@tommy Here it is, the latest 5.14 kernel with Ubuntu Hirsute: https://users.armbian.com/jock/rk322x/Armbian_21.11.0-trunk_Rk322x-box_hirsute_edge_5.14.12_xfce_desktop.img.xz
Any images has dtb in first fat partion. You may edit extlinux/extlinux.conf to correct device. It has samba service that can upload game roms but in my case wifi driver not work, only LAN work for my tv box.
Any images has dtb in first fat partion. You may edit extlinux/extlinux.conf to correct device. It has samba service that can upload game roms but in my case wifi driver not work, only LAN work for my tv box.
Can't remember if the upstream image has lima enabled in X11 or not.
Anyway check /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/40-serverflags.conf and in case Option "AccelMethod" is set to "none" change it to "glamor".
It was set to none because X.org performance is very slow with older lima + mesa and software cursor.
If you wish to try I can provide a cutting edge image with kernel 5.14 and Ubuntu Hirsute (=> much newer Mesa) and hardware cursor, which should radically change the experience.
BTW: I'm pretty interested in trying retroarch just for fun; there is a "gaming on arm" club where you may give some hints or write down a tutorial on how to compile. Maybe @NicoD may give you some help.
@tommy
I would say you to give a chance to the mainline kernel too. Lima driver has decent performance and you don't have to lose time around proprietary Mali OpenGLES-only drivers swapping links under the hood. (BTW for legacy kernel there is the media script link on first page that should install the libraries in the right places).
For snes9x you should not need particular load on the GPU since it has just to render the framebuffer. Lima performances should suffice.
post scriptum.. I usually dont like or play games but i have had 29 giga of arcade games that run on amlogin 905 . it is aarch64 and our little box is armhf 32 bit but i guess games are no-arch so if you go further on the process of emulation please share your experience
@tommy
Even if the main purpose of this 3ad is " general" speaking of the process to bring pure linux on 322x boxes, without going deep in user space apps, people as you, with programming skills, are always welcome to discuss and apport ideas to the project.
I am more the " hardware man", @jock is the " code man" , but what is now clear, even to me, is that doesn't matter the mali version, the bottle neck is the necessity to copy the result of gpu elaboration into x11 windows server. This is where the whole process slows up.
This is true for videos and jock ( but other people too ) is actively searching a solution , a work around but now mostly efforts are on mainline kernel
Example given : if you do init3, unload all mali libraries, insmod all gbm libraries you will have FULL gpu power and you can run even lot of frames per seconds, but the you loose the x11 features. If you control games by game pad or keyboard this could be not such a big problem , once you stop the game you unload gbm go back on mali and startx. Android uses the gbm way so good hardware acceleration and poor desktop experience. On armbian we experiment the opposite .
But this switch isn't convenient for normal use.
@jock could explain this 1.000.000 times better than I did, but the core of problem is exactly what i wrote
I use legacy kernel 4.4.194
~$ cat /proc/version
Linux version 4.4.194-rk322x (root@nott-xubuntu) (gcc version 8.3.0 (GNU Toolchain for the A-profile Architecture 8.3-2019.03 (arm-rel-8.36)) ) #2 SMP Sat Oct 2 12:44:11 +07 2021
I try a dirty hack by change soft link of /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libMali.so from X11 version "libmali-utgard-400-r7p0-r0p0-x11-gbm.so" to "libmali-utgard-400-r7p0-r0p0-gbm.so" for retroarch call library and set default login terminal by "$ sudo systemctl set-default multi-user". I set display resolution to 720x480 for reduce processing load. The result is acceptable to snes (use snes9x2010) level.
I am an amature in Linux build system and C programing. I will try to learn to compile armbian avoiding X11 version but I not sure my knowledge and skill is enough. I have seen someone edit EmuElec(LibreElect with Retroarch interface) to could be run rk322x. I try to edit Emuelect source that almost done but dependencies are very fraustrated. Full Linux system like this armbian project is the best.
