jock

@svdmk Thanks for posting the photos and the firmware! I took a look to the device tree and found something that could be somehow intersting. I'm not absolutely sure it may be related to your issue, but there the device tree contains this gpio switch which is not usual: gpio_poweroff { compatible = "gpio-poweroff"; gpios = <0xb3 0x11 0x01>; status = "okay"; }; it maps to gpio3 bank and pin 17 (PC1, in the rockchip documentation). That string says that the pin is active low, it means that when it is 0, the poweroff is active; when it is 1 the poweroff is inactive. I may assume that gpio pin is used by the operating system to power off the system. On other board that pin is not mapped in the device tree, so I may also assume it is not used anywhere. In your case may (or may not) be related to the weird behaviour you're experiencing. With this command (to be run as root), you can see how the pins is configured. In my case, the pin is set to output at 0 level, but since it is not wired on my board it just does not do anything. Could you please execute the same command on your board? # grep 'gpio3-17' /sys/kernel/debug/pinctrl/pinctrl-rockchip-pinctrl/pinconf-pins pin 113 (gpio3-17): input bias pull down (1 ohms), output drive strength (8 mA), pin output (0 level) You can also control that pin: # cd /sys/class/gpio # echo 113 > export # cd gpio113 # cat direction in # cat value 0 # echo out > direction # cat direction out # echo 1 > value # cat value 1 # echo 0 > value # cat value 0 with echo 113 > export you will make the pin available for userspace, then a directory gpio113 will spawn and you can echo to direction and value to change the pin as input or output and switch levels. If the pin is actually wired to something, it may be that when you switch direction of level the board may suddenly turn off. Now you can also do another test: erase the emmc and verify you still have the shutdown issue. If that is the case, it may be interesting to see what is the pin state in that condition and if switching its condition causes the weird behaviour to stop or does not change anything.

hmm, this is the commit that should have included the fix, but I made a quick diff and I could not find trace of the fix in the compiled u-boot dtb, so perhaps the fix didn't apply at all. Need to check better when I have more time, I hope I have the still the patch around.

@svdmk what you found is very interesting. The issues regarding the automatic shutdown after 1 minute are probably related to a piece of closed source blob (the "Trust OS"). Most of the time it never causes issues, but on some systems it looks like it triggers this automatic shutdown or suspend state for unknown reasons. Normally you don't need to do all this hassle to install armbian, neither there is the necessity for any reboot. It is the combination of the Trust OS and your board that triggers this unexpected behaviour. Also your board is totally new on this forum, I have never seen such zq01-v1.3 board, if you can please post photos of the board and the original device tree (or the whole firmware, if you can). So if I understand correctly, you flashed a piece of Armbian 21.02.1 on the eMMC, then you were able to boot armbian 24.2.0 from sdcard and it tooks 20 reboots to finally reach the user creation phase and login, but once you get there, it finally works for and indefinite time and does not reboot/turn off?

Nope, they are not useful. To identify the issue I need the serial logs from the board UART when you boot multitool to understand the reason why it does not proceed. Did you try to burn a second multitool on a USB stick, plug both the sdcard with multitool and USB stick with multitool and see if it boots?

I perfectly remember the change @ilmich did on libreelec to fix your use case, but I applied to same fix to multitool and it didn't work, so without logs it is impossibile for me to guess what is the problem with multitool and your board.

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