DISCLAIMER (PLEASE READ): everything you can find in this thread (binaries, texts, code snippets, etc...) are provided AS-IS and are not part of official Armbian project. For this reason not people from Armbian project nor myself are responsible for misuse or loss of functionality of hardware.
Please don't ask about support or assistance in other non-community forums nor in the official Armbian github repository, instead post your questions in this thread, in the TV Boxes forum section (hardware related) or in the Peer-to-peer support section (general linux/software related).
Thank you!
This thread is to give stable and mature long-term range support to rk3318/rk3328 found in many tv boxes in Armbian project as Community Supported Configuration (CSC).
The current work is mainlined into Armbian project, but your mileage may vary; most recent developments live on my personal fork on github -> here <-
Important notes: is just a personal opinion, but apparently widely supported, that rk3318 chip is not an official rockchip part. They probably are scrap rk3328 parts which have not passed conformance tests but are sold anyway to tv boxes manufacturers. They don’t reach the same operating frequency of the rk3328, have much higher leakage currents (and thus higher temperatures) and often the boards they are installed on are low quality with low quality components, in fact a very very common issue is the eMMC failure due to bad parts and bad soldering. So said, I personally suggest not to buy any rk3318 tv box, but instead find a properly supported SBC (Single Board Computer) if you need a reliable product. In the unfortunate case you already have such product, this thread may help you have some fun with them.
What works:
• Works on RK3318 and RK3328 TV boxes with DDR3 memories
• Mainline u-boot
• Mainline ATF provided as Trusted Execution Environment
• All 4 cores are working
• Ethernet
• Serial UART (configured at stock 1.5Mbps)
• Thermals and frequency scaling
• OTG USB 2.0 port (also as boot device!)
• EHCI/OHCI USB 2.0 ports and XHCI USB 3.0 ports
• MMC subsystem (including , SD and sdio devices)
• Hardware video acceleration (fully supported via RKMPP on legacy kernel, support via hantro and rkvdec kernel driver on mainline)
• Various WIFI over SDIO are supported
• Full acceleration on legacy kernel and mainline kernel
• U-boot boot order priority: first the sdcard, then the USB OTG port and eventually the internal ; you can install u-boot (and the whole system) in the internal and u-boot will always check for images on external sdcard/USB first.
Unbrick:
Technically, rockchip devices cannot be bricked. If the internal flash does not contain a bootable system, they will always boot from the sdcard. If, for a reason, the bootable system on the internal flash is corrupted or is unable to boot correctly, you can always force the maskrom mode shorting the clock pin on the PCB. The procedure is explained here for rk322x, but for rk3318/28 is the same.
In most of the rk3318/28 boards, shorting the clock pin is difficult or impossible because eMMC are BGA chips with no exposed pins. Pay double attention when burning something on the internal flash memory and always test first the image booting from the sdcard to be sure it works before burning anything in internal flash.
This is a list of posts where forum users have been able to spot the eMMC clock pin to trigger the maskrom mode:
H96 Max+ (board signature: RK3318_V1.4) by @Gausus
X88 PRO 10 (board signature: X88_PRO_B) by @mathgaming
HK1 Max (board signature YX_RK3318) by @Constantin Gatej
Ninkbox N1 Max RK3318 by @enigmasphinx
Partecipation and debugging:
If you want to partecipate or need help debugging issues, do not hesitate to share your experience with the installation procedure of the boxes.
In case of issues and missed support, provide as many as possible of these things is very useful to try and bring support for an unsupported board:
some photos of both sides of the board. Details of the eMMC, DDR and Wifi chips are very useful!
upload the device tree binary (dtb) of your device. We can understand a lot of things of the hardware from that small piece of data; and alternative is a link to the original firmware (you can do a full backup with the Multitool);
dmesg and other logs (use armbianmonitor -u that automatically collects and uploads the logs online)
attach a serial converter to the device and provide the output of the serial port;
Multimedia:
Mainline kernel: 3D acceleration is provided by Lima driver and is already enabled. Hardware video decoding: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/19258-testing-hardware-video-decoding-rockchip-allwinner/
Legacy kernel: If you need multimedia features, like OpenGL/OpenGL ES acceleration, hardware accelerated Kodi, ffmpeg and mpv you can take a look to this post
Installation (via SD card):
Building:
You can build your own image follow the common steps to build armbian for other tv boxes devices: when you are in the moment to choose the target board, switch to /TVB/ boards and select "rk3318-box" from the list.