@tommy I Didn't ever try retroarch. I took a look on snes emulation on libreelec and surprisingly it was working quite well on rk322x. I tried once to compile snes9x for rk322x and also was working fairly well in X.org, but performance dropped when I tried any scaling 2X filter.
That said, I would suggest to you, as @fabiobassa said, to try and see if you can avoid X.org, maybe trying to compile with GBM/DRM support so you get fullscreen without passing through the X server.
Also you should tell which kernel are you using, it may be important.
DISCLAIMERS (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.
THIS POST explains very well the troubles with TV Boxes and why they are not suitable for everyone
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).
Following the recent thread on LibreElec forum about an unofficial image for rk3229 devices, I would like to make public the work made by me and @fabiobassa about bringing rk322x support to armbian.
The project is now in -> mainline Armbian <- development fork -> here <-
This first page and the last 3 or 4 pages of the thread are enough to get up to date with recent developments.
Many useful experiences are scattered through the thread, but the most important things are collected here in the first page, so please read it carefully!
Mainline kernel is fully supported and will receive most support in the future. Legacy kernel 4.4 is deprecated, but is kept around only for special purposes.
What works:
Should boot and work flawlessy on all boards with RK3228a, RK3228b and RK3229, with either DDR2 and DDR3 memories.
Mainline u-boot
Proprietary OPTEE provided as Trusted Execution Environment (needed for DRAM frequency scaling)
All 4 cores are working
Ethernet
Serial UART (configured at 115200 bps, not 1.5Mbps!)
Thermals, CPU and DRAM frequency scaling
OTG USB 2.0 port (also as boot device!)
EHCI/OHCI USB 2.0 ports
MMC subsystem (including eMMC, SD and sdio devices)
Hardware video acceleration
NAND is available only on legacy kernel. To fully boot from NAND, use the Multitool and its steP-nand installation (instructions are below)
Various WIFI over SDIO are supported (SSV6051P, SSV6256P, ESP8089, Realtek chips, etc...), ssv6256p driver is available only on legacy kernel
Full GPU acceleration
U-boot boot order priority: first the sdcard, then the USB OTG port and eventually the internal eMMC; you can install u-boot (and the whole system) in the internal eMMC 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 eMMC clock pin on the PCB. Here there is the procedure, but you can also google around if you get stuck on a faulty bootloader, the technique is pretty simple and requires a simple screwdriver.
There are however some unfortunate cases (expecially newer boards) where shorting the eMMC clock pin is difficult or impossibile, like eMMC or eMCP BGA chips with no exposed pins. In those cases pay double attention when burning something on the internal eMMC/eMCP and always test first the image from the sdcard to be sure it works before burning anything on eMMC/eMCP.
Some useful links with pins, pads or procedures for some boards:
Generic procedure for boards with non-BGA eMMC
MXQPRO_V71 - eMCP
H20 - eMCP
ZQ01 - eMCP
NAND vs eMMC vs eMCP difference:
RK3228 and RK3229 tv boxes comes with three different flash memory chips: eMMC, NAND and eMCP.
It does not depend upon the market name of the tv box and neither the internal board; manufacturers put whatever they find cheaper when they buy the components.
NAND chip is just the non-volatile memory
eMMC chip contains both the non-volatile memory plus a controller.
eMCP chip contains the non-volatile memory, a controller for the non-volatile memory (like eMMC), but also contains a bank of DDR SDRAM memory on the same physical chip.
The difference is very important, because eMMC and eMCP are far easier to support at various levels: the controller deals with the physical characteristics of the non-volatile memory, so the software has no to deal with.
NAND chips instead are harder to support, because the software is required to deal with the physical characteristics and non-standard things that depends upon the NAND manufacturer.
If you have a NAND chips you're unlucky because mainline kernel currently cannot access it, but also because you need special care and instructions explained later.
