SteeMan

What do you mean by "place the boot.ext file from old release"? I think you are leaving out some important steps/information in your post. If someone read this starting with a new box, I don't think your steps work to get a running Armbian. But you don't indicate what needs to be done.

My only suggestion is to get the box back to an original android firmware. You say that you have tried hundreds of things, so you probably don't have the original firmware or you would have tried that already. If you can't get the box back to working with android firmware, there is no way to move forward with armbian.

My only thoughts would be to try to use the amlogic tools to reflash an original android firmware. If that can be done, then the emmc is still at some level writeable. If that works, then you could start over the process of installing armbian. If reinstalling the original firmware fails, I think it may be a hardware issue.

Please read: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16976-status-of-armbian-on-tv-boxes-please-read-first/ Note that TV Boxes are not supported by Armbian Note that there is no one in the forums who works with allwinner based TV boxes Note that you have used a build designed for different hardware and have it mostly working, that itself is amazing. You should think of this forum as a place to post your experiences on what you can get working, not a place to expect support.

You have provided no information for anyone to help you. Please read: 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/ If you are still having problems, then reply with what your problem is and the steps you have taken to reproduce/diagnose the problem.

I must say you are persistent in trying. I hope you view this as a learning opportunity and not a source of frustration. Since you have now acquired the skills necessary to properly debug, I think it is time to start over from the beginning and take this step by step slowly. So I am going to ask that you reflash the original android firmware to get back to a known state for the box. Then with an sd card prepared with the armbian build from the instructions on this site enable multiboot. Then reboot to attempt to run armbian. At that point don't do anything more, but reply back with the console output you are getting from the serial connection, report what you see on the screen for output, and also attach the extlinux.conf file you used and which uboot file. I want to see the state of your box at this point before recommending what to do next.

I don't know what you are looking for. First off are you more comfortable with debian or ubuntu? Then are you looking for a desktop (gui) or are you command line focused? Based on your needs the appropriate build should be obvious.

Moved post to Allwinner unmaintained forum as this board is not supported.

@d51x Note that these ophub builds have nothing to do with armbian. The authors do not participate in these forums or in armbian development. They are using the armbian name under false pretenses. There are some developers in the armbian community who feel their work is being used without proper credit and strongly discourages anyone from using the ophub builds. I'm just providing information to allow individuals the ability to make an informed choice before they dive into the ophub builds.

Have you tried following the instructions in the FAQ for installation? https://forum.armbian.com/topic/17106-installation-instructions-for-tv-boxes-with-amlogic-cpus and have you read this FAQ entry: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16976-status-of-armbian-on-tv-boxes-please-read-first

Please provide the details on what steps you have done in your attempted install. Without any details we can't help you figure out what you are doing wrong.

I still don't know if you are trying to fix your box to run the original android or are you trying to install armbian to run from the sd card in addition to android on the internal storage. Also, what are you trying to use to box for? Will wired ethernet be sufficient for your needs?

The only other suggestion I have at this point is to open the box, identify the serial pins, solder a connector to them and monitor the console output of the boot process. That will at least give you information as to where it is failing. But identifing the serial connection on boards like this can be difficult as they are rarely marked on the board.

I just looked up the specs on the N5 Plus. On the page I was on it said it had an s905x3 cpu. If that is true, you should be using meson-sm1-* dtb files. sm1 is the code name for the *x3 cpus. g12a is the code name for *x2 cpus.

What are you trying to accomplish? Saying you tried flashing different firmwares, doesn't tell us much about what you are trying to do. What is your goal for this box?

This looks like you have successfully enabled multiboot. It is trying to now boot from the SD card. Apparently unsuccessfully. By enabling multiboot it will try to boot from the sd card if one is present. Now that you can get it to try to boot from the SD card, you need to look at your setup on the sd card to get a successfull boot. From what you have stated above, it seems that you are doing the setup steps correctly according to the instructions in the FAQ (https://forum.armbian.com/topic/17106-installation-instructions-for-tv-boxes-with-amlogic-cpus). Now you just need to find a compatible dtb file for your box (if one exists). The general recommended approach is to try all the dtbs one by one for the same cpu as your box has (if you don't already know of one being compatible). You mentioned that you tried meson-g12a-x96-max. Was this based on a successful report by some other user of your box?

Does the box correctly boot to android currently? If so, when using the toothpick method, how long are you holding the reset button? You might try different lengths of time, from a few seconds up to 10 seconds. I find it takes about 5 seconds for the boxes I have. Don't hold it too long though or you end up in android recovery.

I don't think that is the update app that supports the multiboot method, given the error messages you are getting. I think that is an android update tool. You will need to use the "toothpick" method to enable multiboot. Most boxes hide the reset button at the back of the hole for the av plug, but others have a specific hole labeled for the reset button. (A few boxes don't have any reset button however)

What update menu? Be specific, don't make me try to guess.

I think this rk322x-tv-box page on the website is what should be removed. I'm not actually sure why that page exists. There generally aren't pages on the main website for specific tv boxs. There must be some historic reason this one exists that I don't know about. @jock would you be opposed to getting rid of that page, leaving the forums as the sole source of information?

What do you mean by this step?

The only pointer I have on that tool is to try different versions. I have in the past found some firmwares that only load with specific versions of the amlogic tool

When you say 'flashing' what do you mean? What are you using/doing exactly.

multiboot doesn't mean you can't still have your os in emmc. That is what the /root/install-aml.sh script does in the tv box builds from balbes150 (copies the install from sd to emmc while preserving the native vendor u-boot on emmc). The concept is to reuse the vendor u-boots which are device specific (dealing with memory, storage, etc) (since there are tens if not hundreds of different amlogic tv boxes creating uboots for each is impossible) while having only a few generic chainloaded u-boots that are cpu specific bridge to loading the kernel. It is a bit tricky to preserve the vendor u-boot while overlaying the rest of the os into emmc, but generally balbes150's scripts work on most environments.

I don't know what code you are referencing here. This is not the code that is part of the armbian TV box images that balbes150 produced and I try to support through these forums. If you are looking for input from an armbian forum, please be using armbian code. You can find the download links for the code that in the TV Box FAQ post: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/17106-installation-instructions-for-tv-boxes-with-amlogic-cpus