ojogoperdi

I haven't read the whole thread. Sorry for any information you had to repeat! I'll take some due time to read it when I enter school break.
 
I meant it in a more of a "create custom images for our client" kind of way. (more on the client at the end)
It's not in the scope of this thread, so don't worry about it!
 
For the first question: not all devices. But I am sure they all have one thing in common: they are based on rk322x chips.
I said they don't boot, but I should clarify. I mean they don't boot without further intervention.
After flashing armbian, the board is "soft-bricked". Multitool doesn't boot from SD again.
If I force them into maskrom and upload a bootloader you posted in this thread, they can boot armbian.
For all that I tested, I could recover them.
I don't have access to a serial adapter yet, sadly.
As for why I'm sure they are all rk322x (at least the vast majority): this week we flashed some hundreds of the same model of device, and about 12 didn't boot completely, for reasons we have yet to investigate, and maybe 2 of those gave no video signal again. All other devices reached a desktop session.
 
On these devices, building multitool from your repo (./create_image rk322x) or using a premade image, replacing the kernel with a newer one doesn't work for us. The devices never boot. Kernel seems to panic before starting the HDMI driver, or whatever makes the console output appear on the screen.
I don't yet have access to a serial adapter, but I'll report if I have any output when I try.
 
However, the mysterious part is that armbian images (with any kernel version) boot! (if installed into the eMMC)
 
For some reason, booting from the SD card with a kernel version other than 4.4 doesn't work, but from armbian installed on the eMMC works.
 
just armbian. I said eMMC image because I thought it was only meant to work there.
Is armbian supposed to boot from the SD card? That never worked here.
And I assumed it wouldn't because it doesn't contain the special images at the special offsets described here https://opensource.rock-chips.com/wiki_Boot_option
But I read the first post again and you said it's supposed to work. Now I'm kind of confused as to why it doesn't work here.
 
The Brazilian government confiscated (big) irregular shipments of TV boxes. They plan on repurposing some of them (the ones that are actually usable) as mini PCs for schools and other social causes. So our university got a portion of TX9-brand boxes to explore the feasibility of using these devices as PCs. They are very sluggish, and I don't expect them to be usable for this purpose.