Tomas Catone

I disassembled my tv box - there are 4 screws under the 4 rubbery feet. Removed the motherboard and I drilled some holes of 1/4 inch (7 mm) diameter through the bottom plastic piece. Then I placed a USB fan underneath the tv box and wow the temperature really goes down and stays down around 45 C to 60 C depending on work load. The fans are 80mm and 120mm in size. I chose 120mm to be sure.
 
 

That's a very good idea, especially if my online accounts that have my photos would ever become problematic for any reason. I have armbian on a tv box with SMB (samba) and with a USB 3.0 hard drive. The tv box is connected by gigabit ethernet to my home network. So I am going to try these apps - PhotoSync, FolderSync, CX File Explorer - on my android phone to backup my personal photos and videos and determine which is easiest and fastest.
 
Which app on your phone/tablet have you chosen to use to backup your photos/videos?

Take apart your tv box.  Take pictures of all the components inside.  Looking for your exact part number of your wifi module - mine was AP6330.
 
Then I googled and found this person solved it on their tv box. 
 
 
But the procedure might work for other wifi chipsets.   Just have a look in /lib/firmware/brcm and you will see plenty of them.  Plus I believe that is the broadcom designs.  Going up one level there are even more.
 
WARNING - Not an expert... but this trick worked for me.
 
Good Luck.

Nope .  I will put that in my notes if I get there again.  What kernel are you running

Wow - thanks for Webmin.  I've never heard of that one but looks nifty.  I'm going to have to take a look at that.  Thanks

Hi @datatech451 - glad to hear I am not alone.  Yep - I fiddled with SuperCeleron, ATVx and custom launchers a few years back.  I have an old pc with LibreElec around here somewhere too.  But today I am no longer trying to keep Android going on this one.  I moved on to Firesticks since then and the remote control is a big factor on why we stay there.  But for the S912 - I am focusing on the mediaserver side and thinking of adding photo backup of my phone.  I am just in the tinkering and learning phase.  I've had Plex working and have been trialing Jellyfin lately.  It works well to stream locally to my firesticks.  Big Buck Bunny of course and it seems pretty solid.  But I am not doing 4k BBB or anything.  But still testing and troubleshooting random issues and craziness.  In fact - I put Portainer on board.  Jellyfin in a Docker.  Homarr in a Docker, Grafana in a Docker, Adguard in a Docker and Cockpit...  But lots of things not working exactly right but I think because I overload it.  Really trying to push it to the limits just to see and learn.  
 
Burning that all down today and doing a fresh build with just what I need - Jellyfin, Cockpit and Adguard.  I'm gonna skip Docker this time and I bet I get it all working well enough to learn the next level. 
 
As for cooling - I bought some extra heat sinks but never made it further.  I am a little worried about pulling the existing sink off - don't want to crack the cpu.   Feels more solid than thermal paste - more like thermal glue.  But yes - seems to get HOT in a hurry when it is busy.   This box has a heat sink plus heat tape and a piece of sheet metal.  I am betting that is no longer standard build.
 
BTW - I fiddled with my watt meter and this thing just sips...  Seems to idle around 3.6 to 4.1 watts.  Did some measurements during 2 hours of streaming, and did some math it seems it would only use about 2.9 kWh per month if on all the time.   My spinning HDD uses more than that - could justify that SSD upgrade in the future.
 
I found another box with a S905 (I think) in my recycle bin - I might look at optimizing that for retro gaming.   We will see what happens next.   Do you have a favorite gaming ROM or experience? 
 
Anyway - best of luck and keep the faith!

Good to meet a fellow armbian android tv box fan.   We need a logo or shorthand alias for fans 🤣.
 
ZFS - was easy but not clear.  Inside armbian-config under System/Storage is a script to install ZFS support.  I did this and it didn't work... then undid it and then installed it a second time and it worked.  Somewhere in there I also ran the standard commands for install:
 
sudo apt install zfsutils-linux sudo apt install zfs-fuse  
Probably after the first uninstall... but the commands indicate failure.  But then installing the second time seemed to work.
 
