Felipe Triana

I think I know why he is trying to use tv boxes, not exacly why I mean, but I have a idea, and its the price. You see, here in BRZ, tv boxes are very cheap, you can find one in the local scrappy sometimes, or even people selling for less then 10-20 USD a used one, almost same price as a brand new ESP32... A Pi Zero I think costs almost 40 USD... But you are right, this tv boxes all are used components, all fab data on then is from 13 or 12, 10 year old chips, all with solder flux still under them. It's not reliable, specially with wireless. That's why I told him to use ethernet. I have the first one running here for almost 1 month running home-assistant, that is pretty nice. The only brick wall I hit is this limit on 1GB ram, I swaped very DDR3 chips, even with 4 bit ones, and also buyed another box that came with single 2Gig module, called LPDDR2, even discovered that its used on many many phones, I had a Asus Zenphone 2 board laying around and took a look, and find on LPDDR2 Hynix Haha Unfortunately I still stuck with 1GB xD I think that must be related with you said - hardcoded on the bootloader without source code...

I use Ubiquiti on my house, I really tried the best stability on wireless - don't get me wrong, wireless protocol is something incredible, but if you look for something reliable, ethernet cable is your best friend. Even stock box, sometimes lose packges, and for streaming this is a pain in the **s... As a TI professional, I recoment you never use wiifi range extender also.

Dont use wireless, it never works Haha Of my 3 boards, 2 detect the wifi chip, it connects, but if I reboot or sometimes out of nothing, even if connected, stops responding, and you need to send ping google.com to work again. Wi-fi always is shit anyway, just use ethernet cable or a external Wi-Fi adapter from TP Link.

I buyed on Mercado Livre, but its a surprise box, almost literraly, I've been lucky that all three that I buyed worked, even if all they uses different hardware. What problem you are facing? Maybe I can help.

Tried another box, it features a HYN-H9TKNNNBPDAR-ARNGH memory chip and a eMMC, working with RK3229. I didn't found many informations about this memory chip, but l was really using 2GB on Android, and I found something on Ali, it also says 2GB, but I dont know, ARMBIAN found 1GB only. Is there anything I could do? EDIT: aparrently this memory chip was used on MOTO X 2013, and also is 2GB. See page 15 from this Ifixit guide.

Hmm, do you know when the software do the detection? Maybe I just need to upgrade the bootloader on NAND for other (?) ... Don't know.. I'm not using nand right now, because I'm usind SD card to use mainline, but I think the multiboot tool flashed something to bypass NAND, if I remember correctly... 🤔 But if the detection is made during the system boot process, maybe its some resistor configuration or the kernel just "dont like" my modules. They are 8 bit instead 4 bit, and double the original density, but thats the only diferrence. Original was Samsung, K4B2G0446C, and the replacemant is from Micron, HTTC4G83BFR: K4B: just Samsung marking. 2G: 2 Gigabites module (256 Megabytes) 04: 4 bit module 4: 8 internal banks *(3 = 4 banks, 4 = 8 banks, 5 = 16 banks) 6: Voltage *(6 = 1.5v) I took this data from Samsung datasheet... Micron is a little more dificult to find the right datasheet, but its fair to assume that this module has 4 Gigabites, 8 bytes, and for 4 internal banks, since its 4G83 The letters after that is just revision type, speed, power, etc, doesn't matter in this case. Anyway, if you know where its detected the DRAM, and where the profiles for then (assuming that is some kind of profiling table) maybe just need to edit this, a big maybe on that, because I dont know s**t about the software compared to you guys. Thanks @jock and @fabiobassa for the support until now 😃 Have a nice weekend.

@jock I bought another yesterday, brand new, left with stock android and workds for my father for now. On android at least he can see emails and youtube. 😅 about the backup, no I did not make it, I should have... I had this box laying arrond, and had the ideia for desktop replacement, but then I saw the limitations that you said, but I didnt made the backup of the NAND, and that's is why I made the first post.. I know my box have 2GB, because I installed it 😂 I'm work with GPU, bga etc, and was very easy to me find DDR3 laying around, I just swap the original samsung 256MB chips for the 512MB micron ones. Maybe I need to make other steps to unlock the memory. I already reflashed it from maskrom, still 1GB. Maybe you can help.I know the hardware stuff, but no so much about the software. 🤣 Yes, this issue about wireless exists, I could not access any inbound port from wireless. I noticed that if I just plug my etherned cable, and instantly try to access SSH using the wireless ip, works fine, but if I disconnect the cable, stop working. I "fixed" apparently by disabling the eth0 with ifconfig, but I dont know if it is a proper fix 😅 About the HDMI I tested it again and worked, but show as "built in audio" instead HDMI audio, like on the legacy one does show, differentiating built in, from HDMI. Yes, I noticed that, but its the only option if you dont want to use a SD card as system drive if you have NAND, right? Anyway, the problem that I mentioned on the media script existis, you can replicate if you want. But for me, about the box, no matter, I plan now to use this box as a home server as you said. I'm running main from SD card, mininal install without desktop. I already installed apache2, mariadb, php, working fine, very responsive, I liked. If I can make 2GB work, would be awesome.

@fabiobassa Hi, I'm only replying now, because the forum limts one post per day for me, for now a least. Ok. Back to the topic. Yesterday, I was trying to go back to the android because I was thinking in use the TV BOX as a temporary replacemant to my father's notebook, that stopped working and I already resoldered almost everything changed the SIO, SB etc.. Anyway, today I just boght another box, with android and installed for him, and worked fine... but would be nice to have a full backup of the nand anyway, if one day I wish to go back to original firmware, I should have done the backup. The box is a MXQ-4K, as i said, but now I will give details: It features a RK3228A, with 2GB of Micron DDR3 (2 chips on top, 2 on the back of board), a 8GB BGA NAND, and a SV6051 wireless chip and R329Q_V3.0 board revision. I took some photos for more details, right below here: Here a close up of the rockchip on this board, before I changed the heatsink Here is 2 of the 4 DDR3 ram chips, its HTTC4G83BGR (4 gigabites, or 512MB per module) The wireless chip, SV6051P, nothing special.. An overview of the back of the board, showing the nand and pcb shape And finely a overview of the board powered on, running main build from SD Card... Ok, things that I noticed, that can ou cannot be bugs: So far is what I noticed... I would be already happy if a least I could recognize the full 2GB of ram on board and wireless worked on inbound connections, a least I could use the box as a home server, for files, websites, etc. I found other issues that I think is maybe the hardware itself that cant cope with todays demands: main or legacy, even with multimedia tools installed, Youtube can't even play at 144p without dropping 20 to 40% of the frames, tested windowd, and fullscreen, same. Youtube keep rendering on CPU mode, with firefox or chromium, even if I run the browser with glrun command. So far thats it, I'm afraid that I will be able only to reply after 24 hours, because of forum limitation, so in this case, until tomorrow! Thank you for the attention,

Please, anyone could provide a full dump from the default android (any android) of a mxq-4k, made with multiboot tool? I did not made the backup, and now I can't restore original firmware, probably because of the partitions been mess-up or whatever.. I can install and remove and install Armbian many times as I want, but I just can't go back to android without the full dump, a least is what I think.