jock

I got it, I don't remember if it is v2.0, but perhaps it is a v1.4; anyway it works flawlessy on my case, it has a specific led-conf because it carries the rk805 pmic that is required to make operational before trying to raise cpu frequency

DISCLAIMERS (PLEASE READ):
Everything you can find in this thread (binaries, texts, code snippets, etc...) are provided AS-IS and are not part of official Armbian project. For this reason not people from Armbian project nor myself are responsible for misuse or loss of functionality of hardware. THIS POST explains very well the troubles with TV Boxes and why they are not suitable for everyone Please don't ask about support or assistance in other non-community forums nor in the official Armbian github repository, instead post your questions in this thread, in the TV Boxes forum section (hardware related) or in the Peer-to-peer support section (general linux/software related).  
Following the recent thread on LibreElec forum about an unofficial image for rk3229 devices, I would like to make public the work made by me and @fabiobassa about bringing rk322x support to armbian.
The project is now in -> mainline Armbian <- development fork -> here <-
 
This first page and the last 3 or 4 pages of the thread are enough to get up to date with recent developments.
Many useful experiences are scattered through the thread, but the most important things are collected here in the first page, so please read it carefully!
 
Mainline kernel is fully supported and will receive most support in the future. Legacy kernel 4.4 is deprecated, but is kept around only for special purposes.
 
What works:
Should boot and work flawlessy on all boards with RK3228a, RK3228b and RK3229, with either DDR2 and DDR3 memories. Mainline u-boot Proprietary OPTEE provided as Trusted Execution Environment (needed for DRAM frequency scaling) All 4 cores are working Ethernet Serial UART (configured at 115200 bps, not 1.5Mbps!) Thermals, CPU and DRAM frequency scaling OTG USB 2.0 port (also as boot device!) EHCI/OHCI USB 2.0 ports MMC subsystem (including eMMC, SD and sdio devices) Hardware video acceleration NAND is available only on legacy kernel. To fully boot from NAND, use the Multitool and its steP-nand installation (instructions are below) Various WIFI over SDIO are supported (SSV6051P, SSV6256P, ESP8089, Realtek chips, etc...), ssv6256p driver is available only on legacy kernel Full GPU acceleration U-boot boot order priority: first the sdcard, then the USB OTG port and eventually the internal eMMC; you can install u-boot (and the whole system) in the internal eMMC and u-boot will always check for images on external sdcard/USB first.  
Unbrick:
Technically, rockchip devices cannot be bricked. If the internal flash does not contain a bootable system, they will always boot from the sdcard. If, for a reason, the bootable system on the internal flash is corrupted or is unable to boot correctly, you can always force the maskrom mode shorting the eMMC clock pin on the PCB. Here there is the procedure, but you can also google around if you get stuck on a faulty bootloader, the technique is pretty simple and requires a simple screwdriver.
 
There are however some unfortunate cases (expecially newer boards) where shorting the eMMC clock pin is difficult or impossibile, like eMMC or eMCP BGA chips with no exposed pins. In those cases pay double attention when burning something on the internal eMMC/eMCP and always test first the image from the sdcard to be sure it works before burning anything on eMMC/eMCP.
 
Some useful links with pins, pads or procedures for some boards:
Generic procedure for boards with non-BGA eMMC MXQPRO_V71 - eMCP H20 - eMCP ZQ01 - eMCP  
NAND vs eMMC vs eMCP difference:
RK3228 and RK3229 tv boxes comes with three different flash memory chips: eMMC, NAND and eMCP.
It does not depend upon the market name of the tv box and neither the internal board; manufacturers put whatever they find cheaper when they buy the components.
 
NAND chip is just the non-volatile memory eMMC chip contains both the non-volatile memory plus a controller. eMCP chip contains the non-volatile memory, a controller for the non-volatile memory (like eMMC), but also contains a bank of DDR SDRAM memory on the same physical chip.  
The difference is very important, because eMMC and eMCP are far easier to support at various levels: the controller deals with the physical characteristics of the non-volatile memory, so the software has no to deal with.
NAND chips instead are harder to support, because the software is required to deal with the physical characteristics and non-standard things that depends upon the NAND manufacturer.
 
