Werner

not recommended for rockchip socs since it cannot handle the rather high baud rate of 1.5Mbaud. Use FT232, CH340 or CP2104 instead.

Armbian does not have a config for this board nor is it supported in some way.

The rk3588 soc has a fixed boot order which is spi, emmc, microsd, other I think. So if there is a boot loader found on spi it will ignore other options and try to boot from that. 
While Armbian uboot binaries on spi are instructed to check if there is a microsd card inserted and boot from that, vendors can (ab)use this circumstance to make it harder for other operation systems being used because tools like rkdevtool are necessary to get rid of it. If the spi is pre-flashed with crap, I guess that's why the step is necessary.

The rk3588 soc has a fixed boot order which is spi, emmc, microsd, other I think. So if there is a boot loader found on spi it will ignore other options and try to boot from that. 
While Armbian uboot binaries on spi are instructed to check if there is a microsd card inserted and boot from that, vendors can (ab)use this circumstance to make it harder for other operation systems being used because tools like rkdevtool are necessary to get rid of it. If the spi is pre-flashed with crap, I guess that's why the step is necessary.

Hip hip hooray !!!
Yep, this way worked. 

Will provide the all steps for people who have the same issue. 
$ apt install linux-u-boot-rock-5b-edge $ armbian-install # Just in case I've installed to the all partitions. I mean to 5th and 7th. > 5  Install/Update the bootloader on SD card (/dev/mmcblk1) > 7  Install/Update the bootloader on MTD Flash $ reboot        
And now I can enter to uboot shell 
change to F2: 1068MHz ch0 ttot12 ch1 ttot12 ch2 ttot12 ch3 ttot12 change to F3: 1560MHz ch0 ttot14 ch1 ttot14 ch2 ttot14 ch3 ttot14 change to F0: 2112MHz ch0 ttot16 ch1 ttot16 ch2 ttot16 ch3 ttot16 out U-Boot SPL 2024.04-armbian-2024.04-S830c-P0000-Hd72c-Vdfa5-Bb703-R448a (Oct 24 2025 - 02:33:30 +0000) Trying to boot from SPI ## Checking hash(es) for config config-1 ... OK ## Checking hash(es) for Image atf-1 ... sha256+ OK ## Checking hash(es) for Image u-boot ... sha256+ OK ## Checking hash(es) for Image fdt-1 ... sha256+ OK ## Checking hash(es) for Image atf-2 ... sha256+ OK ## Checking hash(es) for Image atf-3 ... sha256+ OK INFO: Preloader serial: 2 NOTICE: BL31: v2.3():v2.3-868-g040d2de11:derrick.huang, fwver: v1.48 NOTICE: BL31: Built : 15:02:44, Dec 19 2024 INFO: spec: 0x1 INFO: code: 0x88 INFO: ext 32k is not valid INFO: ddr: stride-en 4CH INFO: GICv3 without legacy support detected. INFO: ARM GICv3 driver initialized in EL3 INFO: valid_cpu_msk=0xff bcore0_rst = 0x0, bcore1_rst = 0x0 INFO: l3 cache partition cfg-0 INFO: system boots from cpu-hwid-0 INFO: disable memory repair INFO: idle_st=0x21fff, pd_st=0x11fff9, repair_st=0xfff70001 INFO: dfs DDR fsp_params[0].freq_mhz= 2112MHz INFO: dfs DDR fsp_params[1].freq_mhz= 528MHz INFO: dfs DDR fsp_params[2].freq_mhz= 1068MHz INFO: dfs DDR fsp_params[3].freq_mhz= 1560MHz INFO: BL31: Initialising Exception Handling Framework INFO: BL31: Initializing runtime services WARNING: No OPTEE provided by BL2 boot loader, Booting device without OPTEE initialization. SMC`s destined for OPTEE will return SMC_UNK ERROR: Error initializing runtime service opteed_fast INFO: BL31: Preparing for EL3 exit to normal world INFO: Entry point address = 0xa00000 INFO: SPSR = 0x3c9 ns16550_serial serial@feb50000: pinctrl_select_state_full: uclass_get_device_by_phandle_id: err=-19 U-Boot 2024.04-armbian-2024.04-S830c-P0000-Hd72c-Vdfa5-Bb703-R448a (Oct 24 2025 - 02:33:30 +0000) Model: Radxa ROCK 5 Model B DRAM: 16 GiB Core: 353 devices, 32 uclasses, devicetree: separate MMC: mmc@fe2c0000: 1, mmc@fe2d0000: 2, mmc@fe2e0000: 0 Loading Environment from SPIFlash... SF: Detected xt25f128 with page size 256 Bytes, erase size 4 KiB, total 16 MiB *** Warning - bad CRC, using default environment In: serial@feb50000 Out: serial@feb50000 Err: serial@feb50000 Model: Radxa ROCK 5 Model B rockchip_dnl_key_pressed: no saradc device found Net: No ethernet found. Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0 =>

Great
Thanks a lot

merged. forum tag added.