Did that on both of these boxes I have working.  
 
Thanks for the ethtool command.  Here's my results on box1
 
ports auto-negotiation: Yes Supported FEC modes: Not reported Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 1000baseT/Full Advertised pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes Advertised FEC modes: Not reported Link partner advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 1000baseT/Full Link partner advertised pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only Link partner advertised auto-negotiation: Yes Link partner advertised FEC modes: Not reported Speed: 1000Mb/s Duplex: Full Auto-negotiation: on master-slave cfg: preferred slave master-slave status: slave Port: Twisted Pair PHYAD: 0 Transceiver: external MDI-X: Unknown netlink error: Operation not permitted Current message level: 0x0000003f (63) drv probe link timer ifdown ifup Link detected: yes  
Not an expert and first time reading this command but looks like 1000 is the answer.  Crazy thing - box 2 does not have the line "MDI-X: Unknown" shown towards the bottom and "Port: MII" instead of "Port: twisted pair" but is otherwise identical.  Posting in case it helps anyone else - but these are beyond me.  
 
If you confirm that the above = 1000 I will update both my box running posts.  
 
By the way - Another favorite is Software/Management/Cockpit.  Easy to see how the server is doing.  Plus it has a built in terminal and file manager. 
 
Add that to Tailscale and you can check on the server or grab a file while out of the house.  
curl -fsSL https://tailscale.com/install.sh | sh  
Those are my favorites.  What are yours?
 

TV Box Name: Sunvell T95Z plus Octagon shaped box (I wrote it before – but Beware – apparently a lot of variants)
 
CPU Amlogics S912
Armbian build file name: Armbian_community_25.8.0-trunk.277_Aml-s9xx-box_noble_current_6.12.34
DTB file used: meson-gxm-t95z-plus.dtb – (my other T95z uses meson-gxm-vega-s96.dtb)
Kernel Version: 6.12.34
Distribution Installed (focal, buster, etc): Noble
Working Ethernet (Yes/No): Yes
Max Ethernet Speed that works (100/1000): Not sure how to determine...
Does wifi work (Yes/No): No
Does bluetooth work (Yes/No): Not tested
Does HDMI audio work (Yes/No): Yes
 
Additional Comments (provide any additional information you feel is important):
This is my second T95z plus box build. Using as headless server and both seem solid. Confirming what others have said – the build is different inside. This has a different wifi card and eemc. I have a 3rd T95z plus that has the dreaded NAND chip too. Having fun and learning. Using as a simple NAS now with a ZFS pool and works just fine.

TV Box Name: Sunvell T95Z plus Octagon shaped box (Beware – apparently a lot of variants)
CPU Amlogics S912
Armbian build file name: Armbian_community_25.5.0-trunk.370_Aml-s9xx-box_noble_current_6.12.23
DTB file used: meson-gxm-vega-s96.dtb (but several seem to work… none with wifi out of the box)
Kernel Version: 6.12.24
Distribution Installed (focal, buster, etc): Noble
Working Ethernet (Yes/No): Yes
Max Ethernet Speed that works (100/1000): Not sure how to determine...
Does wifi work (Yes/No): YES *** See Below
Does bluetooth work (Yes/No): Not tested
Does HDMI audio work (Yes/No): Yes
Additional Comments (provide any additional information you feel is important):
Tested many files. Ubuntu (noble) seemed much more usable than Debian (bookworm)
 
Also tested
Armbian_community_25.5.0-trunk.334_Aml-s9xx-box_bookworm_current_6.12.21 _gnome_desktop.img.xz
Armbian_community_25.5.0-trunk.334_Aml-s9xx-box_noble_current_6.12.21 _gnome_desktop.img.xz
Armbian_community_25.5.0-trunk.334_Aml-s9xx-box_oracular_edge_6.14.0 _gnome_desktop.img.xz
Armbian_community_25.5.0-trunk.334_Aml-s9xx-box_oracular_edge_6.14.0.img.xz