If you have a NAND chips you're unlucky because mainline kernel currently cannot access it, but also because you need special care and instructions explained later.
 
You can discover if you have a NAND, eMMC or eMCP chip looking on the board are reading the signature on the flash memory chip.
The Multitool (see later) also can detect which chip you have onboard: the program will warn you at startup if you have a NAND chip.
 
NAND bootloader upgrade:
IMPORTANT: don't do this is you have an eMMC or eMCP; skip this paragraph if you are unsure too!
For very expert people who are having issues when (re)booting images, there is the chance to upgrade the bootloader on NAND.
The NAND bootloader is nothing else than a regular idbloader (see official rockchip documentation) but contains some bits to correctly access the data on your flash memory.
Upgrading requires to erase the existing flash content, in the worst case will require you to follow the Unbrick procedure above or restore an older but more compatible bootloader.
If you are not mentally ready to overcome possible further issues, don't do this!
 
The detailed instructions and the binaries are available at this post
 
Multimedia:
Mainline kernel: 3D acceleration is provided by Lima driver and is already enabled. Hardware video decoding: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/19258-testing-hardware-video-decoding-rockchip-allwinner/ Deprecated legacy kernel: multimedia features, like OpenGL/OpenGL ES acceleration, hardware accelerated Kodi, ffmpeg and mpv you can take a look to this post An effective tutorial from @Hai Nguyen on how to configure a box as a hi-quality music player using an USB audio card, and controlling it via remote control is available in this post  
Brief explanation about kernel naming:
current kernel is the mainline LTS kernel version, most maintained and tested. This is the suggested version for production devices. If you don't know what to pick, pick this. legacy kernel (version 4.4) is provided by manufacturer; it is deprecated, unmaintained and not suggested. edge kernel is the development mainline kernel version, with experimental features and drivers; usually stable but perhaps suitable for production devices.  
You can switch from one kernel flavour to another using armbian-config or manually via apt.
 
Installation (via SD card):
Building:
You can build your own image follow the common steps to build armbian for other tv boxes devices: when you are in the moment to choose the target board, switch to CSC/TVB/EOL boards and select "rk322x-box" from the list.
 
Download prebuilt images from the following links:
Archive builds (GPG-signed) - https://imola.armbian.com/dl/rk322x-box/archive/ SUGGESTED - Nightly built from trunk each week by Armbian servers (GPG-signed) - https://github.com/armbian/community Old images provided by me (unsigned and outdated) - https://users.armbian.com/jock/rk322x/armbian/stable  
Archived/older images:
https://armbian.hosthatch.com/archive/rk322x-box/archive/
 
Multitool:
The Multitool is a small but powerful tool to do quick backup/restore of internal flash, but also burn images and general system rescue and maintenance via terminal or SSH.
Compressed images will be uncompressed on fly.
Multitool - A small but powerful image for RK322x TV Box maintenance (instructions to access via network here)  
Quick installation instructions on eMMC:
Build or download your preferred Armbian image and a copy of the Multitool; Burn the Multitool on an SD card; once done, place the Armbian image in images folder of the SD card NTFS partition; Plug the SD card in the TV box and plug in the power cord. After some seconds the blue led starts blinking and the Multitool appears; OPTIONAL: you can do a backup of the existing firmware with "Backup flash" menu option; Choose "Burn image to flash" from the menu, then select the destination device (usually mmcblk2) and the image to burn; Wait for the process to complete, then choose "Shutdown" from main menu; Unplug the power cord and the SD card, then replug the power cord; Wait for 10 seconds, then the led should start blinking and HDMI will turn on. The first time the boot process will take a couple of minutes or more because the filesystem is going to be resized, so be patient and wait for the login prompt. On first boot you will be asked for entering a password for root user of your choice and the name and password for a regular user Run sudo rk322x-config and select your board characteristics to enable leds, wifi chips, high-speed eMMC, etc... Run sudo armbian-config to configure timezone, locales and other personal options Congratulations, Armbian is now installed and configured!  
Despite the procedure above is simple and reliable, I always recommend to first test that your device boots Armbian images from SD Card.
Due to the really large hardware variety, there is the rare chance that the images proposed here may not boot. If a bad image is burned in eMMC, the box may not boot anymore forcing you to follow the unbrick section at the top of this post.
 
