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obaldon1

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  1. Precisely! I've read about anything that balbes150 has written. It consists of google-translated one-liners mostly, and if full of specialized lingo that I do not understand. He wrote quite a bit about g18ref board, but eventually I found one of the posts where he has cut off everyone like me with older hardware and said that our questions will not be answered and instead he will delete them. Huh? Since you make this sound accusatory, I will respond just once: I do this out of sheer kindness and love of our fragile environment. I am trying to reroute from scrap as much computer hardware as I possibly can. This is the purpose of my 2nd recycling business, and I've been doing for more than a decade, having recovered hundreds of devices of which many still work productively for customers who paid close to zero for an opportunity to have internet access, email, word processing, etc. Most of them run either Linux or FreeBSD. As to exotic devices like this, I often do it for the fun of proving that Linux can run almost anywhere. But my charity is not bottomless, and at some point I have to cut the line. If you can point me at a section that provides working instructions for enabling multiboot on a g18ref board, I will be eternally grateful.
  2. @TRS-80 I've been a Netware, QNX, Solaris, Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows sysadmin and developer for close to 25 years. I've installed, retired, scrapped, and recycled literally tons of hardware between 1989 and now. I've pulled literally miles of TP. If I learned something about a piece of garbage that just outright refuses to work after 30 hours wasted, it is a loss of about $2K for me. This is how much this box now costs me. I've already imaged the card back to Raspbian and am typing this from the Pi after the total investment of 5 min of time. Until this project has at least some documentation that works, it will unlikely find many followers. Yes, I was very enthusiastic about having Linux on another device, but I have to issue a stop-loss order. I am still very hopeful of ever running Linux desktop on my other media box Motorola Arris with Broadcom dual core MIPS CPU and 2x SATA ports but it looks like there isn't any distro that supports it. Too bad because it is miles ahead of Amlogic MX2 in terms of storage and graphics performance. Yes, it needs some soldering to get USB ports to work but it is a matter of adding 4x diodes and resistors. @RaptorSDS What do you mean by PC connection? A JTAG, SSH over ethernet, or anything else?
  3. I still do not understand any of this. Are there step-by-step instructions on how to boot Armbian on g18ref? Which files do I need to d/l for this and which steps do I need to take? I tried to read about TWRP but it consists mostly of acronyms that I do not understand. At this point I am close to tossing it back into the pile of aluminum scrap at my recycling business. This is where it came from. It's already wasted about 30 hours of my time with no prospect of success anywhere close. I do not event understand why anyone bothers with Linux on these Amlogic boards, considering the amount of effort and torture that it takes. For me, it's been nothing but torture and frustration instead of fun that it was supposed to be. I watched youtube vids of a fellow who used a toothpick and had Armbian running in minutes after enabling multiboot. What can be so different with my device that it does not accept any of the aml_autoscript files?
  4. @RaptorSDS Ah, Okay, so what should I do? What is the next step to enable multiboot?
  5. Hold right there! What does this mean? It's like French to me. I know how to use a toothpick to get into Android recovery, and my knowledge ends there. Same as above: I do not know what this means. What is uboot? What is TWRP? How do I activate multiboot? I've already tried running aml_autoscript.zip through both Upgrade app and recovery to no avail. Where can I d/l an old image? I've just tried 5.77 from @serkho 's link above and it did not boot nor its aml_autoscript.zip worked. Same validation error as with the latest image.
  6. @RaptorSDS Thank you for clarifying the boot question! So now I am back at where I started, I guess: multiboot has to be enabled. Can anyone tell me how to enable it? I've already tried to apply aml_autoscript.zip through both Update app and directly from Android restore screen. It is rejected either way (Verifying update package... Installation aborted.) Is there a previous, old version of Armbian desktop that is known to work on older MX2 hardware? I read this forum and gleaned that it has likely been deleted from whatever Yadisk that they use as a repo. If the old one worked, but had purported security holes, then it is a whole lot better for my situation than the new one that supposedly has no security holes but does not work at all. This box is going to just sit behind a router and firewall and allow me to type text files and read an odd email.