I think this is wrong. The overlay needs to enabled if there is an m2 sata ssd connected. However in this case we connect a pcie device which connects to a chip that multiplexes the sata devices. tl;dr: try disabling this overlay

Yes
 
That's on us

Yes. In the past everything was added as patch. The problem was (and still is for other reasons) that some patches modifying a dt build on top of each other or stuff breaks. Now the dt can be edited directly and using git blame it is documented who edited what for whatever reason.
Of course sometimes there is an almost perfect dt upstream that needs minor adjustments. Those can be perfectly fine done with a patch.
Also both patches and our dt files only stay for as long as there is no proper equivalent upstream. Once everything is in mainline they are no longer needed.

I don't think you understand how Armbian works.  This board is community supported.  It does not and hasn't been an Armbian supported board.  Given the hundreds of boards out there Armbian only has the resources to officially support a handful.  The rest end up being supported by the user community like this board.  Thus support is only as good as the community volunteers who have the board and wish to volunteer their time to support it.  Armbian provides the tools and infrastruction to make supporting boards easier, but the work still needs to be done by someone for community supported boards like this.

Armbian does not come with some sort of admin console. Please elaborate. 
Try different patch cable.
 
moved

It seems like there is a mix-up between specs for the framework and for the OS. A lightweight desktop can run on 512MB, yes but probably not much fun, depending on applications. Won't recommend running a web browser. 
I'd probably get some existing cheap sbcs with similar specs and play with them to elaborate if the performance is sufficient.

Everything worked fine,  even tried some ffmpeg  for hardware decode 

moved.
 
All boards using rk3588/s soc most likely work best with either vendor or edge kernel. Current has limited functionality since when this kernel became LTS only basic support was there. All further enhancements regarding hardware featureless were upstreamed later.
 
 

As expected. Mainline Linux support for rk35xx soc family is still under heavy development. There is a good overview what should work and what does not:https://gitlab.collabora.com/hardware-enablement/rockchip-3588/notes-for-rockchip-3588/-/blob/main/mainline-status.md

@Werner I agree that it's more convenient for everyone, but it took me some time to find out how and testing it in an image.
https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/8707/commits

It would make more sense to send a PR to fix this so it is included in all upcoming images/releases.

Have you tried to get into by keyboard/hdmi or serial console? If so you could track down why sshd refuses to start

@pochopsp - you can buy two tv-boxes of the same type at once from the same seller and they might have different hardware internally still - that is the reason why it is not prossible to provide really good images for tv boxes: the hardware is simply too random and often also low quality

This is severely outdated. Use this one instead: https://docs.armbian.com/Developer-Guide_Build-Preparation/

Kernel 6.1 is Vendor.
Kernel 6.12 is Current / Mainline
Kernel 6.16 is Edge.
 
It's simple to change to edge. Just run armbian-config (it's available in the menu, or just type it in the command line using sudo). In armbian-config, as you make the selections, you'll find that you keep pressing ENTER until you get to the long list of kernels. Then scroll down to the latest Edge, which as of I last looked was 6.16.4. It may also say Armbian 25.8.1.
 
 

I found the error, please don't do it again.
Just Search for Supported boards before buying
Partners boards that will work in this case: https://www.armbian.com/partners/

Should be resolved

Simply mark whatever you want to quote and a box will appear to click:

This was originally meant as a reply to a user having problems enabling openVFD on a Tannix T3-Mini, a device I happen to own. I have recently been through this journey myself, and having searched the forums, I cannot find a recent topic on how to build this for Armbian, so have decided to make a new post that may be of use to some.
 
Hold on to your hat, because this is going to be long.
 