Quick installation instructions on NAND:
Build or download your preferred Armbian image and a copy of the Multitool; Burn the Multitool on an SD card; once done, place the Armbian legacy kernel image in images folder of the SD card NTFS partition; Plug the SD card in the TV box and plug in the power cord. After some seconds the blue led starts blinking and the Multitool appears; OPTIONAL: you can do a backup of the existing firmware with "Backup flash" menu option; Choose "Burn Armbian image via steP-nand" from the menu, then select the destination device (usually rknand0) and the image to burn; Wait for the process to complete, then choose "Shutdown" from main menu; Unplug the power cord and the SD card, then replug the power cord; Wait for 10 seconds, then the led should start blinking and HDMI will turn on. The first time the boot process will take a couple of minutes or more because the filesystem is going to be resized, so be patient and wait for the login prompt. On first boot you will be asked for entering a password for root user of your choice and the name and password for a regular user Run sudo rk322x-config and select your board characteristics to enable leds, wifi chips, etc... Run armbian-config to configure timezone, locales and other personal options Congratulations, Armbian is now installed!  
Alternative: you can install the bootloader in NAND and let it boot from SD Card or USB:
Download a copy of the Multitool and burn it on an SD card; Plug the SD card in the TV box and plug in the power cord. After some seconds the blue led starts blinking and the Multitool appears; RECOMMENDED: make a backup of the existing firmware with "Backup flash" menu option; Choose "Install Jump Start for Armbian" menu option: the Jump Start uses the internal NAND to boot from external SD Card or external USB Stick; Follow the general instructions to boot from SD Card below, skip the first erase eMMC step.  
Quick installation instructions to boot from SD Card:
If you are already running Armbian from eMMC, skip to the next step. Instead if you are running the original firmware you need to first erase the internal eMMC; to do so download the Multitool, burn it on an SD Card, plug the SD Card and power the TV Box. Use "Backup flash" if you want to do a backup of the existing firmware, then choose "Erase flash" menu option. Build or download your preferred Armbian image; Uncompress and burn the Armbian image on the SD Card; Plug the SD Card in the TV Box and power it on; Wait for 10 seconds, then the led should start blinking and HDMI will turn on. The first time the boot process will take a couple of minutes or more because the filesystem is going to be resized, so be patient and wait for the login prompt; On first boot you will be asked for entering a password for root user of your choice and the name and password for a regular user Run sudo rk322x-config and select your board characteristics to enable leds, wifi chips, high-speed eMMC or NAND, etc... Run armbian-config to configure timezone, locales and other personal options, or also to transfer the SD Card installation to internal eMMC; Congratulations, Armbian is running from SD Card!  
A note about boot device order:
With Armbian also comes mainline U-boot. If you install Armbian or just the bootloader in the eMMC or the Jump Start on internal NAND, the bootloader will look for valid bootable images in this order:
External SD Card External USB Stick in OTG Port Internal eMMC  
Installation (without SD card, board with eMMC)
If you have no sd card slot and your board has an eMMC, you can burn the armbian image directly on the internal eMMC using rkdeveloptool and a male-to-male USB cable:
 
