SteeMan

@shacodelico as was explained earlier in this thread support for the H616 cpu is experimental. Also TV boxes in general are not supported. So you are asking how to run a build that is experimental on a different unsupported box than the build is intended for. If you want to go down this path then the expectation is that you have the skills to be building u-boot and kernels and hacking this together. If that isn't your skill level then this isn't a path that you should be going down. If you do have those skills then we welcome your contributions to the project. But because you are working with an unsupported device don't expect much help in your efforts as the resources around here are spread thin just supported the supported sbcs. Also, if you haven't already please read this post

I'm glad to hear you have armbian installed and running. However you shouldn't expect that the audio jack is going to work. See: Having said that, have you tried choosing different audio sources in pulseaudio? I have only ever used audio over hdmi, so I really don't know if this will work or not.

I don't have that box, but I would try different dtb files. I have a TX3 X3 box and I use the meson-sm1-sei610.dtb which is part of the distribution.

Please read the post 'Please Read First' for expectations around what to expect on the TV Box forums. As it relates to your question, please do not expect to get wifi working on your TV Box.

I'm glad you were able to get armbian running. You should not however expect that you will be able to get the analog audio jack to work. Along with wifi/bluetooth it is highly unlikely that anything other than audio over hdmi is going to work on a TV box like this. If you haven't already, please read the "Please Read First" post to familiarize yourself with what you can hope will work.

@robertoenr What you need is a correctly configured dtb file that maps the actual hardware you have to the kernel so that the kernel can pick up the correct drivers. Such a file likely doesn't exist (unless someone has created one that works already). In reality every tv box board has slightly different hardware and thus needs to have a different dtb file to function properly. But since the board manufacturers don't support mainline linux, no such dtb files exist. So we just use one of the standard dtb files that is close enough. So you get most but not all functionality working. It is beyond the ability/resources of the people around here to create dtbs for every tv box without any information about how they are designed/manufactured. This is why you only get basic functionality when using armbian on tv boxes (basic hdmi, cpu, memory, usb, sdcard, ethernet) as that is pretty standard, where other things like wifi, bluetooth often different on every board or utilize chips that aren't supported in mainline linux.

I wish I had some great insight into your problem. It is interesting that you seem to have a much newer board revision that probably the rest of us that have a box similar to this. That certainly could be the problem. I would also recommend looking at the suggestion just posted by @eddy_c about using the android update app method. The only other suggestion I would have is to try different amounts of time holding the reset button while booting (vary from one second up to 10 seconds to see if that makes a difference), as that is something I have noticed before in getting a successful multi boot, getting the timing right on the reset. I am waiting for a new tx3 mini to come in the mail (hopefully soon), so depending on what board revision I get, maybe I'll be able to reproduce your issue.

I don't have working wifi on any tv box I own. That is why I always stress not to expect to be able to use the on board wifi. If you need wifi, a cheap linux supported usb wifi dongle should work just fine.

First question is are you sure exactly what box you have. The naming of these boxes is not obvious. There are boxes labeled 'H96 max', 'H96 max+', 'H96 max x2' 'H96 max x3' and probably others as well. Each of these boxes is completely different with different cpus from different manufacturers. For example I have an H96 max x2 which has an amlogic s905x2 cpu, but an actual H96 max has a rockchip rk3318 cpu. Often in the forums people don't clearly specify the box they have making searching through the forums a problem as a search result could really be for an entirely different box. Having said all that, if you really do have a rk3318 based box, you may have a difficult time getting something running on that box. The rk3318 cpu is not well supported by the manufacturer to the point from what I have read that this chip isn't even on rockchips roadmap. Here is a recent thread on another rk3318 based box that might help you:

This is the reason there is the TV Boxes Club to provide a community to help with these unsupported builds. Since you are using a TV box you will find no/limited support in the general forums for the reasons stated above. Please read the work in process post in the TV Boxes club that is intended to set expectations around what to expect with armbian and TV boxes:

The armbian desktop installs use the XFCE desktop manager which is lighter weight and more appropriate to the performance characteristics of SBCs. While on an x86 install of ubuntu you will be using by default the gdm3 desktop manager. So yes there are differences.

I don't know what you might be referring to from the archives, but there isn't anything that I can think of that is a post-install step after the installation to emmc. My experience with xrdp is hit and miss. Sometimes it just works, and other times not so much (and that applies to both x86 as well as arm installs). I have found some success with the following script: https://c-nergy.be/blog/?p=14093 Armbian-config also has an option to enable xrdp which I haven't used (I honestly just recently found its existence). But the balbes builds are different enough that sometimes the armbian-config options don't work on these builds (install to nand-emmc is an example where it works differently in the tv builds than the standard armbian-config method).