Caveats
These instructions are, specifically, for the Tannix TX3-Mini. However, with a bit of fiddling, the general approach should work for any supported TV Box. I have added notes where you will need to look to edit a different file for your specific device There are many, many variants of the TX3-Mini out there. What works for me, may not work for you. Do not expect any help or support from me, I am just posting this as a courtesy for how I got this working... your mileage may vary. I am not going to troubleshoot anyone's issues These instructions are quite verbose, as they may also help users of other TV Boxes to get their displays working. It also may not. Like I say, I am not here to be tech support, but we can all agree not having a display stuck on "boot" is a nice thing to have As this is a kernel module it will most likely stop working after each kernel update. You will probably want to create a DKMS to rebuild the module whenever you download a new kernel. This is outside of scope here. Use Google. At the end of this, if all goes well, you will have a display showing the current time. If you want to do more with the display then this is outside of scope and you will need to look elsewhere. However, this link is useful for how to trigger the icons: https://github.com/arthur-liberman/linux_openvfd/blob/master/led_control.txt (note: only items 1 to 6 are valid for the tx3-mini) A lot of this can be done in a chroot, but the actual building of the kernel module itself must be done on the target device. To simplify things all of these instructions are to be executed on the device itself. If you want to do this in a chroot, then knock yourself out, but you are on your own.  
My setup
At the time of writing, these instructions are confirmed working for the 7 Segment display and all icons on:
Tannix T3-Mini S905w with 2GB RAM Armbian 25.11 Kernel 6.12.48-current-meson64 Debian stable (trixie) (13)  
Instructions
Note: Every code block here is meant to be pasted and executed in one go, even the multi-line blocks
We will work from the home folder to keep things simple. Don't worry, there will be no clutter as we will remove files we no longer require as we go
cd ~ Device Tree Blob
The first thing we are going to want to do is enable kernel support for openvfd in our DTB. Normally I'd do this with an overlay, but this does not appear to be enabled on the aml-s9xx-box image, so we will apply an overlay to the DTB directly:
Install the device tree compiler: sudo apt install -y device-tree-compiler --no-install-recommends Back up the existing DTB (if anything goes wrong you can always just restore the backed up DTB) :
Note: If your device is not a Tanix T3-Mini, then you will want to amend the following to point to the actual DTB you are using (you can find this in '/boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf') sudo cp /boot/dtb/amlogic/meson-gxl-s905w-tx3-mini.dtb /boot/dtb/amlogic/meson-gxl-s905w-tx3-mini.dtb.orig  
Create the overlay source code: cat << EOF > ~/openvfd.dts /dts-v1/; /plugin/; / { fragment@0 { target-path = "/"; __overlay__ { openvfd { compatible = "open,vfd"; dev_name = "openvfd"; status = "okay"; }; }; }; }; EOF Compile the overlay: dtc -@ -I dts -O dtb -o ~/openvfd.dtbo ~/openvfd.dts  
Merge the overlay into your DTB:
Note: If your device is not a Tanix T3-Mini, then you will want to amend the following to point to the actual DTB you are using sudo fdtoverlay -i /boot/dtb/amlogic/meson-gxl-s905w-tx3-mini.dtb -o /boot/dtb/amlogic/meson-gxl-s905w-tx3-mini.dtb ~/openvfd.dtbo Delete the overlay source: rm ~/openvfd.dts [Optional] Delete the compiled overlay:
If your build is static (that is, you will never pull an updated DTB through apt) then you can also delete the compiled .dtbo overlay file. I prefer to keep this around, as you can just re-patch the new DTB with the "sudo fdtoverlay ..." command above. It is also possible to automate the update of a newly installed DTB file by creating a postinst.d script, but that is outside of the scope of this document. Google is your friend. rm ~/openvfd.dtbo  
Reboot so when we load the module later, our device knows what to do with it sudo reboot now  
Once your device has been rebooted, you can confirm that your change has been applied correctly with the following command: dtc -I fs -O dts /proc/device-tree | grep -A3 openvfd Again, this will generate a lot of warnings! This is normal. At the end of the warnings you should see the openvfd entry that you added to your DTS in the earlier step. If you do not, then you have not edited the file correctly, and you should go back and try again.  
OpenVFD Config file
We need to create a configuration file which tells the OpenVFD module which GPIO pins are connected to the LCD display. We put this in the /etc folder as this is where we should be storing system configuration files for *deb based systems
The contents of this file were extracted from  https://github.com/arthur-liberman/vfd-configurations  so if you are using a different device, you must replace the following config with the relevant one from the link. If you are having issues with your config not working, direct them to the repo owner, not me. I do not know your device or what may be wrong.
