR4_PHY_V_0_1_22-Built : 14:57:26, Sep 1 2020. g12b g3c95fed - gongwei.chen@droid11-sz ddr clk to 1608MHz 00000000 emmc switch 0 ok dmc_version 0001 Check phy result INFO : End of CA training INFO : End of initialization INFO : Training has run successfully! Check phy result INFO : End of initialization INFO : End of read enable training INFO : End of fine write leveling INFO : End of read dq deskew training INFO : End of MPR read delay center optimization INFO : End of Write leveling coarse delay INFO : End of read delay center optimization INFO : Training has run successfully! Check phy result INFO : End of initialization INFO : End of MPR read delay center optimization INFO : End of write delay center optimization INFO : End of read delay center optimization INFO : End of max read latency training INFO : Training has run successfully! 1D training succeed Check phy result INFO : End of initialization INFO : End of 2D read delay Voltage center optimization INFO : End of 2D read delay Voltage center optimization INFO : End of 2D write delay Voltage center optimization INFO : End of 2D write delay Voltage center optimization INFO : Training has run successfully! soc_vref_reg_value 0x 0000001d 0000001c 0000001b 0000001e 0000001c 0000001c 0000001d 0000001c 0000001c 0000001a 0000001a 0000001b 00000019 0000001f 0000001b 0000001c 0000001b 0000001e 0000001c 0000001e 0000001a 0000001c 0000001c 0000001b 0000001c 0000001c 0000001b 0000001d 0000001d 0000001c 0000001b 0000001c dwc_ddrphy_apb_wr((0<<20)|(2<<16)|(0<<12)|(0xb0):0004 dram_vref_reg_value 0x 0000004d 2D training succeed auto size-- 65535DDR cs0 size: 2048MB DDR cs1 size: 2048MB DMC_DDR_CTRL: 00e00024DDR size: 3928MB cs0 DataBus test pass cs1 DataBus test pass cs0 AddrBus test pass cs1 AddrBus test pass non-sec scramble use zero key ddr scramble enabled 100bdlr_step_size ps== 403 result report boot times 0Enable ddr reg access 00000000 emmc switch 3 ok Authentication key not yet programmed get rpmb counter error 0x00000007 00000000 emmc switch 0 ok Load FIP HDR from eMMC, src: 0x00010200, des: 0x01700000, size: 0x00004000, part: 0 Load BL3X from eMMC, src: 0x00078200, des: 0x01768000, size: 0x000bea00, part: 0 0.0;M3 CHK:0;cm4_sp_mode 0 MVN_1=0x00000000 MVN_2=0x00000000 [Image: g12b_v1.1.3390-6ac5299 2019-09-26 14:10:05 luan.yuan@droid15-sz] OPS=0x10 ring efuse init chipver efuse init 29 0b 10 00 01 25 0c 00 00 0c 37 32 34 54 31 50 [0.778675 Inits done] secure task start! high task start! low task start! run into bl31 NOTICE: BL31: v1.3(release):4fc40b1 NOTICE: BL31: Built : 15:58:17, May 22 2019 NOTICE: BL31: G12A normal boot! NOTICE: BL31: BL33 decompress pass ERROR: Error initializing runtime service opteed_fast <debug_uart> U-Boot 2026.01 (Jan 15 2026 - 07:25:48 -0500) bpi-m2s Model: BananaPi M2S SoC: Amlogic Meson G12B (A311D) Revision 29:b (10:2) DRAM: 2 GiB (total 3.8 GiB) Core: 401 devices, 31 uclasses, devicetree: separate MMC: mmc@ffe05000: 0, mmc@ffe07000: 1 Loading Environment from nowhere... OK PCIE-0: Link up (Gen1-x1, Bus0) In: usbkbd,serial Out: vidconsole,serial Err: vidconsole,serial Net: eth0: ethernet@ff3f0000 starting USB... Starting the controller USB XHCI 1.10 Bus usb@ff500000: 1 USB Device(s) found scanning usb for storage devices... 0 Storage Device(s) found Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0 switch to partitions #0, OK mmc0 is current device Scanning mmc 0:1... Found U-Boot script /boot/boot.scr 8133 bytes read in 2 ms (3.9 MiB/s) ## Executing script at 08000000 U-boot default fdtfile: amlogic/meson-g12b-a311d-bananapi-m2s.dtb Current variant: 211 bytes read in 1 ms (206.1 KiB/s) Current fdtfile after armbianEnv: amlogic/meson-g12b-a311d-bananapi-m2s.dtb Mainline bootargs: root=UUID=45e1ab7d-9528-4d3b-8b8e-27c59e112250 rootwait rootfstype=ext4 splash=verbose console=ttyAML0,115200 console=tty1 consoleblank=0 coherent_pool=2M loglevel=1 ubootpart=fe959640-01 libata.force=noncq usb-storage.quirks=0x2537:0x1066:u,0x2537:0x1068:u cgroup_enable=memory 25338901 bytes read in 1073 ms (22.5 MiB/s) 42338816 bytes read in 1792 ms (22.5 MiB/s) 80849 bytes read in 6 ms (12.8 MiB/s) Working FDT set to 4080000 232 bytes read in 5 ms (44.9 KiB/s) Applying kernel provided DT fixup script (meson-fixup.scr) ## Executing script at 32000000 ## Loading init Ramdisk from Legacy Image at 13000000 ... Image Name: uInitrd Image Type: AArch64 Linux RAMDisk Image (gzip compressed) Data Size: 25338837 Bytes = 24.2 MiB Load Address: 00000000 Entry Point: 00000000 Verifying Checksum ... OK ## Flattened Device Tree blob at 04080000 Booting using the fdt blob at 0x4080000 Working FDT set to 4080000 Loading Ramdisk to 7e7d5000, end 7ffff3d5 ... OK Loading Device Tree to 000000007e758000, end 000000007e7d4fff ... OK Working FDT set to 7e758000 Starting kernel ... Armbian 26.2.1 Trixie ttyAML0 bananapim2s login: root Password: _ _ _ /_\ _ _ _ __ | |__(_)__ _ _ _ / _ \| '_| ' \| '_ \ / _` | ' \ /_/ \_\_| |_|_|_|_.__/_\__,_|_||_| v26.2.1 for Banana Pi M2S running Armbian Linux 6.18.15-current-meson64 Packages: Debian stable (trixie) Performance: Load: 12% Uptime: 1m Memory usage: 5% of 3.68G CPU temp: 44°C Usage of /: 5% of 29G Commands: Configuration: armbian-config Monitoring : htop root@bananapim2s:~#