Glad I was able to help. Enjoy your H96 Max running armbian ubuntu.

I would also add in trying to set appropriate expectations that no tv boxes are 'supported' by the Armbian project. You can get an understanding of how tv boxes fit into the armbian world by looking at the following (work in process) post:

@boxmeister I see from your previous posts that you have had this working in the past. So in general I would expect that you are familiar with the overall processes of getting these builds running on a tv box. But as you are finding there have been some changes in the installation process over time. It can make searching the archives of the forum for answers difficult. I recently wrote a post in response to a similar request for a different amlogic based box. It walks through the current 'documentation' and I try to give a simplified set of steps for the basic amlogic box case. I would like to point out that the Oct 14th build is the last build that includes support for amlogic cpus in these tv box builds. I see in some of your older posts you were asking about updates. Well as the last build you will be on the 5.9.0 kernel with no future updates. Of course all other ubuntu/debian packages will still be updateable, but the kernel won't be.

Most likely it will be the dtb that is the issue.

Amlogic is no longer being supported in these builds after Oct 14, 2020. If you need amlogic support you will need to grab an earlier build.

Since this is a box I actually own, what you are trying is certainly possible. But you should be aware that tv boxes are not officially supported by the armbian project and that the Amlogic cpu (that your box has) isn't any longer included in the builds done by the developer who makes the general purpose builds for tv boxes. See this post for more details: Having said that, there are a couple of things you mention that need to be addressed. None of the builds you mention are even close to what you should be working with. You should be using a build from October 14, 2020 (the last build that works with amlogic cpus) from here: https://yadi.sk/d/_rQgn_FosYuW0g/20.10/20201014 Then follow the instructions in the first post of this thread: Note particularly that since you have used coreelec with this box, you will need to restore an original android firmware to reset the boot system to the state that the armbian tv build is expecting. And by restore, I mean find the android image for your box, and use the Amlogic Burning Tool to install the original firmware on your device. I am running my h96 max x2 with the meson-g12a-u200.dtb For a perhaps more clear set of instructions for the installation on amlogic based boxes you can also review the following post I wrote: Other than using a different dtb and different uboot, those instructions should be the same for your situation.

I am running at 1800. I haven't looked into trying to increase that any higher. As this is my newest box that I am still feeling my way around, I'm not running anything on it that really pushes the cpu, except for a benchmark utility here or there.

I fully agree with @TRS-80 comments above directing most users towards officially supported SBC hardware options. However, I do want to add my own personal thoughts on why I choose to continue to use these Android TV boxes with unsupported armbian running on them: 1) It is a challenge and therefore a learning opportunity. I would never have learnt to build my own linux kernels from source if I was still exclusively using x86 hardware. If you want a challenge you will find it here. 2) Price vs specs. The Android TV boxes are built to be cheap consumer devices. They are produced in larger quantities which drives down the per unit price. You will generally not be able to get the same level of hardware for the same price with a standard SBC. But that cheapness with - no support by the manufacturers and potentially sub-standard components. If the manufacturers goal is to sell the lowest price box they are likely cutting corners somewhere to make that happen. 3) emmc is standard. TV boxes always come with internal storage while most SBCs do not. Again from a price/performance standpoint having internal emmc storage vs running off an SD card is a plus. emmc storage *should* be faster and longer lasting than storage on an sd card. The caveats here being that this is one of the areas that the manufacturers may cut corners. For example I have two TX3 mini boxes that are supposed to have 16GB of emmc memory (like the other TX3 mini boxes I have), but they were instead manufactured with cheaper nand memory for which there is no mainline kernel support. There is no visible difference between the identically packaged boxes that had emmc vs those that came with nand, other than opening the case and looking at the physical chips on the boards. 4) cases come standard. TV boxes always come with cases, whereas for SBCs that is an extra cost. For my uses having a case is a big improvement vs not having one. A downside if that these cases are not necessarily well designed to provide adequate cooling. So depending on your use case, overheating might be a problem. While I own both SBCs and TV boxes, I personally find the TV boxes work best for my needs (running server based software) and I enjoy the challenge of getting them running and keeping them running with the great underlying work that the armbian project is doing to build on top of. I feel that if someone wants to use *unsupported* armbian on TV boxes and has the correct expectations (set your expectations low) and is looking to learn and is up for a challenge these are fun things to work with. And I look forward to working with you on these forums.