Since I am trying to learn server/media center/adguard or pihole stuff – chose the server headless install eventually. Learning has started.
**** Thank you thank you to @ZuiMelanieForno and their post here:
But basically looks like the easy way is to create a soft link of the ap6330 driver file as the brcm4330 file that must be loaded by default.
sudo mv /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac4330-sdio.txt /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac4330-sdio.txt.old sudo ln -s /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac-ap6330-sdio.txt /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac4330-sdio.txt Not sure of this solution will survive update.   (UPDATE: Confirmed - it does not survive update - but doing the commands again and a reboot seemed to work.)
 
I have installed pihole and had it running. I had jellyfin running. Rebuilt from 0 again and am trying to do inside of docker containers. Dockers seems running but still some learning to go.
 
If I write my sd to my eMMC – can reset to 0 again by booting from an sd card … and when ready burn that to eMMC? Or should I keep the writes to the eMMC as few as possible?
 
I own two of these boxes – Identical on the outside but the newer one (bought probably 1 year later) does NOT have an eMMC. It has the dreaded NAND chip(BiWIN 16GB)… Also a different wifi module I think…. (LTM8830)
 
Oh and – can I just say I love pulling this thing out of retirement and having a tiny low cost media server in the house. Thanks @balbes150 and @SteeMan and Everyone for their hard work!  This is amazing... until I blow it up again...

Thanks @SteeMan !!
 
Still learning.  I was getting a quick error when enabling RDP inside the Armbian config.  Updated everything and reinstalled xrdp and the error went away.  A couple of reboots later and now RDP is working!!!  Success!!
 
I have installed Teamviewer Host.  They have a .deb install file for ARM-32 (no 64 bit file available) so installation wasn't hard.  Not working exactly right yet... but wrenching on it but it lost priority now that RDP is working...
 
When will I be able to post more than 1x a day?  Or a link?  It deleted my link in my earlier post.  Just asking.
 
"Firmware" is inside Armbian config but after looking at it more closely it is "apt update and apt upgrade".  So I am doing it recursively until it says there is nothing more to upgrade.  Hope that doesn't mess anything up.
 
"Freeze" inside Armbian config says it will disable the Armbian kernel upgrade.  Sounds wise since 20.11 doesn't support Amlogics cpu.  Agreed?

Interesting tidbit - I changed the background to one of the blue xfce mice but for some reason it only stays for a little while and then goes back to the grey penguin.  Reboot brings back the blue for a little while.  Just odd. 
 
Other progress:  I tested almost all Amlogic .dtb device tree files .  I appreciate the link to the work of @mumpitzstuff on compiling dtb files.  I compiled the one he used for my tv box - but it didn't work.  Then I tried pasting together a file of my own from a couple of stock dtb files - but that didn't fix anything.  The meson-gxm-vega-s96.dtb file is what I am using and it has working ethernet so that is what I NEED.  Meson-gxm-q200-n1.dtb shows a wifi symbol in the top left corner after boot but my mouse and keyboard don't work.  Meson-gxm-beelink-gt1 seems to have working Bluetooth.  I might work more on compiling my own dtb file but at this point I am moving onto Samba setup and Plex setup.  I think my homebrew dtb file idea is missing the actual drivers for the chips so even after defining the device tree I still need to somewhere somehow add the drivers?
 
Well - that is the update for today.  Seem to be inching towards my goal. 
 
Any tips/tricks or ideas are appreciated. 
 
@Gio Giogio - sorry - I can't post links so the one I sent you got auto-deleted above.  But have a look for reddit getting_armbian_to_boot_on_sunvell_t95z_plus and I bet you can use that to get over the first hurdles. 
 
Thanks again! 
 
 

Links to theft and hacking are removed.