Octavio Cuatrochio

Hey @Sergey Lepeshkin, thanks for the fast reply. I will check what you mentioned. I was thinking, could i modify the recovery.zip from the recovery partition so when it reflashes it gives the box "su" rights? that would be via software and no need to connect wires. If my idea is not possible, i will keep trying with the UART. Thanks for the advice.

Hi all, i've been going this forum long enough to try and root a tv box that i buyed recently, but this one is HEAVILY locked up, like nothing i have seen before. My objective here is to access 'su' so i can have access to rooting/overclocking this thing for emulators, and after that adding a heatsink, active cooling, etc. I tried ADB over all USBs (4 in total) but nothing. then i tried to see if root was available through some leftover app or vulnerability, but nothing. Then i tried following the specs from this thread (pretty similar in design to my PCB) but my UART displays nothing. (I leave the images from my setup below), i tried switching the wires, i tested the voltages and they return 3.3v, so they are ok. I tried the toothpick method to access recovery, but it has 2 buttons. 1 does nothing (AFAIK) and the other one goes directly to updating, so no menu. Any help is appreciated, as i'm out of any ideas. I leave my pictures below, and my specs: CPU: Alwinner H313 RAM: 1GB ROM: 8GB PCB: Z01S-v13.3, 2025.05.20 OS: Android 7-8 ish

Well, this version of the PCB seems the most locked up of all. I tried ADB with all USBs, no dice, no root, i soldered the wires to the UART test pins (See image below) but with my setup (also see image below) i could not get any logs via TIO in Linux. Also, the toothpick method does not shows a menu, but goes straight to updating, so ALSO there is locked up, so i cannot go to recovery. Any ideas? i'm pretty out of ideas at this point. Are the wires badly soldered? both shows 3.3V, so i suppose not. Is my USB-To-TTL badly configured? Btw, my PCB is Z01S-v13.3, 2025.05.20. Any help is appreciated.

Hey @Sergey Lepeshkin, your information proved very helpful! I have a tv box in the same vein as yours, but mine is version Z01S-V13.3, so they probably revised it a little bit. Thanks for finding the UART pins! I will try it out and post what I find! My objective here is to overclock it, install active cooling and a heatsink, and see how it runs some emulators. Btw, quick question, performance wise the box would be faster on Armbian or Android? Thanks!