The problem (Armbian on U9-H requires physical button after power loss)
The discovery process (MCU at I2C bus 0, address 0x15, register 0x11)
The fix: i2cset -y 0 0x15 0x11 0x00
The systemd service for persistence
That 0x01 = button required, 0x00 = auto power on
Note it likely applies to the Minix NEO U1 as well since it uses the same MCU