shellless

@Alex ThreeD the reason why there is no ground is that i used a usb cable to get the ground since i was afraid of ripping components up while soldering the wire to the ground pin on the serial interface; so i dont think that was the problem

@suser I tried to erase the emmc but murphy's law bit me; if you want to read it the whole thing is written at the end of the post; but tldr i cooked the emmc and needed to cut its lines to allow the box to boot again; but i am still only able to boot the multitool and not armbian; essentially what i am asking is: does armbian need a bootloader on the emmc for it to boot or is it supposed to just start if the emmc is empty or not detected?

@suser how were you able to get your t9 to boot armbian? on mine I'm only able to boot the multitool; when i try to boot armbian nothing shows up, neither on the screen nor on the network; and when i try to boot the multitool again i need to repress the button. I tried to connect to the console with an arduino uno with the microcontroller in reset and a logic level shifter, but regardless of what os i loaded i just got jibberish back at all of the baud rates. Also could you check if the board in the photos is like yours? just to make sure it's not another box with the same shell: