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Hello everyone, I have three Amlogic S905x TV boxes with a dead EMMC, and one with a desoldered EMMC (since I thought without it, they would boot from the microSD card). Is there a way to force them to boot into Armbian? Holding the power button doesn't work, and desoldering the EMMC didn't help either. I was able to boot Armbian using UART. A workaround is to use Ardruino, which sends commands to boot Armbian after a while, but that's a workaround, and I'd like a more elegant solution. 1) Download the *.img.gz image for the amlogic_s905x 2) Write the image to the microSD card using Rufus. 3) Connect the UART. Steps 2-6 in the brick instructions. 4) Insert the microSD card with Armbian into the console. 5) Turn on the console, close the testpoint, and at a certain point, the UART boot log will stop at gxl_p212_v1#. 6) Execute the following commands: mmc dev 1 env default -a -f;save setenv preboot 'if fatload mmc 0 1020000 aml_autoscript; then autoscr 1020000; fi; if fatload usb 0 1020000 aml_autoscript; then autoscr 1020000; fi; if fatload mmc 1 1020000 emmc_autoscript; then autoscr 1020000; fi;' save reboot Is there a simpler way to boot from a microSD card to default settings? Maybe I need to cleverly write a bootloader to it?

To my knowledge, there are two versions of this device: the "old" version and the new version, which has a 6031 Wi-Fi chip. Here are the two DTS files extracted from the original android tv firrmware for each hardware version. Hope it helps. Tanix_TX1_6031_DTS.txt Tanix_TX1_DTS.txt

On internet i can't find any image for this tv box. Anyone have build for this?

I installed Waydroid on an Amlogic Meson GXM (S912) TV box. The SOC has a Mali-T820 GPU, and the box has 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of eMMC. This was easy to do and Waydroid worked, but it was very slow, even before it heated the SOC to 80°C, which is probably its throttling limit. I removed Waydroid because it was too slow. I wasn't trying anything demanding. Even navigating Android Settings was ridiculously slow. This is a bit surprising because the hardware was designed for running Android. I was not running much else, just Wayfire and one or two Alacritty consoles. I don't think I was running out of memory. Is it possible to get decent Waydroid performance on other arm64 hardware?

Hi, I am assuming that you have a standard Q1 TV Box (Allwinner H313 based). 1) Download Armbian Imager here; 2) Install the version for your operating system; 3) After installing, choose "Manufacturer=ALLWINNER", Board="X96Q TV BOX", Operating system="minimal Trixie current" and Storage ( I suggest a good quality Class 10 SD card); 4) After writing the image, insert the SD card into the available SD slot; 5) Insert a wooden toothpick or a Q-tip into AV/Reset input; 6) Click (kindly) and hold the toothpick and connect the TV Box power supply to the power entry; 7) Release the toothpick after 8-10 seconds. if the HDMI connector is plugged you should see the Armbian initial boot process Note: some TV Boxes don't need items 5, 6 and 7. I hope it helps.

I'm planning on buying said Tv box in order to make it as a klipper host for a 3d printer since pi alternatives are too expensive nowadays.

I created this account just to thank you, man. Thank you so much, it worked perfectly here. Finally, my old TV box has another use besides collecting dust.

I wouldn't mind open source but the problem is their prices got bumped up because of the ram and storage shortages. It's why I'm asking if someone has managed to get armbian running on this specific Tv box model or a similar one that has an allwiner H618 chip at the very least.

