SteeMan

Moved post to correct sub forum

These instructions are for Amlogic CPUs for TV Boxes. Note: 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 attempting the install. coreelec changes the boot environment in ways that are incompatible with these Armbian builds. Download links: Weekly Community Rolling Builds: https://www.armbian.com/amlogic-s9xx-tv-box/ or build your own image using the Armbian build framework Once you download your chosen build, you need to burn the image to an SD card. Generally balenaEtcher is recommended as it does a verification of the burn. Also be sure to use high quality SD cards. Once you have the SD card with your chosen build, then you need to edit the boot configuration file on the SD card. In the BOOT partition of the SD card there will be a file /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf, that you need to edit. There will also be a extlinux.conf.template file to use as a reference. You will need to add a line into the extlinux.conf file for the Device Tree (dtb) file you will be using for your box. Place this line before the APPEND line as shown in the .template file. Basically you need to have the correct dtb for your box. You may need to attempt to use different dtb files until you find the one that works the best for your box's hardware (there are a bunch of dtb files in /boot/dtb/amlogic/... to try depending on your cpu architecture and hardware). It is unlikely that there will be a matching dtb file for your TV box. The idea is to find the one that works best for your box. This may mean that you try booting with different dtb files until you fine one that works good enough for your needs. By searching the forums you will find information about what dtbs other users have found work best for different boxes. Because you are booting from an SD card, you can easily try different dtb files. The dtd files are named by cpu family. So for example dtb files for the s905x2 cpu are named meson-g12a-*. Below there is a table that shows the identifiers for each familiy (g12a for s905x2 in this case). Next you need to copy the correct uboot for your box. This is needed for how these builds boot on amlogic boxes. There are four different u-boot files located in the /boot directory: u-boot-s905, u-boot-s905x-s912, u-boot-s905x2-s922, u-boot-s905x3 You need to copy (note copy not move) the u-boot file that matches your cpu to a new file named u-boot.ext in the /boot directory So for example with a TX3 mini box that has an s905w cpu you would copy u-boot-s905x-s912 to u-boot.ext: cp u-boot-s905x-s912 u-boot.ext (See table below for more details on which u-boot to use for which cpu) Once you have your SD card prepared you need to enable multiboot on the box. There are different ways documented to do this, but the most common is the "toothpick" method. The "toothpick" method means to hold the reset button while applying power to the box. The reset button is often hidden and located at the back of the audio/video jack connector. By pressing that button with a toothpick or other such pointed device you can enable multiboot. What you need to do is have the box unplugged, have your prepared sd card inserted, then press and hold the button while inserting the power connector. Then after a bit of time you can release the button. (I don't know exactly how long you need to hold the button after power is applied, but if it doesn't work the first time try again holding for longer or shorter times). You should now be booting into armbian/linux. Note that the first boot takes longer as it is enlarging the root filesystem to utilize the entire SD card. After you are satisfied that your box is working correctly for your needs you can optionally copy the installation from the SD card to internal emmc storage (assuming your box has emmc). (Note: Installing to emmc has some risks of bricking your box. Don't do this unless you feel you understand how to reinstall your box's android firmware) You install armbian to emmc by running the shell script in the /root directory: install-aml.sh. Note: It is not possible to install into emmc on boxes with the s905 cpu (s905x, s905w, s905x2, etc however should all be supported). It is recommended that you make a backup of emmc first. Also be prepared if anything goes horribly wrong with your emmc install to reinstall the android firmware using the Amlogic USB Burning Tool to unbrick your device. If you have or can find an original android firmware on the internet and you can generally (but not always) recover a bricked box using the Amlogic tool and the original firmware file. Mapping from CPU to uboot and dtb: u-boot-s905 s905 - gxbb u-boot-s905x2-s912 S905X - gxl S905W - gxl S905D - gxl S905L - gxl S805X - gxl S912 - gxm A311D - gxm u-boot-s905x2-s922 S905X2 - g12a S922 - g12b u-boot-s905x3 S905X3 - sm1 Not supported or not tested S805 - S905W2 - S905X4 - S805X2 - s4 A113D - axg A113X - axg Note: Followup posts in this thread should be limited to comments to improve or better understand these instructions. Other issues should be posted as new questions in the Amlogic CPU Boxes sub-forum.

