SteeMan

Adding to what balbes150 said, there is no support of these chips in mainline modern kernels. Obviously there is support (poor if you look at the source code) in legacy kernels and therefore Android. But the focus of Armbian is mainline and therefore from the perspective of Armbian, these chips are completely unsupported and really unsupportable.

@xoodoo Please read the following FAQ post: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16976-status-of-armbian-on-tv-boxes-please-read-first While the above posted thread on rk3399 support will give you information on the status of the rk3399, the latest balbes150 build with rk3399 support can be found here: https://users.armbian.com/balbes150/arm-64/ I installed and ran the above build on a Magicsee M6 Max rk3399 box. I don't know about the box you linked to above, but you can try the different u-boots and dtb files and you may find something that will work for you.

moved to the TV Box's forum

moved to TV Boxes club forum

@giga What armbian tv box builds have you tried? What instructions have you tried? What dtb's have you tried? I don't have this box but have armbian running on a different rk3399 based box.

@Arek Rybak I would recommend that you read the two TV Box FAQ posts: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16976-status-of-armbian-on-tv-boxes-please-read-first https://forum.armbian.com/topic/17106-installation-instructions-for-tv-boxes-with-amlogic-cpus What dtb's have you tried. On my x96 mini boxes I am using /dtb/amlogic/meson-gxl-s905w-p281.dtb

@RetroFan90 you are getting that message because of what the message is saying: WSL is not a supported build environment. If you want to do a build on windows you will need to do it inside a VM like VirtualBox. The supported build environments are discussed in the documentation on the website.

@Jason Duhamell Please don't post large files inline. Use the "Spoiler" feature to hide long attachments (the icon that looks like an eyeball). It makes it much easier to read these threads without having to scroll through large files.

Please describe your problem and what you have done. Also, I can't see the linked image, please attach any relevant images as an attachment to your post.

@Crypto_Dino. Also, the instructions you linked to are at least two years old. Many items listed there have changed. For example the uenv.txt file is no longer used and instead the boot process uses the standard extlinux.conf file. Unfortunately I don't have much familiarity with H6 based tv boxes so I'm not able to provide a set of directions for you.

@Crypto_Dino if I recall correctly balbes has moved to using ext3 files systems for his builds. So you will need something that can read a ext3/linux file system in order to see the contents of the image on your sd card

@Crypto_Dino I'm not sure which instructions you are following, but you aren't using the correct latest builds for the h6, nor following instructions correctly. The latest builds by balbes150 for the Allwinner H6 are located here: https://users.armbian.com/balbes150/aw-h6-tv/ As for instructions you mention renaming files to u-boot.ext. That is an instruction for Amlogic CPUs not the Allwinner H6.

Also, dtd files are kernel/kernel version specific,. You can't assume a dtb from a vendor kernel will work on a mainline kernel.

You say you have followed the instructions. Have you explicitly followed this note from the instructions:. Note2: If you have previously run other distributions on the box such as coreelec the below installation will not work. You will need to restore the original android firmware before attemping the install. coreelec changes the boot environment in ways that are incompatible with these armbian builds.

@RicardoSA What instructions are you following? No current instructions have a step that requires you to copy any file to root. Look at the instructions in the FAQ section of the TV box forum.

Moved your post to the appropriate forum. Please read the TV Box forum FAQ items: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16976-status-of-armbian-on-tv-boxes-please-read-first https://forum.armbian.com/topic/17106-installation-instructions-for-tv-boxes-with-amlogic-cpus

While there are other differences, based on what you have described the biggest difference for you is that the "arm-64" builds are no longer maintained. Those builds from October 2020 are the last that will be made. Whereas the "aw-h6-tv" builds are being currently maintained by balbes150 and are current with the latest kernel patch releases.

@extremeaudio both of your questions are answered by the FAQ posts in the TV Box forums: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16976-status-of-armbian-on-tv-boxes-please-read-first https://forum.armbian.com/topic/17106-installation-instructions-for-tv-boxes-with-amlogic-cpus

Moved post to the correct location in the TV Boxes forum

@Tanmay Saha You didn't indicate what build you were using or what steps you were using. I would recommend starting with the TV box FAQ: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16976-status-of-armbian-on-tv-boxes-please-read-first and https://forum.armbian.com/topic/17106-installation-instructions-for-tv-boxes-with-amlogic-cpus

moved topic to the proper forum

@supersmurfs Since above you state that your box is an Allwinner H616 box, the following thread is tracking the base Armbian development for supporting the H616 cpu. While support is progressing, it is a way from being stable/supported.

This comment is likely superceeded by balbes and jock's posts, but I wanted to just provide my thoughts on the android dtb issues. The way I like to think about dtbs is they are glue code between the kernel and the hardware. We often think of them only from the perspective of the hardware, which once a box is built the hardware doesn't change (although boxes can change over the course of different manufacturing runs providing different board revisions). But the kernel is an evolving code base and even though the hardware may be fixed, the dtb glue may need to change over time as the kernel code changes. Thus technically dtbs are kernel version specific (but in practice the changes in the kernel generally are not significant over smaller periods of time). However.... When it comes to android kernels two factors come into play, one is that android kernels tend to be highly forked/patched from mainline kernels and second, android kernels tend to be based off very old kernels. So for example an android 4.4 based kernel is really a 5 year old kernel, and a lot has changed in the kernel over a 5 year period. Also, making this more complex is that fact that sbc/tv box support has only been added to mainline kernels fairly recently. So older android or legacy kernels that were supported were highly patched kernels. Armbian is generally focused on current mainline kernels (after all that is where the future support will all take place), and therefore a 5.10/5.12 kernel is very different in how it supports sbc/tv box hardware than a 4.4/4.x legacy/android kernel. The end result is to not expect an android dtb to work with a mainline kernel. That doesn't mean that there isn't a lot to be learned from an older dtb file, but the process is much more complicated than simply getting the old andoird dtb and using it on a mainline kernel and expecting it to work.

@supersmurfs Welcome to the Armbian TV box forums. I want to thank you for your interest and apparent willingness to dig in and learn.

Most of my TV boxes are amlogic based. I just bought an H6 box but haven't had time to do much with it other than to boot an armbian build on it. Armbian booted on the box but networking didn't work, so I need to find some time to look into that when I get a chance. I may be reaching out to you once you get your allwinner boxes up and running