Download your preferred Armbian image from Armbian download page and decompress it. Download the rk322x bootloader: rk322x_loader_v1.10.238_256.bin Download a copy of rkdeveloptool: a compiled binary is available in the official rockchip-linux rkbin github repository. Unplug the power cord from the tv box Plug an end of an USB Male-to-male cable into the OTG port (normally it is the lone USB port on the same side of the Ethernet, HDMI, analog AV connectors) while pressing the reset microbutton with a toothpick. You can find the reset microbutton in a hole in the back of the box, but sometimes it is hidden into the AV analog jack Plug the other end of the USB Male-to-male cable into an USB port of your computer If everything went well, run lsusb: you should see a device with ID 2207:320b Run sudo rkdeveloptool rd 3 (if this fails don't worry and proceed to next step) Run sudo rkdeveloptool db rk322x_loader_v1.10.238_256.bin Run sudo rkdeveloptool wl 0x0 image.img (change image.img this with the real Armbian image filename) Unplug the power cord Done!  
Installation (without SD card, board with NAND)
If you are in the unfortunate case you can't use an SD card for installation and your board has a NAND chip, you still have an option to use the quick Multitool installation steps via USB.
 
Obtain a copy of rkdeveloptool: a compiled binary is available in the official rockchip-linux rkbin github repository. Unplug the power cord from the tv box Plug an end of an USB Male-to-male cable into the OTG port (normally it is the lone USB port on the same side of the Ethernet, HDMI, analog AV connectors) while pressing the reset microbutton with a toothpick. You can find the reset microbutton in a hole in the back of the box, but sometimes it is hidden into the AV analog jack Plug the other end of the USB Male-to-male cable into an USB port of your computer If everyting went well, using lsusb you should see a device with ID 2207:320b Run sudo rkdeveloptool wl 0x4000 u-boot-main.img (download u-boot-main.img.xz , don't forget to decompress it!) Unplug the power cord  
Now you can follow the instructions on how to install on eMMC/NAND via SD card, just use instead an USB stick to do all the operations and plug it into the USB OTG port. Once you reboot, USB OTG port will be used as a boot device.
 
NOTE: NAND users without SD slot may be unhappy to know that it will be difficult to do extra maintenance with Multitool in case something breaks in the installed Armbian system: installing u-boot-main.img makes the installed system unbootable because it is missing the NAND driver.
 
 
Alternative backup, restore and erase flash for EXPERTS:
These backup, restore and erase flash procedures are for experts only. They are kept here mostly for reference, since the Multitool is perfectly able to do same from a very comfy interface and is the suggested way to do maintenance.
 
Backup:
Obtain a copy of rkdeveloptool: a compiled binary is available in the official rockchip-linux rkbin github repository. If you prefer, you can compile it yourself from the sources available at official rockchip repository Unplug the power cord from the tv box Plug an end of an USB Male-to-male cable into the OTG port (normally it is the lone USB port on the same side of the Ethernet, HDMI, analog AV connectors) while pressing the reset microbutton with a toothpick. You can find the reset microbutton in a hole in the back of the box, but sometimes it is hidden into the AV analog jack Plug the other end of the USB Male-to-male cable into an USB port of your computer If everyting went well, using lsusb you should see a device with ID 2207:320b change directory and move into rkbin/tools directory, run ./rkdeveloptool rfi then take note of the FLASH SIZE megabytes (my eMMC is 8Gb, rkdeveloptool reports 7393 megabytes) run ./rkdeveloptool rl 0x0 $((FLASH_SIZE * 2048)) backup.data (change FLASH_SIZE with the value you obtained the step before) once done, the internal eMMC is backed up to backup.data file  
Restore: first we have to restore the original bootloader, then restore the original firmware.
Running rkdeveloptool with these switches will accomplish both the jobs:
./rkdeveloptool db rk322x_loader_v1.10.238_256.bin Downloading bootloader succeeded. ./rkdeveloptool ul rk322x_loader_v1.10.238_256.bin Upgrading loader succeeded. ./rkdeveloptool wl 0x0 backup.data Write LBA from file (100%) Download here:
 
Erase the flash memory: clearing the internal eMMC/NAND memory makes the SoC look for external SD Card as first boot option.
If there isn't any suitable SD Card, the SoC enters maskrom mode, which can then be used for full eMMC/NAND access using rkdeveloptool. This is perfectly fine if your box has an eMMC flash memory.
NOTE: In case you have a NAND flash memory this option is however discouraged. The original bootloader contains some special parameters to correctly access the data. Clearing the flash memory will probably garbage the NAND data and restoring the bootloader may require some special instructions.
 
