Tarzanus

I tried downloading and running the latest image from SD card. I get kernel panic at boot. Anyone knows how to start it successfully? It's Rockchip based box A95X Z2.

I have tried the latest image 20.11, focal and buster. System seemed running stable at first, but in a few hours, there was kernel panic which was caused by CPU. Issue happened randomly, under load or when practically idle. Is it possible u-boot i used is causing it, or is that bugger just needed to boot? I wanted to play with it and run it as a server, but sadly it's not stable enough.

Here, I've made some hdparm tests: Test of eMMC /dev/mmcblk0: Timing cached reads: 846 MB in 2.00 seconds = 422.99 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 342 MB in 3.02 seconds = 113.37 MB/sec Test of SD-card /dev/mmcblk2: Timing cached reads: 820 MB in 2.00 seconds = 409.24 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 68 MB in 3.04 seconds = 22.33 MB/sec Test USB3.0 dongle /dev/sda1: Timing cached reads: 946 MB in 2.00 seconds = 472.31 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 330 MB in 3.02 seconds = 109.37 MB/sec Test USB3.1 dongle /dev/sda: Timing cached reads: 920 MB in 2.00 seconds = 459.98 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 362 MB in 3.01 seconds = 120.45 MB/sec It looks like USB3 port is the fastest option. eMMC is also quite fast. Sadly, SD-card seems to be on USB2 lines and works rather slow.

I know and I do have a libreelec/Kodi sd-card, but it would be more than great if somehow we could make Armbian on these TV boxes more optimized. They could be easily used as cheap basic Desktop computer replacement used for video playback, internet browsing and libreoffice work. While there's unnecessary high CPU load, these chips are also overheating which again cause them to throttle and slow down. My first thought and the reason I bought it was basic webserver for a not-so-large website and the first results are more than promising.

Kernel 5.5.0-rc6 works nice and stable on my RK3318 based box. USB3 works again. The only isue I have now is slow rendering of websites in chromium (high CPU usage) and completely useless Kodi which also uses almost 100% CPU without even starting a movie - even moving around the menus lags. Is Mali450 GPU that slow or is it not fully supported so most (all) rendering is done through CPU using software rendering instead of GPU rendering? It seems strange, libreelec worked quite nice with Kodi.

Use image from @balbes150 from this topic RC2 of 5.5 mainline kernel works best (haven't tried rc6 yet, but with rc5, USB3 stopped working. When you burn the image to your SD-card patch it up following this procedure: System works pretty well, except for Wi-fi and bluetooth. The system is not fully optimized and it has issues playing video clips, especially at higher resolution. I hope GPU support will also get polished if that's the issue.

A95X Z2 4GB/64GB, RK3318 Armbian_19.11.4_Arm-64_bionic_dev_5.5.0-rc2_desktop_20191228 Doesn't work: Wifi, Bluetooth Does work: everything else It is stable and relatively fast, considering low price. It is based on RK3318 chip so it's not really desktop replacement material. Video playback in chromium works very slow and VLC has issues playing higher resolution videos. Desktop environment seems to be GPU accelerated and browsing seems quite smooth. Kodi - LibreElec, plays videos smoothly, even in a bit higher resolution (fullHD). I haven't tried 4k, but I very much doubt it can. If I install Kodi in Armbian it can't play even video resolutions such as 720p. Armbian_19.11.5_Aml-g12_bionic_dev_5.5.0-rc5-next-20200110_desktop is newer, but USB3 stopped working.

@hexdump Well, I used unified version 5.5 rc-2 now, which works. I'll see how it performs. I've noticed legacy 5.3 version had issues with graphics. Video playback was next to useless. First impression is better with this image, but I'll see later when I check it a bit more.

@hexdump I only found 5.3 for RK3328.

That dtb does not boot on A95X Z2 device. Rk3318-t9.dtb from caruso works. I'll try latest ubuntu image now and try to make it work as well. I checked armbian distro before and the only real issue was that wifi and BT don't seem to work. Sound works but you have to manually select output each after each restart.

I got into desktop environment. Wifi and BT doesn't work but LAN does.

I tried that as well, remained black, nothing. I took the file he extracted and it didn't work. I checked the firmware version I have and it says PQ2A.190205.003-9.0-201910140936. Couldn't find the firmware on the internet to extract the files myself. Perhaps If I install wireshark and try updating, I can get the update URL or something.. Sadly I have very little time to spare lately.

I tried placing his dtb file into Armbian_19.11.3_Rk3328-tv_eoan_legacy_4.4.154_desktop_20191126.img and it doesn't work. I'll try doing some more research.

Thank you! I'll try, hopefully tonight. Thank you for letting me know about this! Regards

Peeked inside. I can see memory modules and it seems the model is identical to A95x F2R