jock

Hello, which one is your device? And no, MXQ 4K market name does not help at all, you have to open the tvbox and look for the name printed on the board PCB. What you can do to is: * downloaded and try the latest multitool * take photos of the board (both sides) * provide the output of the serial log for the failing condition

From the datasheet it seems interesting, but no, never seen such chip and never seen a driver for it

@audio kees if your need is just play video at 4k you probably won't go with armbian but rather with libreelec; if your goal is playing music you'd probably want to go with volumio either. Armbian is suited mostly for linux desktop replacement and server-like tasks. Said so, tv boxes are the worst choice around in any case, especially if you choose among the lowest budget. Much better if you go with properly supported Single Board Computer (SBC) and, as said, you'd better take a look to what libreelec suggests as preferred hardware (probably Raspberry Pi) if you want/need an out-of-the-box working system.

@audio kees Perhaps you can install armbian in eMMC and libreelec from sdcard/USB stick. It will work because armbian bootloader is capable of booting from several devices; altough it is quite strange libreelec bricks your board.

@audio kees the eMMC when the board is turned on is 400 KHz (no typo), then when it gets initialized (immediately, in practice) runs at 50 MHz. The best thing you can do right now is find the TX/RX pins of the debug uart, attach an USB to TTL serial adapter and see what the board is saying during boot and understand why the board is bricked posting here the logs. Bitrate is 115000bps. About 1T or 2T, it is the DDR Command Rate parameter. If you don't change that, current images have it set to 2T which is more compatible, but some board still don't like it and want 1T. That's exactly the reason I strongly suggest (in the first page tutorials) to first try and boot armbian from sdcard before installing it in eMCP/eMMC.

For God's sake, don't! You just need to find the eMMC clock pin, gate it to ground when turning on the board and then restore the normal condition right after the board has power. You don't need to do such an invasive procedure! You said you have an oscilloscope, so then it would be a joke finding the clock pin. AFAIK, the eMMC default clock is 400khz. More informations are in the first page of this thread, including how to find the clock pin on the NAND/eMMC pads. I also wonder how did you brick the board. As @fabiobassasuggested, you can also try powering up the board keeping the reset button behind the audio jack pushed for 4/5 seconds and see if you get in maskrom mode.

@audio kees did you try to press "Enter" on your keyboard?

Hello; I'm not exactly sure I understand... you say you're stuck at the license disclaimer but you managed to get a dmesg log?

@mydeardiary thanks for pointing out the render group, I will fix that in mainline armbian soon!

As far as I understand, you used the multitool to install armbian on emmc; so it worked. H20 boards are lousy, because manufacturers, to keep costs down, removed power regulators from the board; for this reason the CPU can't go over 1.0ghz, but regular armbian images are configured to boot at 1.2ghz so perhaps that is the reason your board does not boot anymore. That's why it is hardly suggested everywhere to follow the procedure and test the armbian image using an sdcard before burning to emmc. Is the multitool able to boot if inserted into sdcard slot or not? You could do maintenance directly from the multitool because it allows to mount and modify the burned image. It should be able to boot, otherwise you need to find the serial pads and attach a serial adapter to debug the problem.

What do you mean with "everything is ok"? Did you run multitool, erase the emmc and try armbian from sdcard? did you install armbian on emmc? Also specs are totally fake, your device is 1G + 8G, not sure is a rk322x also.

@qqg attach a serial adapter and post the logs. Baud rate of the original firmware i 1.5mbps, instead armbian/multitool uses 115000bps

No.

Too much missing information. Are you sure the board boots but there is no HDMI? Are the leds blinking or steady? Serial output is essential to give any help.

👍 (of course the "crying user" was not intended to you but to the average guy who stumbles upon the post and does not spend one minute to read the disclaimers!)

It's ok if they are flashing. That is default configuration, so users can understand if the board is running fine or if it is frozen or crashed.

Mmmh, dmesg does not tell anything. You need to post the serial output of the ddrbin, or do: sudo cat /sys/kernel/debug/clk/dpll/clk_rate that will tell you the effective frequency of the memory in DDR mode (ie: should be 1600000000 for 800 mhz memory, 1320000000 for 660 mhz memory, 660000000 for 330 mhz memory)

The script allows you to go up to 800mhz, but I would not go further than 660MHz for a number of reasons

if the red and blue light are flashing, perhaps the new kernel has some issues with HDMI. The board is running fine, but recently some kernel adjustments broke HDMI output in some cases. You may login via ssh to fix the issue (install and older 6.1 kernel) or erase the eMMC and reinstall armbian, or boot a new armbian installation from USB (now you can, because the bootloader coming with armbian allows USB boot)

@pakos96 attached to this message there is a script that does the trick to change the ddrbin frequency. Can be used on the boot block device directly on the board, or on a file to modify a ddrbin binary or an armbian image before sdcard burn. Usage and examples are in-built with the script, so launching it without arguments provides all the help that could be needed. Some notes: THIS IS AN EXPERT THING. If you're not an expert, do not do this; do not come here later sobbing you made a mistake, or you will receive more insults that will make you cry even more 🫣 always always always test the ddrbin frequency change on a system booting from sdcard if there is a bootloader installed in eMMC, it has priority: changing the ddrbin on sdcard won't have any effect until you clean the eMMC (or the bootloader) some boards (notably X88 Pro) do not like ddr frequencies above 330MHz: they won't boot changing the ddrbin frequency of the bootloader in the eMMC is very dangerous! You may brick the board (only way out: maskrom via eMMC clock pin gating) ddrbin-switch-freq.sh

@TechVNC imola.armbian.com and users.armbian.com are back online, thanks for reporting!

I guess there is no alternative download page, but you can download a nightly image following the link in first page

1. yes, the device seems already in maskrom mode 2. no, you're not "upgrading the bootloader" with that command, but you are just uploading a bootloader into the board memory and booting it to gain minimal management functionality. Nothing is written on the emmc in this step: if you power cycle the board, you have to do again this step 3. yes, this step writes the raw image onto the emmc. Unfortunately I don't know exactly how this translates against AndroidTool/rkdevtool for windows, but my best guess is that you don't need step 2 because AndroidTool/rkdevtool already does that for you. Perhaps the "download image" tab is what you need, and there you should upload only the raw image starting at 0x00000000, because the raw image already contains all the necessary booting code, but I don't know if it is the right step. Perhaps @fabiobassa is more experienced with that tool and could lend a hand.

no, USB won't work. rk3318 does not support boot from USB. rkdeveloptool is available or compilable for windows too, you should use that to write the armbian image using and usb male-to-male directly on the emmc then. These instructions may help you: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/26978-csc-armbian-for-rk3318rk3328-tv-box-boards/page/19/#comment-130453

@Dripz Hello! Actually, the regular installation instructions via sdcard never mention Linux: all you need is multitool, an armbian image and a generic tool to write on sdcard. Since you're in maskrom mode (perhaps you erased the internal emmc), and you did not mention what board you have, the first thing you can try is to take a fresh armbian image (see first page, take a nightly build based upon kernel 6.6), burn it on sdcard, plug the sdcard in the box see if it boots.