Obtain a copy of rkdeveloptool: a compiled binary is available in the official rockchip-linux rkbin github repository. If you prefer, you can compile it yourself from the sources available at official rockchip repository Unplug the power cord from the board Plug an end of an USB Male-to-male cable into the OTG port (normally it is the lone USB port on the same side of the Ethernet, HDMI, analog AV connectors) while pressing the reset microbutton with a toothpick. You can find the reset microbutton in a hole in the back of the box, but sometimes it is hidden into the AV analog jack Plug the other end of the USB Male-to-male cable into an USB port of your computer If everyting went well, using lsusb you should see a device with ID 2207:320b run ./rkdeveloptool ef and wait a few seconds once done, the internal eMMC is erased and the device will boot from the sdcard from now on  
Partecipation and debugging:
If you want to partecipate or need help debugging issues, do not hesitate to share your experience with the installation procedure of the boxes.
In case of issues and missed support, provide as many as possible of these things is very useful to try and bring support for an unsupported board:
 
some photos of both sides of the board. Details of the eMMC, DDR and Wifi chips are very useful! upload the device tree binary (dtb) of your device. We can understand a lot of things of the hardware from that small piece of data; and alternative is a link to the original firmware (you can do a full backup with the Multitool); dmesg and other logs (use armbianmonitor -u that automatically collects and uploads the logs online) attach a serial converter to the device and provide the output of the serial port;  
Critics, suggestions and contributions are welcome!
 
Credits:
@fabiobassa for his ideas, inspiration, great generosity in giving the boards for development and testing. The project of bringing rk322x into armbian would not have begun without his support! Justin Swartz, for his work and research to bring mainline linux on rk3229 (repository here) @knaerzche for his great contribution to libreelec support and mainline patches @Alex83 for his patience in testing the NAND bootloader upgrade procedure on his board @Jason Duhamell for his generous donation that allowed researching eMCP boards and esp8089 wifi chip

@Felipe Muniz I don't think it was a good idea to change the NAND. AFAIK, eMMC can be switched with no real software issues, but NAND chips in my opinion are way thougher because they require a software layer (the FTL) to work correctly. The proprietary NAND driver contains the FTL routines for a bunch of vendors and specific parts, so IMHO you can't put any bigger/better part and expect to work out of the box.
 
You may boot in maskrom mode, upload a recent loader and see if rfdeveloptool/rkflashtool detect the nand parameters correctly (size, vendor, page size, ecc bits, etc...),otherwise I would not expect it to work in any way.
 
 

@Felipe Muniz I don't think it was a good idea to change the NAND. AFAIK, eMMC can be switched with no real software issues, but NAND chips in my opinion are way thougher because they require a software layer (the FTL) to work correctly. The proprietary NAND driver contains the FTL routines for a bunch of vendors and specific parts, so IMHO you can't put any bigger/better part and expect to work out of the box.
 
You may boot in maskrom mode, upload a recent loader and see if rfdeveloptool/rkflashtool detect the nand parameters correctly (size, vendor, page size, ecc bits, etc...),otherwise I would not expect it to work in any way.
 
 

@Jumperbillijumper from that link It seems t'ha t you already adked the same quesion in that thread and jock ( the same jock that is the author of all this stuff ) aleady answered there.
 
Please do not cross posting , thanks so much
 

You would try an Ubuntu distro and enable the oibaf repository to get cutting edge mesa.
Default mesa from debian and ubuntu is a bit older and does not contain specific fixes for mali-400/450
 
Oibaf repository is already set in /etc/apt/sources.list.d but the line is commented by default.
Removing the comment and then running apt update && apt upgrade should do the trick.
 