You can discover if you have a NAND, eMMC or eMCP chip looking on the board are reading the signature on the flash memory chip.
The Multitool (see later) also can detect which chip you have onboard: the program will warn you at startup if you have a NAND chip.
NAND bootloader upgrade:
IMPORTANT: don't do this is you have an eMMC or eMCP; skip this paragraph if you are unsure too!
For very expert people who are having issues when (re)booting images, there is the chance to upgrade the bootloader on NAND.
The NAND bootloader is nothing else than a regular idbloader (see official rockchip documentation) but contains some bits to correctly access the data on your flash memory.
Upgrading requires to erase the existing flash content, in the worst case will require you to follow the Unbrick procedure above or restore an older but more compatible bootloader.
If you are not mentally ready to overcome possible further issues, don't do this!
The detailed instructions and the binaries are available at this post
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/
Deprecated legacy kernel: multimedia features, like OpenGL/OpenGL ES acceleration, hardware accelerated Kodi, ffmpeg and mpv you can take a look to this post
An effective tutorial from @Hai Nguyen on how to configure a box as a hi-quality music player using an USB audio card, and controlling it via remote control is available in this post
Brief explanation about kernel naming:
current kernel is the mainline LTS kernel version, most maintained and tested. This is the suggested version for production devices. If you don't know what to pick, pick this.
legacy kernel (version 4.4) is provided by manufacturer; it is deprecated, unmaintained and not suggested.
edge kernel is the development mainline kernel version, with experimental features and drivers; usually stable but perhaps suitable for production devices.
You can switch from one kernel flavour to another using armbian-config or manually via apt.
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 CSC/TVB/EOL boards and select "rk322x-box" from the list.
Download prebuilt images from the following links:
Archive builds (GPG-signed) - https://imola.armbian.com/dl/rk322x-box/archive/
SUGGESTED - Nightly built from trunk each week by Armbian servers (GPG-signed) - https://github.com/armbian/community
Old images provided by me (unsigned and outdated) - https://users.armbian.com/jock/rk322x/armbian/stable
Archived/older images:
https://armbian.hosthatch.com/archive/rk322x-box/archive/
Multitool:
The Multitool is a small but powerful tool to do quick backup/restore of internal flash, but also burn images and general system rescue and maintenance via terminal or SSH.
Compressed images will be uncompressed on fly.
Multitool - A small but powerful image for RK322x TV Box maintenance (instructions to access via network 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 sudo rk322x-config and select your board characteristics to enable leds, wifi chips, high-speed eMMC, etc...
Run sudo armbian-config to configure timezone, locales and other personal options
Congratulations, Armbian is now installed and configured!
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 eMMC, the box may not boot anymore forcing you to follow the unbrick section at the top of this post.
Quick installation instructions on NAND:
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 legacy kernel 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 Armbian image via steP-nand" from the menu, then select the destination device (usually rknand0) 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 sudo rk322x-config and select your board characteristics to enable leds, wifi chips, etc...
Run armbian-config to configure timezone, locales and other personal options
Congratulations, Armbian is now installed!
Alternative: you can install the bootloader in NAND and let it boot from SD Card or USB:
Download a copy of the Multitool and burn it on an SD card;
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;
RECOMMENDED: make a backup of the existing firmware with "Backup flash" menu option;
Choose "Install Jump Start for Armbian" menu option: the Jump Start uses the internal NAND to boot from external SD Card or external USB Stick;
Follow the general instructions to boot from SD Card below, skip the first erase eMMC step.
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 eMMC; 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 sudo rk322x-config and select your board characteristics to enable leds, wifi chips, high-speed eMMC or NAND, etc...
Run armbian-config to configure timezone, locales and other personal options, or also to transfer the SD Card installation to internal eMMC;
Congratulations, Armbian is running from SD Card!
