AndrewDB

Of course there is a way. 1. Load the NAND driver. 2. Use fdisk. 3. Pray the gods of hacking that everything goes smoothly. Remember that if you brick your TV box, you can always restore it using the SD card method. 😎

I meant to the kernel command line. You have to edit /boot/uEnv.ini and reboot

Probably you could get some RAM back by passing the kernel some command line parameters, check adding "cma=64" to the command line and see what happens. https://lwn.net/Articles/396707/

Check the beginning of the output of the dmesg command, you'll see how the kernel allocates RAM, it actually reserves those 180MB for various purposes. andrew@km8p1:~$ dmesg [ 0.000000] Booting Linux on physical CPU 0x0000000000 [0x410fd034] [ 0.000000] Linux version 4.20.5-aml-s912 (root@vbox) (gcc version 7.2.1 20171011 (Linaro GCC 7.2-2 017.11)) #5.75 SMP PREEMPT Mon Feb 11 17:40:28 MSK 2019 [ 0.000000] Machine model: Amlogic Meson GXM (S912) Q201 Development Board [ 0.000000] OF: reserved mem: failed to allocate memory for node 'linux,cma' [ 0.000000] cma: Reserved 256 MiB at 0x0000000023400000 [ 0.000000] On node 0 totalpages: 224000 [ 0.000000] DMA32 zone: 3520 pages used for memmap [ 0.000000] DMA32 zone: 0 pages reserved [ 0.000000] DMA32 zone: 224000 pages, LIFO batch:63 [ 0.000000] psci: probing for conduit method from DT. [ 0.000000] psci: PSCIv0.2 detected in firmware. [ 0.000000] psci: Using standard PSCI v0.2 function IDs [ 0.000000] psci: Trusted OS migration not required [ 0.000000] random: get_random_bytes called from start_kernel+0xa8/0x400 with crng_init=0 [ 0.000000] percpu: Embedded 23 pages/cpu @(____ptrval____) s54744 r8192 d31272 u94208 [ 0.000000] pcpu-alloc: s54744 r8192 d31272 u94208 alloc=23*4096 [ 0.000000] pcpu-alloc: [0] 0 [0] 1 [0] 2 [0] 3 [0] 4 [0] 5 [0] 6 [0] 7 [ 0.000000] Detected VIPT I-cache on CPU0 [ 0.000000] CPU features: enabling workaround for ARM erratum 845719 [ 0.000000] CPU features: detected: Kernel page table isolation (KPTI) [ 0.000000] Built 1 zonelists, mobility grouping on. Total pages: 220480 [ 0.000000] Kernel command line: root=LABEL=ROOTFS rootflags=data=writeback rw console=ttyAML0,1152 00n8 console=tty0 no_console_suspend consoleblank=0 fsck.fix=yes fsck.repair=yes net.ifnames=0 [ 0.000000] Dentry cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 8, 1048576 bytes) [ 0.000000] Inode-cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 7, 524288 bytes) [ 0.000000] Memory: 586756K/896000K available (12990K kernel code, 1020K rwdata, 4176K rodata, 576K init, 787K bss, 47100K reserved, 262144K cma-reserved) For my use case, 1GB has been enough, I have never run out of memory. But yes, the 2GB Km8-P for $33 or so is also a very good value.

Either you try a proper HD TV or monitor capable of 1920x1080p, or you have to play around a little bit with the fbset command to try to find some setting that will work on your TV's.

Compared to other development boards the Khadas Vim2 is actually quite inexpensive. So I would say that if the $63 price for the S922X Odroid N2 is confirmed, it would provide exceptional value per dollar. And I certainly hope Oleg gets one, courtesy of HardKernel. Also the Panfrost developers should get one ASAP. In the meantime though, I'll be very happy with my $25 S912 Km8-P TV boxes. Just can't beat that low cost!

In my humble opinion, on S9XXX TV boxes that have NAND flash instead of eMMC, it's not a good idea to try and install Armbian on NAND, simply because the Linux kernel NAND drivers are very much work-in-progress (again, in my humble opinion). Also a good SD (Sandisk A1 16GB) card which you can get for $5 is just as fast as NAND flash, in most cases.

Just noticed that Khadas has released a new version of their S912 Vim2: https://www.khadas.com/product-page/new-vim2 It's certainly much more expensive than a TV box but if you are developing or experimenting with the S912 I think it's the best solution around. I certainly hope Oleg gets a courtesy sample seeing as he has done so much work on Armbian for S9XXXX .

hdmi.sh reads the mode parameter in the command line and sets up the framebuffer accordingly. The default is 1080p. Please run the following command: cat /proc/cmdline and report the result here. Also please indicate what resolution(s) your monitor or TV is capable of.

Yes, that is a good idea. I'll do a general cleanup and pay some attention to cleaning up the code from the README, erasing those pesky >!

I have no idea what the "UEFI magic" refers to but if it's a feature of u-boot mainline and can be enabled with make menuconfig and an option somewhere then yes, "UEFI magic" should be available. If you try it and it works, please send me a note and I will add it to the HOWTO.

Thanks a bunch for the tip, TonyMac32. I suspected the C2 had some special blobs and yes I am aware of the controversy over clock frequencies reported/real. So for the S905 I will point people to the "README.nanopi-k2" - which I am actually in the process of verifying too (I exchanged an email with Neil A. about it).