Also note that in X11 you may want to enable the vsync when possible, which turns out to perform much much better because with vsync on the driver will use page flipping, with vsync off will use buffer copy that reduces performances a lot.

@Dario Murgia Don't worry, it is not essential, it was just good to know. However the fix has been mainlined in armbian

GPU is only doing 3D graphics.
Media applications are accelerated by VPU, which is a totally different part of the chip. I think gstreamer is already quite capable of using the v4l2 interface to profit of media acceleration drivers already in mainline kernel (namely hantro and rkvdec for rk3318, both accelerating h.264, vp8, vp9 and hevc, but some codecs still have partial support on rockchip64 armbian branch).
Ffmpeg needs to be built with patches and in a custom way because kernel interface for codecs has been made "stable" very recently (I guess in kernel 5.19).
Also mpv has the capability to use hardware video decoding via v4l2, but still need a custom build because it uses in turn ffmpeg. There is this old thread where I provided a custom build binary of mpv, but it was for ubuntu hirsute and debian bullseye; surely it would require some adaptations and tinker if you want to run on newer distros.
 
Accelarerating youtube in a browser is a whole different story. I don't know what is the current status (maybe @usual user has some clues?), but surely it is much more challenging than standalone video playing.
 

@Seth Very much thank you for the photos!
I looked at them side by side trying to spot differences, and the board layout and printings seems exactly the same to me. The squared has a 2146 printed below the heatsink, the rounded has 2147; I may guess it is a something like lot number; the date "2020/06/29" maybe is the date when the board was designed. @FRIKIdelTO has the 2151 lot number but the same 2020/06/29 date on his board.
The differences are, as you already noticed, in some pads being populated with components or just unpopulated.
 
I may guess the fx8934 comes with an on-board crystal which is below the metal shield, instead the sp2734c requires an external crystal and the inductor too.
I checked the nvram files, and both the default shipped with armbian and the alternative version for the 2734c have the crystal set to 37.4MHz.
My HK1 board comes with an HK6334Q, has the external 37.4MHz crystal but works with the default firmware like the fx8934 that has no external crystal. Very messy 😄
 
About the HDMI, on kernel 5.19 it does not work on both of them or just on the "squared" one?
 
I cleaned, sorted and finally made a diff of the two nvram fiels I attach here for curiosity and study purposes.
You can see there are several calibration parameters that differs a bit, but there are also some obscure parameters like swctlmap that probably control some chip registers to behave in a way or another.
Use zless -R to see it correctly with colors.
diff-def-alt-nvram.txt.gz

@oolonthegreat This thread is for rk3318 and not rk3188; please open a new thread for that request and also remove the long log lists from here because they make the browsing from mobile very difficult.
 
@Aapo Tahkola I meant the four pads at the right of the IR receiver, not the three pads near the led array: those are clearly pads for diodes if you pay attention to the symbols.
Looking at the back of the @uehqsvbm's board, those four pads have a different wiring than the IR receiver and from the front side there is no immediate connection to the IR receiver; It is not 100% sure because there could be some in-board layer connecting them to IR, but I may guess those are not for IR. Also the central pads immediate connection is to a couple of components that seem to be resistances.
They could also be spare connection for leds, but in such case a single resistance would suffice and placing resistors there is a waste of components since the board does not have leds there.
 
Looking at the front side, the rightmost pad is surely ground (it has the reverse triangle symbol), and the leftmost maybe is VCC (there is a path going to IR receiver), maybe the two central pads are uart RX/TX.
 
About the led blinking led issue, this is what google suggests as first answer: https://linuxreviews.org/HOWTO_Control_LED_Lights

Yes, you can. Actually the choice to remove any Android code from the board is a deliberate choice by me 😝 but has some performance and compatibility reasons, since this way the user is in control of the ddrbin, miniloadloader/SPL and trustos.
 
