zero48

@zero48
 
......... night is made for sleeping  for mostly people on the earth, but not for tecnicians ajajajajaj

But with the sd-multitool have you at least a try-to-boot ?
Those boards are UNBRICKABLE because the real bootstrap is in the soc itself. I have many with broken nand or emmc that I desoldered and they boot flawlessly from SD of course with right ddrbin U-Boot and the hellish trust-os.
Later if is phisically broken the sdcard reader, well YES it died with honor LOL 
( And.... ... There still is last thing to try but the process is long)

@Maker39
not more than yesterday, in private chat @jock and me we were saying that this 3ad is SUPER because many others users, such as you actively help people.
This is right spirit of a forum

@zero48, With people like @jock and @fabiobassa , this board couldn't win this fight
Congratulations on your success
 
I was rooting for you, but nothing could help

@zero48
I said it:
this box WILL WORK !!!

Congrats
 

Gents, 
 
Finally got it Installed , I'm so happy !! 
 
Now I'll check whats working or not (not interested in WIFI in case of failure) .
 
I used Armbian_20.11_Rk322x-box_buster_current_5.9.10_minimal.img  ( I dont need Desktop for my purpose)
 
Thanks Very much @jock and @fabiobassa for your patience and guide .
 
Sincerely
 
 
 
 

Gents, 
 
Finally got it Installed , I'm so happy !! 
 
Now I'll check whats working or not (not interested in WIFI in case of failure) .
 
I used Armbian_20.11_Rk322x-box_buster_current_5.9.10_minimal.img  ( I dont need Desktop for my purpose)
 
Thanks Very much @jock and @fabiobassa for your patience and guide .
 
Sincerely
 
 
 
 

Unless you have rtl8189etv as wifi chip you don't need that.
Just configure the board with rk322x-config so can you get back soon to spend some time with your family

That solved the problem !!
Now the SDcard it is accepting the image (testing with Focal which is bigger) flawlessly
 
  
 
Thanks very much to you and @fabiobassa for the support and patience 
 
Kudos !! 
 

I don't understand what's wrong with your setup, but did you decompress the multitool (that's its name), as suggested by @fabiobassa before burning on the sdcard? If you are burning the .xz archive as is it will certainly never work!
 
Also in Windows you must see the MULTITOOL FAT partition on the sdcard, otherwise you're doing it wrong.
 

It happens because when you burn the multitool image on the sdcard, the FAT partition is 2GB large by default. The partition is then enlarged the first time you boot the multitool on the box to fit the whole size of the sdcard itself.
Once you boot the multitool in the box, you can then plug again the sdcard on your computer and the FAT partition will be as large as the sdcard.
 
There two strange things though:
* the images for rk322x are all less than 2gb in size, so if you are not putting more than one image on the sdcard you should be fine even with default partition size
* AFAIK, rk3229 with 4Gb of RAM cannot exist, probably 4Gb of RAM are just on the label of the box
 

@zero48
Your board is one on which we worked a lot, is well known and totally and well supported in armbian.
It has NAND so pay attention : you have to use stePnand for internal installation ;
it has DDR3 upvto 768 MHz so is one of my favourites for his speed
You will be very satisfied of it !!!
 
Thank you for photos, cheers
 
EDIT:
Those lovely China producers..
It should be a 3228 with one or two giga of ram. Look at what they say .. 4 GB ram......
 
Anyway you can check those infos with the efuse and with " free"  command.
 
Please read back the forum since there are many useful infos you can grab from the board with some command lines

Try Rufus https://rufus.ie/
 I always keep "Rufus", "Win32 Disk Imager" and "HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool" handy for recording images.
And you no need press "magic button" for boot with Multitool .

@zero48
indeed the procedure that maker is suggesting you is correct and one of the best
And really the booting sequence of those boards allow the box to boot from internal, search if exist a trustos and uboot on the card and then boot from the card if valid things are found.
I guess android is working, or are you  trying to boot with shorten pins and/or android erased ? If yes please revert to ideal cndition of android in place and working
last question : have you sufficient skill to setup a uart converter to debug what is going on ? On that board solder a pl2303 is very easy

And please guys , when you receive support is a costless thing to just put a " like ( heart icon) " , not for vanity having as many likes is possible , but because this helps the reputations and reliability of users trying to help your efforts and also strengthens the sense of community and the purpose of a forum.
ty @Maker39
 

@zero48
I would do like this:
1. through Rufus completely format SD by disabling "Quick format"
2. Write Multitool.img.xz .
After that, in Win, the card should be seen as 2GB FAT32 with some files, such as:
/backups
/bsp
/extlinux
/images
kernel.img
LICENSE
rk322x-box.dtb
3. Insert "Multitool" SD on box and PowerON.
Should be boot and repartition FAT32 for whole space.
 
p.s. Is there Android 10 in your box? Maybe there the bootloader somehow works differently?