If you are using a current community build, the rtl8189es driver is already installed.

moved post to the correct forum

Did you remove the SD card after the copy to emmc? I suspect the boot order is SD first, then mmc and based on your post, if it is still booting to sd that would imply you have an sd card inserted for it to boot from.

I'm not completely sure, but I think this is intentional, as 23.02 hasn't been officially released yet. It is to be released this weekend. The builds get pushed out to the mirrors which takes some time for all the mirrors to sync up as the first step.

First off, you aren't using Armbian. So posting questions in the Armbian forum isn't the the correct place to ask your questions. Since you are using the orangepi provided software, that is the appropriate place to ask your questions on that software. However feel free to download the Armbian build for your board and try it if you would like: https://www.armbian.com/orange-pi-zero-2

What image were you installing from? Are these files part of that image, or were they created later?

This post is not Armbian related and therefore off topic. However since the information is generic others might find it useful so the post is being allowed, in the hopes that someone would pick up this work and bring it into the Armbian fold. Any volunteers ?

I tested the 23.02.1 aml-s9xx-box builds against all the amlogic TV boxes I have and they worked as expected.

Speeds lower than 1Ghz were removed in this patch to mainline kernel for stability reasons: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/arch/arm64/boot/dts/amlogic?h=v6.2&id=fd86d85401c2049f652293877c0f7e6e5afc3bbc

Moved to a more appropriate subforum

Providing logs with armbianmonitor -u helps with troubleshooting and significantly raises chances that issue gets addressed.

Moved post to correct forum. Also, please to not double post (you have already asked this question in a different thread).

First off read: You are asking about a build that is over three years old, for a kernel that is much older than that from a developer that has stopped working on amlogic tv boxes. This isn't likely to lead to the results you are looking for. The best advise I can give you is to read this thread: which contains the historic info about supporting the s805 cpu

Which dtb are you using? Since you found someone who apparently got these things working, you would probably be best served by reaching out to them to see what they did to get wifi/sound working on this box. It looks like they forked their build from armbian a while back and here is a link to the diff between the base armbian they forked from and their set of changes: https://github.com/armbian/build/compare (Your answers are somewhere in that diff). Since I don't own that box, there isn't much I can do beyond pointing you in these directions.

Please read the following 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

Since there is no mainline linux kernel support for the s905x4 that I am aware of, I suspect that coreelec is using the android based kernel. Note that currently the boot environments for coreelec and armbian are incompatible. So if you install coreelec, you will need to reflash android in order to use armbian. Also note that the armbian amlogic environment uses the native firmware (android installed) boot loader. You have an ambitious task ahead of you, good luck. Since Armbian is community based, anything want to submit to the project as a result of your efforts would be welcomed. If you need advice on PR submittal, I'd be happy to help.

@Gaaf What version did you originally have installed (file name and download location)? How did you upgrade from 22.11.0 to 23.2.0? It looks like you are switching from the current stable kernel to the unstable edge kernel? How did you switch? Is that what you intended? Basically I need more information about your environment and how you have upgraded it, to be able to explain what you are seeing.

What build do you have installed (full name of the file and location you downloaded from)? While I used to see this problem with older kernels, I haven't seen this recently with newer kernels.

Have you tried installing armbian-firmware-full?

Your question is off topic for this forum as this is an Armbian forum, not an android forum.

I'm going to point you to the following two 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 But then tell you that no one has worked on s8xx cpu TV box builds for years around here. So digging through the archives for some build that is a couple of years old will be your best bet, but it won't get any kernel updates, so you will be stuck on whatever version of the kernel you might get running.

You are not using Armbian. You have downloaded software from a site that is a fork of Armbian and uses the Armbian name without permission. They do not participate in Armbian development, nor do they participate in these forums. We can't help you here as we don't produce the code you are running. You need to log your question with those you downloaded your software from.