Hello Le Potato hackers, I have a small favor to ask of you: I just wrote a Howto cross-compile mainline u-boot for your "Le Potato" (actually it's supposed to be for the La Frite when this starts shipping, but right now it's for the Le Potato) Here: http://wiki.loverpi.com/faq:sbc:libre-aml-s805x-howto-compile-u-boot Since I don't have a Le Potato I cannot verify that my HOWTO really produces a working u-boot, so I would be very grateful if any one of you could spend around 20 minutes of their (very valuable, without any doubt) time to follow the step-by-step instructions and check it out? What you need: An x86_64 PC/Laptop/Workstation running Linux, preferably Ubuntu 18.04 but anything else should be OK, as long as it's recent. A Le Potato. An SD-card A USB-to-serial converter to check that your you-just-compiled-it-yourself u-boot WORKS! Missing instructions on how to copy u-boot.bin.sd.bin to your SD card, assuming your PC/laptop sees it as mmcblk0: dd if=u-boot.bin.sd.bin of=/dev/mmcblk0 conv=fsync bs=1 count=442 dd if=u-boot.bin.sd.bin of=/dev/mmcblk0 conv=fsync bs=512 skip=1 seek=1 Thanks a bunch on any feedback!

And yet again, duct tape saves the day!

Check my post here, you must prepare a micro SD card with the Android image from 4pda using one of the two methods in the CNX article, then: - Flash it, including u-boot. - Then prepare a USB key with Armbian 5.75 pointed above and install it using the usual method (see first post in relevant thread). - Before you do all that, I suggest you try the Km8 P for a few days using Armbian 5.44 with kernel 3.14.29, installed with USB key, it works fine with this version too.

The Linux kernel NAND driver is very much work in progress, I suggest you don't waste time with that and continue using an SD card as mass storage. A very good Sandisk A1 16GB (micro) SD card is just $5 (shipped), and probably as fast or almost as fast as the NAND Flash

Well, at the same time these TV boxes use really crappy WiFi chips, and the manufacturers refuse to release the source code for their Android drivers, so there is no way to support them. Any inexpensive Realtek wifi dongle is 10x better than those crappy WiFi modules we usually find in these TV boxes. Please check this post:

I have looked that up, it seems to be NAND Flash, not eMMC, which explains why ddbr is not detecting any eMMC. If you cannot boot Android anymore then you can restore the original Android image using the SD Card Method or any other method. Check how to unbrick your TV box on Freaktab, there are many threads on the subject. I don't think there is a driver for it, I suggest you buy a $5 WiFi dongle if you must absolutely use WiFi.

Please attach hdmi.sh to your post and tell us what is the resolution of the monitor or TV you are using.

Thank you Seasalt for all this information on thermal dissipation and cooling the S912. Also your software defined radio use is very interesting. What hardware do you use?

ARM never positioned any of their cores as destined for desktop applications, iow, they never tried to tackle the gorilla Intel on their home turf. BTW Intel or Apple could buy ARM at any time with much less than a year's profit, but they never did so. Things could change in the coming years as ARM-based SoC's become powerful enough to run basically any applications, and ARM is also trying to enter the server CPU market. The delay is due to that: ARM doesn't really support any of the SoC's based on their cores for desktop applications, so any SBC based on any modern ARM core is basically dependent on very competent developers like Oleg, the Armbian team, the people at BayLibre, etc for Linux development, with lots of time-expensive trial-and-error work involved.

These are header, dtb and image files packaged in .deb format but you don't need to worry about them.

Just wanted to report on the status of my three Mecool Km8-P TV boxes. - All three boxes have now had their firmware flashed with an older Android version which includes a u-boot that correctly boots 4.xx kernels. The u-boot version in the shipped factory firmware on this recent batch of Km8-P boxes would boot kernel 3.14.29 fine but would absolutely refuse to boot any 4.xx/5.xx kernel. - All three boxes are now running Armbian_5.75_Aml-s912_Ubuntu_bionic_default_4.20.5_20190211.img.xz with meson-gxm-q201.dtb. This release has proved to be exceptionally stable on these Mecool Km8-P TV boxes. - Two boxes are running Armbian from a Sandisk A1 SD card. On one box I have installed Armbian on the eMMC, simply executing the install.sh script did the trick without any problems. - I use these boxes in headless mode (no monitor, keyboard or mouse, access through ssh) as distcc compile nodes and they perform admirably. I can compile the Linux kernel in under 15 minutes on my compile farm. - These boxes run at a cool 38~42C (depending on room temperature) at idle and 72~76C under heavy load and do not require any special cooling. I have not observed any thermal throttling even under heavy load. - I have benchmarked the Km8-P using both sbc-bench and the Phoronix Benchmark Suite, see the thread I started on the subject of benchmarking an inexpensive S912 TV box. In summary, these Km8-P boxes place in the middle of the pack for single-threaded benchmarks and at the top of the pack for multithreaded benchmarks, and are the best in terms of performance per dollar compared to any other SBC, as of February 2019. - I have not tested any of the multimedia capabilities: audio, video decoding, 3D graphics acceleration, HDMI, etc.

Normally the character "," is not used in a filename, as far as I know.

Yes, I found out that these small Km8-P TV boxes don't heat up too much, because the 8 cores are kept running at their low but optimal power/performance clock frequencies. Even during testing I have not seen the temperature of the S912 SoC go above 76C, and they idle at between 39~42C.