It should be noted that many of the limitations mentioned above are specific to the Amlogic builds historically created by balbes150. There is also the good work being done by @jock and others for Rockchip based TV boxes (see the 'CSC Armbian for RKxxx' threads). And while the general statements about Android TV boxes not being officially supported armbian supported hardware, etc are still true, because these CSC builds are focused on a smaller subset of the TV box world there is likely better support for various hardware like wifi etc. And as of right now, there are a few more active developers working on those code bases.

I will let you know. One of the changes between 5.9 and 5.10 for the rock-pi-4 dtb is that in 5.10 it now has three versions rock-pi-4a, 4b and 4c. I am currently using the 4b version for the N6 max. If the networking stability remains, I may experiment with the other dtb files and/or try to revert back to the way they were structured in 5.9 to see if that may be the cause of the issues. I bought the N6 max board because of your recommendation and am very impressed with the overall performance. But I really don't know how closely the box hardware matches the rock-pi-4 dtb that I am currently using. This is the most recent board I have purchased and I am still getting to know it better. Do you run your N6 max box from sd card or internal emmc? It took me a bit of work to adjust balbes scripts, but I eventually got the os installed on emmc.

It is my own kernel build from mainline kernel sources. I build 5.4 and 5.9 kernels for my 'production' boxes. I just this past weekend got a build environment put together for 5.10 for my test boxes.

@FHam First I want to restate some of the basics around armbian on android tv boxes. 1) They are not supported. 2) A single developer (balbes150) has worked years on getting things to the state they are. 3) As of October 14th balbes150 removed support for amlog cpus, so that is the last build that will maybe work on your box, 4) There is a very small number of people on this forum/club that are able to provide any guidance, 5) Most likely no one on this forum/club has ever seen your specific box, 6) Expectations should be set low (i.e. don't expect anything to work) but if you do get the box to boot, get hdmi and wired ethernet to work, you are doing good. 7) Really don't expect things like wifi, bluetooth, remote control etc to work. 8) If you get this working on your box, it will likely only be useful for server type tasks, maybe a little light graphical desktop usage, but certainly not video/multimedia. There is a lot of information in the two threads you have opened on your installation problems. I think at this point it would make sense to start from the beginning and step through the basics to try to help you. There were a couple of very important questions asked of you in the old closed thread that you didn't answer. I am going to make some recommendations in an effort to try to help. 1) Use the latest/last build that supports amlogic cpus: https://yadi.sk/d/_rQgn_FosYuW0g/20.10/20201014 2) Follow the instructions (I agree that the instructions are often not clear) from the first post of this thread: I recently wrote a post that attempted to help someone better understand the instructions for an amlogic cpu as he was having difficulty understanding the instructions from balbes150. This may help you: 3) Pay particular attention to the first sentence in red. If you have ever tried to install other linux builds on this box, stop. You will first need to restore the box with an original android firmware before continuing. This is true even if the box is still running android. The key here is if you have ever 'attempted' to install something else. The installation process for some other firmwares will modify the booting environment in ways that cause the armbian install to no longer work. The armbiantv installation is dependent on an unmodified default android environment. I have more than once solved problems I have had by reverting a box to a clean fresh state by reinstalling the android firmware. Note, when I say reinstall the android firmware, that doesn't mean using the android functionality to reset the box, it means going out and finding the correct manufactures firmware file and using the low level amlogic tools to install that on your box. This is one of the questions asked in the previous thread that you didn't answer, which is why I am spending so much time on it. It is critical that the state of the box be known and clean otherwise we are all just wasting time. 4) In your previous thread you have a screen shot showing you trying to run aml_autoscript.zip from android recovery. From my understanding if you find yourself in android recovery you are doing something wrong. No part of the installation process uses android recovery. I have always been successful with the 'toothpick' method and would recommend you stick with that. 5) The extlinux.conf file you posted in the previous thread had a number of errors in it. Please post the extlinux.conf file you are currently trying to use. You are working with a box that isn't common. I have no experience with it. But by correctly following the installation, you may yet be successful.

Just to set expectations, I have five different tv boxes that are running armbiantv, and wifi doesn't work on any of them. While you may get lucky and solve your wifi issues for your specific box, you shouldn't have an expectation that wifi will work. As for audio, i'm not sure what you mean by 'inside audio channel'. But like wifi, audio support has been difficult for these boxes. While I do now have audio working via hdmi on most, it doesn't work via any of the other connectors a box may have in my cases. But since I use my boxes for server type usage, these limitations don't impact me. But everyone should be aware of the limitations and set expectations accordingly. Good luck on your continued efforts and do please report back what you find to help others who may want to embark down a similar path.