A note about boot device order:
With Armbian also comes mainline U-boot. If you install Armbian or just the bootloader in the eMMC or the Jump Start on internal NAND, the bootloader will look for valid bootable images in this order:
External SD Card
External USB Stick in OTG Port
Internal eMMC
Installation (without SD card, board with eMMC)
If you have no sd card slot and your board has an eMMC, you can burn the armbian image directly on the internal eMMC using rkdeveloptool and a male-to-male USB cable:
Download your preferred Armbian image from Armbian download page and decompress it.
Download the rk322x bootloader: rk322x_loader_v1.10.238_256.bin
Download a copy of rkdeveloptool: a compiled binary is available in the official rockchip-linux rkbin github repository.
Unplug the power cord from the tv box
Plug an end of an USB Male-to-male cable into the OTG port (normally it is the lone USB port on the same side of the Ethernet, HDMI, analog AV connectors) while pressing the reset microbutton with a toothpick. You can find the reset microbutton in a hole in the back of the box, but sometimes it is hidden into the AV analog jack
Plug the other end of the USB Male-to-male cable into an USB port of your computer
If everything went well, run lsusb: you should see a device with ID 2207:320b
Run sudo rkdeveloptool rd 3 (if this fails don't worry and proceed to next step)
Run sudo rkdeveloptool db rk322x_loader_v1.10.238_256.bin
Run sudo rkdeveloptool wl 0x0 image.img (change image.img this with the real Armbian image filename)
Unplug the power cord
Done!
Installation (without SD card, board with NAND)
If you are in the unfortunate case you can't use an SD card for installation and your board has a NAND chip, you still have an option to use the quick Multitool installation steps via USB.
Obtain a copy of rkdeveloptool: a compiled binary is available in the official rockchip-linux rkbin github repository.
Unplug the power cord from the tv box
Plug an end of an USB Male-to-male cable into the OTG port (normally it is the lone USB port on the same side of the Ethernet, HDMI, analog AV connectors) while pressing the reset microbutton with a toothpick. You can find the reset microbutton in a hole in the back of the box, but sometimes it is hidden into the AV analog jack
Plug the other end of the USB Male-to-male cable into an USB port of your computer
If everyting went well, using lsusb you should see a device with ID 2207:320b
Run sudo rkdeveloptool wl 0x4000 u-boot-main.img (download u-boot-main.img.xz , don't forget to decompress it!)
Unplug the power cord
Now you can follow the instructions on how to install on eMMC/NAND via SD card, just use instead an USB stick to do all the operations and plug it into the USB OTG port. Once you reboot, USB OTG port will be used as a boot device.
NOTE: NAND users without SD slot may be unhappy to know that it will be difficult to do extra maintenance with Multitool in case something breaks in the installed Armbian system: installing u-boot-main.img makes the installed system unbootable because it is missing the NAND driver.
Alternative backup, restore and erase flash for EXPERTS:
These backup, restore and erase flash procedures are for experts only. They are kept here mostly for reference, since the Multitool is perfectly able to do same from a very comfy interface and is the suggested way to do maintenance.
Backup:
Obtain a copy of rkdeveloptool: a compiled binary is available in the official rockchip-linux rkbin github repository. If you prefer, you can compile it yourself from the sources available at official rockchip repository
Unplug the power cord from the tv box
Plug an end of an USB Male-to-male cable into the OTG port (normally it is the lone USB port on the same side of the Ethernet, HDMI, analog AV connectors) while pressing the reset microbutton with a toothpick. You can find the reset microbutton in a hole in the back of the box, but sometimes it is hidden into the AV analog jack
Plug the other end of the USB Male-to-male cable into an USB port of your computer
If everyting went well, using lsusb you should see a device with ID 2207:320b
change directory and move into rkbin/tools directory, run ./rkdeveloptool rfi then take note of the FLASH SIZE megabytes (my eMMC is 8Gb, rkdeveloptool reports 7393 megabytes)
run ./rkdeveloptool rl 0x0 $((FLASH_SIZE * 2048)) backup.data (change FLASH_SIZE with the value you obtained the step before)
once done, the internal eMMC is backed up to backup.data file
Restore: first we have to restore the original bootloader, then restore the original firmware.