The explanation is not exactly simple because these three pieces then cause unwanted behaviours, especially  the proprietary trustos does not allow rk3318 to run above 1.1GHz. I guess rockchip put an artificial cap because the chip can run fine at 1.3GHz or even overclocked at 1.5GHz. A pro of the proprietary trustos is that it allows DDR frequency scaling, that is not allowed by the opensource trustos, but to overcome this I patched the ddrbin to use ram at 667MHz with great benefits in terms of multimedia and general performance. If you run stock Android you are forced to use the "stock" ddrbin at 300/333 MHz because the rockchip boot always happens from internal flash... so it's a chain of issues and to avoid all of these hassles I prefer to erase Android and start fresh.
 
If you still want to go the "Android" mixed way, @hexdump wrote a document on his github on how to do, but I always forget the bookmark the link... That's still something that should be exclusive for the power user because that belong to the same class of those I explained above are around the corner.
 

@n3o  As a moderator of these forums, I have been watching your postings.  You are abusing these forums and the people that contribute to them.  (Everyone, especially @RaptorSDS and @jock have been very willing to invest a lot of time to help you)   However, repeatedly you have been given specific information that you ignore, been given advise that you ignore and then you come back with more and more questions.  There are very limited people resources working on Armbian (and even less with TV boxes).  You alone are consuming way more developer time than any one individual has the right to receive.  This is open source, and therefore users are needed to contribute as much as they consume in resources from the community in order for this to work.  This is not a school where you can come to be taught how everything works, demanding the attention of everyone else to teach you. 
 
Your latest questions are now venturing into very deep and difficult areas of code (none of which is expected to work on these TV boxes as has been mentioned to you).  If you want to continue down the path you are going, you first need to become an expert at these topics on known working platforms, then you can try to apply that expertise on TV boxes.  You may not realize it, but the questions you are asking, are essentially asking for weeks if not months of developer help to get working, if it is at all possible.
 

I will never stress out that THESE issues reported by you are the exact reasons to chose a properly supported Single Board Computer from the officially supported list and not buy crap like supercheap tvboxes. If you don't have the time, will and skills to solve troubles, tvboxes may end up being a large source of frustration. The very same problems are the main reason tvboxes are NOT OFFICIALLY SUPPORTED and NOT ENDORSED by Armbian project; tvboxes are just a community effort to have fun with them and avoid some waste, but the mileage can vary greatly. Here are the FAQs

I will never stress out that THESE issues reported by you are the exact reasons to chose a properly supported Single Board Computer from the officially supported list and not buy crap like supercheap tvboxes. If you don't have the time, will and skills to solve troubles, tvboxes may end up being a large source of frustration. The very same problems are the main reason tvboxes are NOT OFFICIALLY SUPPORTED and NOT ENDORSED by Armbian project; tvboxes are just a community effort to have fun with them and avoid some waste, but the mileage can vary greatly. Here are the FAQs

I will never stress out that THESE issues reported by you are the exact reasons to chose a properly supported Single Board Computer from the officially supported list and not buy crap like supercheap tvboxes. If you don't have the time, will and skills to solve troubles, tvboxes may end up being a large source of frustration. The very same problems are the main reason tvboxes are NOT OFFICIALLY SUPPORTED and NOT ENDORSED by Armbian project; tvboxes are just a community effort to have fun with them and avoid some waste, but the mileage can vary greatly. Here are the FAQs

Not until a sample happens to arrive in my hands

@n3o  You bricked your own device and neglected to create a backup before doing so?  At this point I would think you are just trolling.  I have given up on trying to convince you that your time is better spent elswhere.   I'll let the other forum members decide for themselves if helping you is worth their time. 

@n3o I think it's time you put this to bed and find something else that runs armbian without involving the entire forum.  At this point you are wasting your time. 
 
Like was mentioned by @RaptorSDS, the fact that android was corrupted should be highly suspicious and I would think points to some hardware defect. 
 
If you finally give up I would think one of the fully supported sbc's would be a good start if you want to still try to run Armbian.  
 
