Vinicius Guastala

please ignore my previous comment. THE EXPERIMENTAL IMAGE DID BOOTED FROM SD CARD! IT WORKED 

I have forgotten to erase the flash on the first time... After I erased, it booted from the SD Card.

I cannot thank you guys enough!!!! <3 <3 <3  
 

@Vinicius Guastala I agree with @fabiobassa, thanks for the very detailed post of your board and broad description of the behaviour.
I would suggest you to erase the internal flash and try to boot from sdcard with this armbian image. It is an "experimental" image with opensource Trust OS; many recent boards are having issues with proprietary trust os, possibly yours has similar issues, so you could give a shot to this. By the way, the serial log output would be indeed very handy if you have the chance to find the serial port.
 
Beware also that armbian (and multitool) use 115200bps baud rate for the serial, while proprietary software uses 1.5Mbps baud rate!

please ignore my previous comment. THE EXPERIMENTAL IMAGE DID BOOTED FROM SD CARD! IT WORKED 

I have forgotten to erase the flash on the first time... After I erased, it booted from the SD Card.

I cannot thank you guys enough!!!! <3 <3 <3  
 

Hello Guys,

This will be a long post, so I already apologize for that!
 
I am trying to install armbian in the most generic MXQ PRO 5G 4K ever. No joking when I say it’s generic, because I have some proof that this Frankenstein monster is actually a MX9 and a MXQ 4K PRO merged together.
 
Here are some board Details:
MoBo: MXQ-EP-2-V1.0
CPU: Rockchip RK3228A
Wifi: SV6256P
Storage: Samsung KMQ7X000SA – B315 (Is this a ECMP 8GB+8GB or a emmc?)
 
I call it a MXQ Frankenstein, for the following reasons:
According to the info and the picture from this source, the “MX9 4K 5G” has the exactly same MoBo “MXQ-EP-2-V1.0”, but with the SV6152P wifi instead. According to this other forum post, the OP has posted pics from his "TXC2-MXQ-EP-V10” MoBo, which looks basically identical to my “MXQ-EP-2-V1.0”, but it has the SV6152p wifi like the MX9 4K 5G, but with a RK3229 CPU instead. This post was very useful for me because of the Short Pad for Mask Mode for this version is the same as mine. In this other post, we see the same “MXQ-EP-2-V1.0” Mobo, but with with a SanDisk storage chip instead. And in the same post, in the last comment we see another user with a 8GB/128GB variant with the same SV6152p wifi from the above “TXC2-MXQ-EP-V10” So including my version, it seems we have at least 5 different versions of this horrendous Frankenstein device, for the “lowering cost reasons” we already know….
 
Despite many tentatives, I am not able to make the “multitool” (or amrbian directly) to boot, from any method. Tried many times from SD, from USB and even after it is copied directly to the eMMC, all following the guides from the 1st page from this post, but also from other internet sources. Simply I’ve got a black screen output whenever the SD Card with multitool or armbian in inserted, with no leds turned at all.
 
Unfortunately I have not done the backup from my original ROM before I have tried to write armbian directly to the emmc, because I did not know that was possible back then, and now I’m also not able to find my original ROM.
 
I have tried many (10+) different ROMs, flashing from Linux and Windows, but I ending up having the same behavior as booting armbian, with no Video and no LEDs, until I finally came across to the ROM called “MXQ-EP-2-V1.0_SV6152P_OK By: (Zer013)” from this site.
 
With said ROM, I was able at least to get the HDMI video and LED’s blinking, but I got stuck at a boot animation loop forever. For some reason, only when I flash it from Windows using BatchTool or RKDevTools it works.
 
At least I was able to test different Loaders, and with this ROM, I have tested successfully all the loaders below, either flashing by Linux or Windows. (Remember: The device gave video and LEDs, but I still got stucked at ROM’s boot screen):
RK322XMiniLoaderAll_V2.47_spectek_en_ddr2_rd_odt_171209.bin – This was extracted from the above ROM image that give me workin LEDS and HDMI Video rk322x_loader_v1.10.238_256 from a 2020 comment on this thread from a guy trying to overclock his ddr memory. rk322x_loader_v1.10.238_256.bin from first page, from the “Installation (without SD card, board with eMMC)” section I was trying to flash different loaders in hope that some of them would make my armbian to boot from the SD card, but without any luck unfortunately.
 
I have also tried to erase the flash completely to force the SD Card boot, but I have got the same no-screen / no-leds behavior.
 
If anybody has any ideas on how to go further to install armbian in this board, I would appreciate a lot! I don’t need the wifi for the purpose I intend to use it, so minimal installation is more than enough for me.
 
I’ve been turning it on mostly with just the USB cable in the OTG port, so at least I can check the device status with lsusb in linux. Sometimes I do some tests with the power cable turned on, and I have noticed the same behavior as well. Does it make any different to turn it on by USB or Power Connector?

I’m still not able to find the Serial UART pins, even after I have tried soldering my USB-TTL in different points of the Board as there is no printed info, so this also adds to the overall complexity. Despite my efforts with the multimeter, I was not able to identify them yet. Since I’m afraid to burn another USB-TLS adapter, I’m being cautious and only using the GND and RX pins from the adapter. So far, I have found 2 interesting pins, but they only give me gibberish text, despite trying different baud rates (I have tried them all). Most promissing PIN for now is the pin labeled “K” in the pic below, as it is the one that gives me more output when the device is booting, almost in the same time as a normal system boot… So my “guess” is that the Pink K is the board TX pin…



Attached there are all the photos of the mentioned components from my board.