Prebuilt images:
Nightly stables - built from trunk by Armbian servers and GPG-signed: https://github.com/armbian/community
Multitool:
Multitool - A small but powerful image for RK3318/RK3328 TV Box maintenance. Download it from here
Quick installation instructions on eMMC:
Build or download your preferred Armbian image and a copy of the Multitool;
Burn the Multitool on an SD card; once done, place the Armbian image in images folder of the SD card NTFS partition;
Plug the SD card in the TV box and plug in the power cord. After some seconds the blue led starts blinking and the Multitool appears;
OPTIONAL: you can do a backup of the existing firmware with "Backup flash" menu option;
Choose "Burn image to flash" from the menu, then select the destination device (usually mmcblk2) and the image to burn;
Wait for the process to complete, then choose "Shutdown" from main menu;
Unplug the power cord and the SD card, then replug the power cord;
Wait for 10 seconds, then the led should start blinking and HDMI will turn on. The first time the boot process will take a couple of minutes or more because the filesystem is going to be resized, so be patient and wait for the login prompt.
On first boot you will be asked for entering a password for root user of your choice and the name and password for a regular user
Run rk3318-config to configure the board specific options
Run armbian-config to configure timezone, locales and other personal options
Congratulations, Armbian is now installed!
Despite the procedure above is simple and reliable, I always recommend to first test that your device boots Armbian images from SD Card.
Due to the really large hardware variety, there is the rare chance that the images proposed here may not boot. If a bad image is burned in , the box may not boot anymore forcing you to follow the unbrick section at the top of this post.
Quick installation instructions to boot from SD Card:
If you are already running Armbian from eMMC, skip to the next step. Instead if you are running the original firmware you need to first erase the internal flash; to do so download the Multitool, burn it on an SD Card, plug the SD Card and power the TV Box. Use "Backup flash" if you want to do a backup of the existing firmware, then choose "Erase flash" menu option.
Build or download your preferred Armbian image;
Uncompress and burn the Armbian image on the SD Card;
Plug the SD Card in the TV Box and power it on;
Wait for 10 seconds, then the led should start blinking and HDMI will turn on. The first time the boot process will take a couple of minutes or more because the filesystem is going to be resized, so be patient and wait for the login prompt;
On first boot you will be asked for entering a password for root user of your choice and the name and password for a regular user
Run rk3318-config to configure the board specific options
Run armbian-config to configure timezone, locales and other personal options, or also to transfer the SD Card installation to internal ;
Congratulations, Armbian is running from SD Card!
Tutorial - How to install Armbian on your TV Box (by @awawa) :
https://www.hyperhdr.eu/2022/01/tv-box-mania-i-part-x88-pro-10.html
A note about boot device order:
With Armbian also comes mainline U-boot. If you install Armbian, the bootloader will look for valid bootable images in this order:
External SD Card
External USB Stick in OTG Port
Internal
The Multitool does not boot / How to burn image directly on eMMC:
Some boards have the sdcard attached to an auxiliary (called also sdmmc_ext or external) controller which is not the common one.
Forum findings declare that those boards are not able to boot from sdcard with stock firmware and they neither do in maskrom mode: the stock firmware always boots even if you put the multitool on sdcard.
In such case, burning images directly on eMMC is the only way to have a working Armbian installation.
You can follow these instructions by @fabiobassa to burn images directly on eMMC:
Notes and special hardware:
Script to change DDR memory frequency here
Wireless chip AP2734, SP2734, HY2734C and similars: they are clones of AmPAK AP6334 which is combo wifi + bluetooth of broadcom BCM4334/B0 chips. You may need a special nvram file, instructions by @paradigman are here
Critics, suggestions and contributions are welcome!
Credits:
@fabiobassa for his ideas, inspiration, great generosity in giving the boards for development and testing. The project of bringing rk3318 into armbian would not have begun without his support!