 
 
 

Because you have to change it in /sys/class/leds/working with the behaviour you'd like

Indeed if network manager does not work, the ethernet won't get an IP automatically. Perhaps the ssv6051 driver makes the network manager crash? (you may try to blacklist the driver).
 
The ssv6051 driver is the same as legacy, but some things have been necessarily changed to work on mainline kernel. In your case, it is not just a problem of the detection of the chip, but there is some kind of communication issue because the driver can't read the efuse from the chip (that, in fact, is the reason of the bad detection).

Not until a sample happens to arrive in my hands

Impossibile, perhaps you did not follow the instructions correctly (ie: erase the internal eMMC first)
 
ssv6051 driver is crap, in your particular case for some reason is not able to detect correctly the chip version and indefies it as ssv6051q, instead it is ssv6051p, but I don't know the reason.
For the ethernet part, it usually just works in the uttermost majority of situations, there has never been the need to do adjustments on any board, so it sounds strange that on yours it does not work.

@chinhhut Ah ok, an error during shutdown... well I never experienced such issue, may be an error in the kernel or in the trust OS which is leading some spurious interrupt after secondary cores are brought down... I'm not able to recognize anything specific from that crash dump, but I may suggest you do add "panic=10" in the kernel command line: this way, when a kernel panic happens, the kernel may still try to reboot after 10 seconds so you don't get stuck.

Hello,
 
Thank you for this amazing project. It truly revived this old TV Box from the dead.
 
Firstly, I want to share my experience with my my board (HK1 Mini), which might be useful to others.
Booting mainline kernel builds from SD card was not possible, but It booted successfully once flashed to eMMC. On the other hand, legacy booted from SD card just fine.
Bricked my board using build "Armbian_23.08.0-trunk_Rk322x-box_bookworm_current_6.1.39_minimal", but then recovered using original firmware, FactoryTool and MaskROM.
For my eMMC chip (Samsung KLMAG2GEAC-B002) I have posted the pins below to enter MaskROM mode.
 
Everything works on legacy build (Armbian_22.02.0-trunk_Rk322x-box_bullseye_legacy_4.4.194_minimal).
However, Ethernet and WiFi on newer kernel versions does not. The build I am using is "Armbian_23.5.1_Rk322x-box_bookworm_current_6.1.30".
This is where I'm stuck and ask for help.
 
This board uses the SSV6051 network chip and rk322x-config detects it correctly, but does not give me the option to select the driver like it did on legacy build.
I have tested all the LED configs, but none fix the issue on mainline, while the default config worked perfectly on legacy.
SSV6200 driver and NetworkManager throw a bunch of errors on startup.
 
Here I have attached the logs and DTS/DTB.  I would greatly appreciate it if you could take a look.
Tell me if the DTB is incorrect in any way because binwalk found multiple locations from the backup.
hk1mini.dtb
hk1mini.dts
armbian-hardware-monitor.log
 
Thank you!
---
 
HK1 Mini Board (RK3229-D4-V02)
MaskROM pins for Samsung KLMAG2GEAC-B002 (or B001 - the last number is unclear)
 

Yes, this is exactly the way I suggest to take confidence with the system: erase the internal flash to zero (does not matter if NAND or eMMC) to remove any trace of Android; then use Armbian from sdcard to bring up the system, experiment with rk322x-config to setup the board correctly so, in case of mistake, just plug the sdcard in a PC and revert the error; install packages, services, reinstall armbian from scratch with another kernel or rootfs (Debian bullseye, bookworm, Ubuntu Jammy LTS, latest Ubuntu, etc...) and do all your own experiments on the sdcard.
 
When finally you notice that the base system is stable with the proper led-conf and you're happy with the software setup, transfer it to internal flash or install armbian on internal flash with multitool.
 
Also, IMHO, boards with NAND have much better use with external sdcard than internal flash, since NAND are supported only with ancient 4.4 kernel and they still are problematic. Keep them erased and live easier with external sdcard.