Running rkdeveloptool with these switches will accomplish both the jobs:
./rkdeveloptool db rk322x_loader_v1.10.238_256.bin
Downloading bootloader succeeded.
./rkdeveloptool ul rk322x_loader_v1.10.238_256.bin
Upgrading loader succeeded.
./rkdeveloptool wl 0x0 backup.data
Write LBA from file (100%)
Download here:
Erase the flash memory: clearing the internal eMMC/NAND memory makes the SoC look for external SD Card as first boot option.
If there isn't any suitable SD Card, the SoC enters maskrom mode, which can then be used for full eMMC/NAND access using rkdeveloptool. This is perfectly fine if your box has an eMMC flash memory.
NOTE: In case you have a NAND flash memory this option is however discouraged. The original bootloader contains some special parameters to correctly access the data. Clearing the flash memory will probably garbage the NAND data and restoring the bootloader may require some special instructions.
Obtain a copy of rkdeveloptool: a compiled binary is available in the official rockchip-linux rkbin github repository. If you prefer, you can compile it yourself from the sources available at official rockchip repository
Unplug the power cord from the board
Plug an end of an USB Male-to-male cable into the OTG port (normally it is the lone USB port on the same side of the Ethernet, HDMI, analog AV connectors) while pressing the reset microbutton with a toothpick. You can find the reset microbutton in a hole in the back of the box, but sometimes it is hidden into the AV analog jack
Plug the other end of the USB Male-to-male cable into an USB port of your computer
If everyting went well, using lsusb you should see a device with ID 2207:320b
run ./rkdeveloptool ef and wait a few seconds
once done, the internal eMMC is erased and the device will boot from the sdcard from now on
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;
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 rk322x into armbian would not have begun without his support!
Justin Swartz, for his work and research to bring mainline linux on rk3229 (repository here)
@knaerzche for his great contribution to libreelec support and mainline patches
@Alex83 for his patience in testing the NAND bootloader upgrade procedure on his board
@Jason Duhamell for his generous donation that allowed researching eMCP boards and esp8089 wifi chip
uhmmmmm .... how can i drive my car? uhmmm what car have you ? fuel, diesel, electric , horse power ..
if you don't give more infos, actually our crystal ball is broken. Which wifi chip if ? ssv6051, spe... 8023cs ??
And last thing, if it is working under armbian-config and not in user-space programs ( docker) try to ask in docker forums ;-)
@tommy
there is a lot of interest in retro gaming and graphics use of those box but if you have read the whole 3ad ( and I'm not sure you did.. ) you should also have read that gpu hardware acceleration is in some way conflicting with x11 server and this is the reason why it runs smoothly on android or libreelec that were compiled with good performance on graphics but not so well on linux desktop. You can try to mixt up things among armbian and libreelec that uses wayland instead of xorg, but this is on yourself
And NO at the actual state of progress there is few possibilities that the things will go better on 322x
@dotbg
pardon I didn't understand ! What you mean ? That your box is claiming have mega mega mega tons or gigatons of ram and you see only one or two ?
That seems a very paradoxical question. To ask that question you have to first start writing a question, but the question you ask can't be written before you start asking a question. It's like a new big bang is happening in my head.
Welcome to the forum.
Just a heads up, I think the bigger issue between the revision 1.1 and 1.4 is that they removed the "U5" buck AVCC/RTC 3.3V converter, Instead in its place they put a "R9" 0 ohm resistor from the GPIO 3.3v regulator "u55". As such it makes sense that they removed the "Q11" gpio voltage enable switch, since now that switch must always be on.
In testing the voltages, the Rev 1.1 GPIO VCC is 3.37v, whereas the AVCC/RTC Vcc is 3.27v.
