SteeMan

If you are using the community armbian build, then it will first try to boot from the sd card if present and then boot from emmc if no sd card. I don't know, I've never tried it. If you install to emmc, you should have a backup of your android firmware and know how to reinstall it if something goes wrong. Otherwise your box could end up bricked.

I'm not aware of anyone actively (or even within the last few years) working on these old 32bit amlogic cpu based TV boxes.

@kaattaalan What version of armbian are you using? Also you mention u-boot.mmc, there shouldn't be a file by that name, was that a typo?

That sounds like you have then properly enabled multiboot and it is trying to boot from the sd card. Have you done this step to enable the boot process from the sd card?

That is pretty good. Better than many tv boxes. Have you read: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16976-status-of-armbian-on-tv-boxes-please-read-first Have you tried all the meson-sm1-* dtb files? The idea is to find the one that is the best fit for your hardware where there isn't an exact match in the linux kernel. Maybe. dtb files are kernel version specific (but not alot changes between linux versions) so if the dtb is from a recent linux kernel it may be compatible. There would be no harm in trying.

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@iloveomv The location you posted is a fork of armbian. Their developers use the Armbian name without permission. We discourage people from posting links to that project in these forums as we can't help people with those builds as the code isn't armbian. Because they use the armbian name people get confused and think they are using armbian code and come here for support. Those developers do not participate in these forums, nor do they support armbian development. Feel free to PM the the information but direct followup questions should be directed to their support methods.

Moved post to correct location

The install instructions has a link to the current build

Please look at the following two 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

moved post to correct forum

That makes sense, you at telling the kernel which display settings to use, instead of trying to discover the correct settings for the attached monitor. I'm curious how you figured this out? Is there some reference you used, that you could link here for others to read more about how/why this works?

That could be the problem. These old boxes generally were designed in an era when 16 to 32GB was the common/max. I personally wouldn't use a 128GB card.

Can you try the other SD card with the adb command?

OK now I understand. It is common to have incompatibilities between older TV boxes and SD cards. You also said you: Which sd card was that with? Obviously if the box can't read the one card, nothing is going to work with that card.

That is yo be expected. As I said earlier: You would need to create the empty aml_autoscript.zip file on this build manually.

What do you mean by "TV Box doesn't recognize the SD card"? How is it different from before?

Another way of triggering the running of the aml_autoscript file is to issue a 'adb reboot update' command through adb.

The current builds do not even include the aml_autoscript.zip file because it is rarely needed. There is nothing special about this file it is a zero byte dummy file, that is supposed to trigger the loading of the aml_autoscript file via some update apps.

There are different types of update apps, so when you run the update app on the old 5.9.0 build do you see the same interface as this how to article shows?

From the picture your box is a rebranded m8s pro+, as indicated by the board markings. In googling I have found the following like that shows someone being successful at installing Armbian (http://www.galipe.net/guide-mecool-m8sproplus-armbian/). (article in French, I used Google translate) So it should be possible. While those instructions are old, they show that it should work.

While unlikely, it could be on the other side of the motherboard.

Have you opened the case and looked for one?

I don't know if this is possible or not since I don't know anything about what Batocera is. Unless Batocera uses the same booting process as Armbian, it is unlikely.

@remolaan If your box has the s805x cpu (not s805 as your title indicates), you might have success following these instructions: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/17106-installation-instructions-for-tv-boxes-with-amlogic-cpus Using the meson-gxl-s805x-p241.dtb or meson-gxl-s805x-libretech-ac.dtb and the u-boot-s905x-s912 uboot file I'm not aware on anyone having ever tried this, but it might work.