Note: I remove the final functions='usb colon eth wifi' line as whilst the driver works fine with it included, it generates errors/warnings, which I would rather not see, and it appears to serve no purpose for Armbian
Execute the following to generate the config for the TX3-Mini
Note: If your device is not a Tanix T3-Mini do not execute the following. Instead, find your config at https://github.com/arthur-liberman/vfd-configurations and save it as /etc/openvfd.conf sudo bash -c "cat << 'EOF' > /etc/openvfd.conf vfd_gpio_clk='0,76,0' vfd_gpio_dat='0,75,0' vfd_gpio_stb='1,4,0' vfd_chars='4,3,2,1,0' vfd_dot_bits='0,1,3,2,4,5,6' vfd_display_type='0x01,0x00,0x00,0x00' EOF"  
Build the Kernel Module
Now for the nitty gritty, we need to build the kernel module.
The first thing we need is the kernel headers.
Note: the headers version must match your installed kernel version exactly. Do not try installing the headers for a different kernel version. You will run into issues
If you are on a standard image, or your kernel has been upgraded since you built your image, this is straightforward: sudo apt install linux-headers-$(uname -r) However, if you have built the image yourself, and you have not upgraded your kernel, then most likely the version available from the apt repository will not be compatible and your build may fail or the driver may not work at all. In these instances, you will need to go back to your build system and add the following switch to your ./compile.sh command: INSTALL_HEADERS=yes  
Install the required build tools
sudo apt install -y git build-essential --no-install-recommends  
Clone the openvfd repo.
At the time of writing the openvfd repo is not compatible with later Linux kernels. I have raised a PR against the repo to enable support, however it has not yet been accepted. If/when it is accepted I will be deleting my fork of the repo, but in the meantime, you can clone my fork with:
git clone https://github.com/torzdf/linux_openvfd.git ~/linux_openvfd If the above does not work, it is because I have deleted my fork as the changes have been merged, and I am unable to come back and edit this post. If this is the case then run the following:
Note: DO NOT run the next line, if the above git clone worked
git clone https://github.com/arthur-liberman/linux_openvfd.git ~/linux_openvfd  
Enter the driver folder of the cloned repo
cd ~/linux_openvfd/driver  
Create a Makefile. The provided Makefile will not work, so we need to replace it with our own:
cat << 'EOF' > ./Makefile ifeq ($(KERNELRELEASE),) PWD = $(shell pwd) KERNELDIR = /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build modules: $(MAKE) -C $(KERNELDIR) M=$(PWD) modules modules_install: $(MAKE) -C $(KERNELDIR) M=$(PWD) modules_install clean: rm -rf *.o *.ko .tmp_versions *.mod.c modules.order Module.symvers ssd253x-ts.* else obj-m := openvfd.o openvfd-objs += protocols/i2c_sw.o openvfd-objs += protocols/i2c_hw.o openvfd-objs += protocols/spi_sw.o openvfd-objs += controllers/dummy.o openvfd-objs += controllers/seg7_ctrl.o openvfd-objs += controllers/fd628.o openvfd-objs += controllers/fd650.o openvfd-objs += controllers/hd44780.o openvfd-objs += controllers/gfx_mono_ctrl.o openvfd-objs += controllers/ssd1306.o openvfd-objs += controllers/pcd8544.o openvfd-objs += controllers/il3829.o openvfd-objs += openvfd_drv.o endif EOF  
Compile the kernel module:
make -j$(nproc)  
Install the kernel module:
sudo make modules_install  
Update the kernel modules:
sudo depmod -a  
Create the helper service
Next we need to compile and install the helper service
Enter the folder that contains the source code for the helper service: cd ~/linux_openvfd  
Build the helper service: make OpenVFDService  
Make the helper service executable: chmod +x OpenVFDService  
Install the helper service: sudo cp OpenVFDService /usr/bin/  
Clean up
We have built everything we need from the OpenVFD repo, so we can get rid of the source code
Go back to our home folder and delete the source code cd ~ && sudo rm -r linux_openvfd  
systemd Service file
The final step. We need to create a service file that will load the kernel module, launch the helper service, and enable it on boot
Create the systemd service file:
note: If you prefer a 12 hour clock rather than a 24 hour clock, edit the 'Environment="OPTS=-24h"' line to 'Environment="OPTS=-12h"' sudo bash -c 'cat << '\''EOF'\'' > /etc/systemd/system/openvfd.service [Unit] Description=openvfd Wants=network-online.target [Service] Type=simple Environment="OPTS=-24h" ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/sh -c ". /etc/openvfd.conf; /usr/sbin/modprobe openvfd vfd_gpio_clk=$vfd_gpio_clk vfd_gpio_dat=$vfd_gpio_dat vfd_gpio_stb=$vfd_gpio_stb vfd_chars=$vfd_chars vfd_dot_bits=$vfd_dot_bits vfd_display_type=$vfd_display_type;" ExecStart=/usr/bin/OpenVFDService $OPTS & ExecStop=/usr/bin/killall OpenVFDService ExecStopPost=-/usr/sbin/rmmod openvfd [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target EOF'  
Reload the systemd daemon: sudo systemctl daemon-reload  
Start the openvfd service: sudo systemctl start openvfd.service At this point your LCD should now be showing the time. If it is not, you can check for errors with: sudo systemctl status openvfd.service  
Enable the service at boot: sudo systemctl enable openvfd.service  
 
And that's it. If all has gone well, you now have a working LCD Display for your TV Box running a recent Armbian build