For Rev1.4 though, the GPIO/AVCC/RTC Vcc is actually 3.4v.
I am currently removing "R9" from rev 1.4 and installing a diode to drop some voltage. It may help to keep the device from overheating. If that doesn't help, perhaps adding a secondary 3.3v buck regulator can fix the issue.
Update: With the diode to drop voltage, the resulting voltage on AVCC/RTC is 2.91V.
This results in the following temp readings stable/finger tested:
19:02:53: 1200MHz 0.71 19% 11% 6% 0% 1% 0% -2°C
19:02:58: 1008MHz 0.73 19% 11% 6% 0% 1% 0% -4°C
19:03:03: 240MHz 0.67 19% 11% 6% 0% 1% 0% -9°C
19:03:08: 240MHz 0.62 19% 11% 6% 0% 1% 0% -10°C
19:03:13: 240MHz 0.57 18% 10% 5% 0% 1% 0% -11°C
19:03:18: 240MHz 0.52 18% 10% 5% 0% 1% 0% -17°C
19:03:24: 240MHz 0.48 17% 10% 5% 0% 1% 0% -20°C
19:03:29: 240MHz 0.44 17% 10% 5% 0% 1% 0% -21°C
This leads me to believe that the temperature may not be significantly if at all different between v1.1 and v1.4. It would make sense for the slight voltage difference of voltage on the AVCC pins would change the internal temperature readings. They probably don't have any sort of voltage reference internally, and that would lead to any sort of internal reading based on analog voltages to be affected by voltage changes of the AVCC power.
I will test this with a power supply on the seperated AVCC/RTC to see if it does indeed result in different internal readouts.
Alright, here's what I found:
All of these results are running the armbianmonitor right after start up and each show a "finger test" draw represents draw on the Avcc/rtc from the power supply, and is quite stable.
Orangepi v1.4 test: r9 removed, AVCC&RTC=3.27 about 50mA draw during test:
Orangepi v1.4 test: r9 removed, AVCC&RTC=3.4V about 50mA draw during test:
Orangepi v1.4 test: r9 removed, AVCC&RTC=2.90V about 40-50mA draw during test
Results: The internal temperature sensing cannot be trusted, especially since there is no voltage reference.
Tomorrow I will try to place a 150mA 3.3V LDO regulator instead of "r9" and see if I can find a way to actually test temperature.
PS: I would add images if I could figure out how to do so outside of hosting them somewhere else.
Sidenote:
"R9" is glued down, so to minimize chance of lifting pads when desoldering try this:
1- apply generous amounts of flux from flux pen.
2) use solder wick to remove as much solder as possible
c Once all the solder is gone, rotate the part 90 degrees with flat end needle nose pliers while slightly pushing into the board.
If you managed to get enough solder off, the part should break free without lifting the pads. And if they do lift, you can always solder onto the test points on the board.
Yes I have. I like my XU4 for gaming and for rendering. It may be faster than the C2, but it`s not as versitile. I use the C2 as a laptop powered by a power bank and a 7" display. It does everything right. It`s power efficient, doesn`t overheat, very fast when overclocked to 1.75Ghz and ram to 1104Mhz.
Software is great. Perfect Youtube playback, I used it a lot for video editing and rendering when traveling.
None of the other SBC`s do so well in all these things. While ths also the oldest design.
But the C2 isn`t perfect. It has troubles with a display resolution of 1080p or higher.
My use cases are different of that of most other people. For many high resolutions are more important. Then the C2 isn`t a good choice. It`ll stay my laptop until I find another that is faster, as small and light and doesn`t overheat.
Cheers.
Well, it's one of only two with 4 fast cores, the other being XU4. The RK3399 doesn't even have that going for it. It honestly is in the top 3 performers in any case, every time I use any other board I get a rude awakening about how bad a desktop experience can be. RK3399 is somewhat better but is still poorly supported kernel wise by comparison.