@hexdump for his precious support in early testing, ideas and suggestions
@MX10.AC2Nfor his patience in testing mxq-rk3328-d4 board support
All the rockhip64 maintainers at Armbian project who have done and do most of the work to support the platform
A guide to installing Armbian on the H96 Max V11 (RK3318_V1.4 blue PCB)
What you will need
Your H96 Max V11 TV box with the power supply and the HDMI cable that came with it;
A TV or a monitor with an HDMI port;
A wired USB keyboard (or a wireless one with a USB dongle);
An Ethernet cable to connect to a router on your home network that has Internet access;
A Micro SD card (minimum 1GB, more if you're going to back up Android on your box before overwriting it with Armbian);
A USB card reader for Micro SD cards;
A Windows PC connected to your home network;
Installation steps
Download the experimental Armbian image (kernel 5.19.15 and libreelec patches — alas, that's the latest version that works correctly with our box) and a copy of the Multitool;
Burn the Multitool on the SD card using Rufus (no need to change any settings, just click "SELECT" and locate multitool.img.xz or drag and drop the file on Rufus and then click "START");
Connect your TV box to the TV or monitor, connect the keyboard, plug in the Multitool SD card and then plug in the power cord;
Wait a minute (while SD card partitions are being resized) for the Multitool main menu to appear, then select "Shutdown";
Unplug the power cord and the SD card, then plug the SD card into your PC. Two new drives should appear, labeled BOOTSTRAP and MULTITOOL. If you see both, skip the next step. If you only see the BOOTSTRAP, proceed to the next step;
Start Disk Management (press Win+X, K). Scroll down the list of disks (use the scrollbar, because mouse wheel doesn't work there) to locate your SD card, and on the MULTITOOL partition right-click, then press C, and click "Add", "OK";
Open the MULTITOOL drive in Windows Explorer (or your favorite file manager) and copy the downloaded Armbian image to the images folder;
Safely remove (eject) the SD card, plug it into the TV box and plug in the power cord. The Multitool main menu will appear in a few seconds;
If you don't care about stock Android firmware on your TV box, skip the next step. If you want to back up the Android firmware, proceed to the next step;
In the Multitool main menu select "Backup flash" and click through (there will be only one option). Name your backup file. Wait for the backup to finish. The backup file will be saved to the backups folder on the SD card's MULTITOOL partition;
Now it's time to replace Android with Armbian. In the Multitool main menu select "Burn image to flash" and click through (there will be only one option). Wait for the process to complete, then in the main menu select "Shutdown";
Unplug the power cord and the SD card, then replug the power cord. Wait a few minutes for Armbian to get everything ready for its first launch, and then follow the initial setup prompts;
You will be taken to the login prompt. Log in with the name/password for the regular user you've created;
Connect your TV box to your home network router with an Ethernet cable;
In Armbian, enter the command sudo cat /run/motd.dynamic and note the IP address assigned by the router to the TV box;
Now you will need to connect to your TV box on the home network via the SSH protocol. If you're running Windows 10 or later, press Win+X, I, Enter. A PowerShell/Terminal window will open. Enter the following command, substituting the words in angle brackets with actual values: ssh <IP address from the previous step> -l <name for the regular user>. Type yes at the prompt asking if you really want to connect to this unknown host. At the next prompt that appears, enter the password for the regular user you've created. Skip the next step;
If you're running an older version of Windows, you will need to download PuTTY, an SSH and Telnet client, set up an SSH connection to your TV box with the IP address above and log in with the name/password for the regular user;
Now it's time to fix the settings for the Wi-Fi chip that doesn't work out of the box on the H96 Max V11. To delete the old settings, copy the command sudo rm -f /usr/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac4334-sdio.rockchip,rk3318-box.txt and paste it by right-clicking in the SSH window, then press Enter;
To create the new settings file, enter (copy-paste) the command sudo nano /usr/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac4334-sdio.rockchip,rk3318-box.txt
The nano text editor will open with a new empty file;
Now open this small text file (a copy of nvram_2734c.txt from this forum topic), press Ctrl-A to select all text in it, then Ctrl-C to copy it to the clipboard;
Switch to the SSH window, right-click to paste the copied text to nano then press Ctrl-S to save and Ctrl-X to exit;
Enter (or copy-paste) the command sudo reboot -f to reboot Armbian. After that you can either close the SSH window and proceed with the physical console or start a new SSH session once Armbian has restarted;
Enter (or copy-paste) the command sudo apt update && sudo apt install armbian-config
After the update and installation is completed, run armbian-config to configure various software and hardware settings (including Wi-Fi). It is recommended to select "Freeze" in System settings to disable Armbian kernel upgrades because our kernel is compiled with custom patches enabling HDMI output on H96 Max V11 to work properly that are unavailable in other kernel versions.