  7. So far I've tried all DTBs in the image that I have and none booted. I am back to square #1: not sure if it even tries to boot from SD. I also downloaded libreelec but got stuck because it is not an image that I could burn onto the SD. It is just a bunch of files. What do I do with them? I want to try a previous version of Armbian but they do not seem to be around anymore. Someone deleted them from Yadisk. Does anyone still have older versions stashed anywhere?
  8. Serkho, I appreciate that you mention it because I have not seen this information anywhere. But first I want to understand if my box allows multiboot or not. Does the fact that it boots into Android with the SD card with Armbian inserted mean that multiboot is disabled? If it is disabled, what are the steps to enable it? Since I never saw the box do anything other than its normal Android boot, I have no way of knowing whether it is even trying to boot Armbian. What should happen if I am not using the correct dtb? From what I read on this forum, it either shows black screen or crashes. Am I wrong? Anyhow, my eEnv.txt is vanilla, and it points at meson8m2-mxiii-plus.dtb Thanks to you, gentlemen, for holding my hand. It is very difficult to piece together information about what is essentially a "black box" from disparate internet sources. Regards, Oba Na
  9. To the best of my understanding, I am not yet using any dtd because I am not yet attempting to boot Armbian. At the moment, I am trying to enable multiboot, and it is not working as I described above. When I simply insert an SD card with Armbian_20.09_Aml-s812_bullseye_current_5.9.0-rc7_desktop.img burned onto it and with 1 random dtd.img copied to the root, the boot process blasts right through to Android. This is why I am trying to enable multiboot by either pointing Upgrade app at aml_autoscript.zip or by selecting it from the Android recovery menu once it shows up, both times running into the verification error that I posted above. Can anyone explain in simple terms, which Armbian image and which aml_autoscript.zip are appropriate for MX2 with g18ref? Piecing together this info from cryptic clues scattered over multiple forums is very hard for a noob like me. It is my understanding that it is not possible to tell me which dtd is appropriate, because they have to be found by way of trial and error. Correct me if I am wrong. Someone should have tried g18ref previously and figured out which dtd works, but I am not holding hope that this is documented anywhere. PS: This forum is killing me with its 1 post a day limit. It is not achieving anything positive but delaying my responses and diminishing chances that anyone who knows answers still has patience to wait for me. Is this absolutely necessary?
  10. Awesome! Thanks a whole lot! Now I am beginning to find my ways around Android. My version has an Upgrade app. It allows me to select aml_autoscript.zip file and reboot. But after it reboots, it again displays the black screen with a dead droid, and yellow text appears on the bottom: -- Install /sdcard ... Finding update package... Opening update package... Verifying update package... Installation aborted. I tried two different images from both SD card and USB stick: Armbian_20.09_Aml-s812_bullseye_current_5.9.0-rc7_desktop.img Armbian_20.09_Aml-s812_focal_current_5.9.0-rc7_desktop.img The result is always the same, as above. Once the text appears, the screen enters the same Android recovery mode as with a toothpick (which I have to hold until boot logo appears). I also tried "apply update from EXT" recovery screen option from either SD or USB, but it prints the same yellow error message again. Should the file aml_autoscript.zip be the same for my MX2 on g18ref as for 802/812? Or do I need a different file?
  11. Hi, Serkho, Something went wrong with my account: every time I log in, the forum says the password is wrong, and then it says account locked, even though I saved the password in FF when I first logged in. Anyhow, I had to create another account just to reply. First, it is not clear whether the SD card has to be inserted or not when enabling multiboot. I tried both with inserted or not, and the result of following your instructions is always the same: the box boots into a black screen with a white rectangle in the middle that says "Complete action using" and has 2x choices: MediaBox Launcher or XBMC, and the options below are Always or Just Once. If I hold the button until the boot process is over, I end up in a black screen with a droid lying on its back with a door in its stomach open and a red triangle with an exclamation sign over it. The blue text on top of the screen says "Android system recovery <3e> Volume up/down to move highlight; enter button to select. reboot system now apply update from ADB apply update from EXT apply update from cache wipe data/factory reset wipe cache partition set efuse item When you are saying "run firmware update from the app", which app do you mean? Keep in mind: I know nothing at all about this device. I do not understand jargon or acronyms that are used on this forum.
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