Here are some of my SBCs that are under $20 (see photo below). I have divided them into two categories, with hdmi and not. The ones on the left are without, and on the right are with. The ones without are mostly orangepi's and nanopi's. Just do a search on their web sites and if it is under $20, I have it. One thing to consider is the ones with two spi channels (e.g. nanopi core 1 - note core 2 is better but its over $20), this would allow connecting two spi screens. If you connect two relatively big 3.2 ili9341 screens, with the browser stretched across them, your experience would still suffer but it would be okay in some extreme situations. The ones with hdmi include, raspberrypi zero w (double spi), nanopi A64 (double spi), pcduino4 nano (double spi), nanopi m1 - same as pcduino4 nano (double spi), and the other three orangepi's. Bananapi zero is slightly over $20, I have it connected to a lap dock. Of these, the best is pcduino4 nano (get it on ebay between $5 to $16), supported well in software (armbian), and nanopi a64 ($19.99?) is my second choice, software support is getting there (may be?), at least double spi works with pine64 image (latest kernel). Raspberrypi Zero W is only $5 from my local store, and dual spi screen with camera works, you really can't beat it in price.
Because software development and item support is expensive and they have a limited amount that can be blasted on this. They still have to make a profit.
Some help more, some nothing, but majority is done for free by the community. Linux is a community project per see and if you want a quality Linux, you have to do something about.
Our capitalistic world function on the principle that winner takes it all - if you get a huge popularity and related big sales numbers, you don't need to give not a single dollar back to the community, while on the other hand, you have.
Igor's 2do list is long, very long and I have nobody to ask to do that instead of me. This is a few months faster way: https://www.armbian.com/get-involved and with bigger certainty that this feature gets implemented. Overlay repo: https://github.com/armbian/sunxi-DT-overlays
I've got a NanoPi Neo Core 2, with the NAS kit. It lets me attach a 2.5" SATA SSD drive, all contained in an aluminium case (which elevates it above "toy", to my eyes). The whole kit, minus SSD hard drive, was about $80 (and I'd call this a good value, worth it), however shipping from China took a long time (like a few weeks to a month). Disk performance isn't stellar, but it doesn't suck either. Much more performant-feeling than a Raspberry Pi. It's adequate, to make your own personal LAN server, like say OpenMediaVault (for serving SMB file shares), or Nextcloud (DAV file shares, with SSL encryption, work great in Gnome Nautilus out-of-the-box, or Linux Mint's file manager, Nemo, once you install the package "davfs2").
Small home offices should be a good fit for this kit, where LAN file-share usage day-to-day is light-to-mediumly demanding.
What I love about this kit is that the H5 CPU has decent mainline kernel support. This helps to assure me that this board won't just be a "flash in the pan", and I'll very likely be able to get kernel security updates for at least a few years into the future.
I mention this all to underscore my earlier point that to get something minimally sturdy, performant, long-lasting and above all useful in a way that goes beyond a tinkerer's toy (which can be a great starting point for many, don't get me wrong), then to me, this $80 kit is about the lowest I'd personally go. For $20, I'd rather go eat a pizza or something.
Guys, you're going at this all wrong. For desktop use and 20$ best bet for a good experience is a used Dell, HP with a Core2 Duo type cpu. These are plentiful, since businesses get rid of them and you can easily pick one up for 20$ or less if you shop around.
It's going to give you much better desktop experience with common apps and OS than any A7 or A53 based SBC (these CPUs are muuuch slower than Core2). If you can spring extra $$$ for a few more gigs of ram (these typically come with either 2 or 4GB of ram) and a 60GB SSD (18$ from aliexpress) you can get a fluid desktop experience for peanuts.
tommy got a reaction from NicoD in armbian-gaming : A tool to install Box86, Box64 and Wine on Armbian Hirsute
tommy got a reaction from jock in CSC Armbian for RK322x TV box boards
tommy got a reaction from fabiobassa in CSC Armbian for RK322x TV box boards