jock

@some0ne Multitool has a menu entry with "erase internal flash" or something like that. It surely takes less than 60 seconds to reach that. For details on maskrom mode, see the first post.

@Sean Perez Sorry for the very late answer; I'm not sure the orange pi debian contains the proper patches or the proper device tree things; I strongly suggest you to use on of the latest armbian images. I tested it on Allwinner H3 with 1gb of RAM and it worked well, but don't know the status of the hardware video decoders of H618. Probably it is better to use a kernel 6.6 and ask support in the allwinner forums just to know what kind of hardware decoders have. Don't know if CMA is an issue, 128mb should be more than enough to decode full-hd content. rockchip has no need for large CMA buffers since hardware decoders have their own MMUs. If allwinner has a similar design should even not need CMA buffers. Raspberry Pi (1, 2, 3 and probably 4) GPU/VPU instead has no MMU, so it requires CMA for video decoding and 3d graphics.

Sorry but I don't have the older versions around; they can be rebuilt cloning the github repo and moving to the commit of interest. Usually the latest is always the best and more compatible. If the board reboots there is something else going on and the fact that after the spontaneous reboot there is no eMMC makes me think there is indeed something else going on, out of the control of the multitool. Erasing the internal eMMC and booting armbian from sdcard may help you trying to isolate where the issue could be, maybe your eMMC is just faulty or defective and is causing weird behaviour.

You're welcome This is actually not possible with the openvfd driver because it is not wired to the kernel led framework but is a totally custom module that just exposes the hardware to userspace.

@some0ne in the first page there is the updated multitool version. For some reason a closed source binary blob, on some very rare boards, turns off or put the board in suspend. The reason is not known, since something happens in a closed source blob. I don't know if it is your situation, but it looks something that already happened.

It would be nice to have a proper kernel driver for such device. As far as I remember, it uses a i2c-like bus with some minor differences; I looked into some time ago, but had to give up due to not enough time, but a proper driver would wire the led chip hardware with the kernel led framework to exploit all the kernel triggers and goodies.

Hello, I don't think any tv box has a microphone or microphone header anywhere. Some SBCs instead have the microphone on-board (like some Orange Pi boards)

Very weird, if the kernel module is loaded, there should be the device under /dev too. From dmesg I see something suspicious: [ 1249.869135] usbcore: registered new interface driver ch341 [ 1249.869317] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for ch341-uart [ 1249.869609] ch341 1-1.3:1.0: ch341-uart converter detected [ 1249.872306] usb 1-1.3: ch341-uart converter now attached to ttyUSB0 [ 3599.906107] input: BRLTTY 6.5 Linux Screen Driver Keyboard as /devices/virtual/input/input20 [ 3599.919207] usb 1-1.3: usbfs: interface 0 claimed by ch341 while 'brltty' sets config #1 [ 3599.921891] ch341-uart ttyUSB0: ch341-uart converter now disconnected from ttyUSB0 [ 3599.921965] ch341 1-1.3:1.0: device disconnected so perhaps brltty is clashing with the usb device. If you are not using a braille device, you can try uninstalling it

Yes Yes, but you won't get any lima or panfrost anyway, 4.4 is way too old kernel. Also Panfrost is of no use, since it does not support Utgard (Mali-400) but only Midgard and above

I bet: your internal flash is NAND and you are installing the image in the internal flash. Read the first page for more info. Use sdcard and mainline kernel if you don't want up to date kernel and opensource drivers.

@Jaisere Hello, I wonder why you are using an image with the legacy 4.4 kernel, which I don't maintain anymore. That is an ancient kernel supplied by the vendor and it is several years old; the vendor (rockchip) maintained up to a couple of years ago, but now it is totally deprecated and unmantained. The only usefulness for that kernel is that it works with the internal NAND flash. Use images with current kernel (at the moment, current version is 6.1), which is mainline kernel. It does not support NAND, but it is maintained and supports practically everything.

@ego worker journal rotation is normal, the disconnection of the USB devices are typical of tv boxes adapted to do something else: tv boxes are not able to supply too much power and if the USB devices are not low power, they often disconnect. Nb: please put logs in a spoiler section, not code

Ah ok, thanks for this, I'll keep in mind with newer versions.

@ego worker Now I'm checking edge 6.6.7 kernel and it works like a charm: made some stress tests with openssl speed -multi 4 while running KDE and hardware video decoding with no particular issues My eMCP reads at most at 28.4mb/s in DDR mode, sometimes also times out, but it is a scrap board with plenty of issues; decent and non-abused eMCPs read up to 90mb/s in DDR mode.

But that's not a supported setup for ubuntu jammy or debian bookworm with this repository, perhaps it is better to discuss in a separate thread?

@ego worker during my tests the board was stable with days of uptime, but when some tasks were run it hang as well. Could not really understand where is the issue, but I did not dedicate any time to it. What overlays did you enable? R29s are very limited, they have no power regulators for cpu and logic so voltage is fixed. For this reason, cpu, ddr and gpu frequencies cannot scale up to nominal frequencies.

vo=gpu-next fails on my setups, but the rk3288 tinkerboard-s was one of my test beds and it did not show any reset issue. Also other boards did not show any particular stability issues.

Use the multitool and install the "Jump start" feature, then you should be able to boot from either sdcard or usb.

Mostly trial and error; if the board is well known and someone already discovered it or if you have the original dtb you can look there

@haven Cool workaround, thanks! Can be also useful to pinpoint the bug/missing feature

Read the first post of the main thread about rk3318, there is an alternative firmware for your wifi you may want to try

@Le Best Noob Thanks for the photos. It looks like a quite a standard rk3229 board, in fact looking into the device tree it uses the same led wiring of mxq_rk3229, which is led-conf2; the only thing doubt is that the leds may be switched in polarity: when set to on, they turn off, and viceversa.

Yeah, USB3 is quite sensitive to interferences, and when the board is not designed nor realized with particular care, that's what you get. rk322x thread is filled with these minor and major issues and when people asks what they can do, the best answer is always "next time buy a properly supported SBC, whose specifications are clear and has been tested for proper support". I always say that tv boxes are very nice for toying around - I find it very funny to reverse engineer them. You may even be lucky and get stability for your project, but if you're not a power user with more than average experience and knowledge you will easily have troubles of some sort sooner or later.

Which is a false statement. You talk that way only because you don't know what is there behind. I run the rk322x and rk33x8 thing for years and perhaps I'm more informed than you. Tv boxes have been always a discussion theme in the past with the armbian "management board". People with more experience than me noted, years ago, that they would be way too costly and practically unmaintainable by project members if community would not be involved in their management. That's true: their hardware changes constantly, market names that means nothing, plenty of revisions for the same "board" with different wirings and different hardware parts. You can't set a supporting level when you get a situation like this. For that reason dedicated forum sections and Community Supported Configuration (CSC) boads were introduced, and support is given by community itself with a "best effort" fashion. Tv box and alike configurations are always accepted into armbian, but only as CSC boards. Also rk322x family is there only for tvboxes. Wiping out all csc boards and families and forum section and maintainance would be much easier for everyone. Perhaps it is somehow true, but still is challenging to deal when your opponent "cheats" in every possible way (scrap or defective parts, false advertisement, etc...)

Actually I don't know, but I think that tv box manufacturers do little to nothing adjustment on their android images. I think they deal with the software as little as they can do. Despite there are dozen of tv box brands out there, all of them have the same exact software, the only difference is the device tree to adapt little differences of the boards here and there. Software support costs, and costs a lot, and tv box manufacturers have to keep the price as down as possible.