A guide to installing Armbian on the H96 Max V11 (RK3318_V1.4 blue PCB) What you will need Your H96 Max V11 TV box with the power supply and the HDMI cable that came with it; A TV or a monitor with an HDMI port; A wired USB keyboard (or a wireless one with a USB dongle); An Ethernet cable to connect to a router on your home network that has Internet access; A Micro SD card (minimum 1GB, more if you're going to back up Android on your box before overwriting it with Armbian); A USB card reader for Micro SD cards; A Windows PC connected to your home network; Installation steps Download the experimental Armbian image (kernel 5.19.15 and libreelec patches — alas, that's the latest version that works correctly with our box) and a copy of the Multitool; Burn the Multitool on the SD card using Rufus (no need to change any settings, just click "SELECT" and locate multitool.img.xz or drag and drop the file on Rufus and then click "START"); Connect your TV box to the TV or monitor, connect the keyboard, plug in the Multitool SD card and then plug in the power cord; Wait a minute (while SD card partitions are being resized) for the Multitool main menu to appear, then select "Shutdown"; Unplug the power cord and the SD card, then plug the SD card into your PC. Two new drives should appear, labeled BOOTSTRAP and MULTITOOL. If you see both, skip the next step. If you only see the BOOTSTRAP, proceed to the next step; Start Disk Management (press Win+X, K). Scroll down the list of disks (use the scrollbar, because mouse wheel doesn't work there) to locate your SD card, and on the MULTITOOL partition right-click, then press C, and click "Add", "OK"; Open the MULTITOOL drive in Windows Explorer (or your favorite file manager) and copy the downloaded Armbian image to the images folder; Safely remove (eject) the SD card, plug it into the TV box and plug in the power cord. The Multitool main menu will appear in a few seconds; If you don't care about stock Android firmware on your TV box, skip the next step. If you want to back up the Android firmware, proceed to the next step; In the Multitool main menu select "Backup flash" and click through (there will be only one option). Name your backup file. Wait for the backup to finish. The backup file will be saved to the backups folder on the SD card's MULTITOOL partition; Now it's time to replace Android with Armbian. In the Multitool main menu select "Burn image to flash" and click through (there will be only one option). Wait for the process to complete, then in the main menu select "Shutdown"; Unplug the power cord and the SD card, then replug the power cord. Wait a few minutes for Armbian to get everything ready for its first launch, and then follow the initial setup prompts; You will be taken to the login prompt. Log in with the name/password for the regular user you've created; Connect your TV box to your home network router with an Ethernet cable; In Armbian, enter the command sudo cat /run/motd.dynamic and note the IP address assigned by the router to the TV box; Now you will need to connect to your TV box on the home network via the SSH protocol. If you're running Windows 10 or later, press Win+X, I, Enter. A PowerShell/Terminal window will open. Enter the following command, substituting the words in angle brackets with actual values: ssh <IP address from the previous step> -l <name for the regular user>. Type yes at the prompt asking if you really want to connect to this unknown host. At the next prompt that appears, enter the password for the regular user you've created. Skip the next step; If you're running an older version of Windows, you will need to download PuTTY, an SSH and Telnet client, set up an SSH connection to your TV box with the IP address above and log in with the name/password for the regular user; Now it's time to fix the settings for the Wi-Fi chip that doesn't work out of the box on the H96 Max V11. To delete the old settings, copy the command sudo rm -f /usr/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac4334-sdio.rockchip,rk3318-box.txt and paste it by right-clicking in the SSH window, then press Enter; To create the new settings file, enter (copy-paste) the command sudo nano /usr/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac4334-sdio.rockchip,rk3318-box.txt The nano text editor will open with a new empty file; Now open this small text file (a copy of nvram_2734c.txt from this forum topic), press Ctrl-A to select all text in it, then Ctrl-C to copy it to the clipboard; Switch to the SSH window, right-click to paste the copied text to nano then press Ctrl-S to save and Ctrl-X to exit; Enter (or copy-paste) the command sudo reboot -f to reboot Armbian. After that you can either close the SSH window and proceed with the physical console or start a new SSH session once Armbian has restarted; Enter (or copy-paste) the command sudo apt update && sudo apt install armbian-config After the update and installation is completed, run armbian-config to configure various software and hardware settings (including Wi-Fi). It is recommended to select "Freeze" in System settings to disable Armbian kernel upgrades because our kernel is compiled with custom patches enabling HDMI output on H96 Max V11 to work properly that are unavailable in other kernel versions.

@Gwainer If you haven't bought a TV box yet, stay where you are. Direct your resources to supporting companies that keep open source running. Here is a list of where you should spend your resources. https://armbian.com/partners

Hello averyone I'm trying to download the multitool.img.xz can someone please help me find it or share a valide link?

not getting internal wifi from "amlogic s905x3" "x96 max plus" tv box wifi chip "CDTech 47W3155" board version "Q5X3-141 V4.1"

I recently got this tv box emulator thing but i now emulate games on my laptop for convineince. I decide to download armbian on the tv box so that i can set up pi-hole for network wide ad blocking. Ive tried multiple times but i cant see to get it working. Cpu: Amologic S905L Ram:2 gig DDr3 ive been downloading this version https://github.com/ophub/amlogic-s9xxx-armbian/releases/download/Armbian_jammy_arm64_server_2026.02/Armbian_26.02.0_amlogic_s905l_jammy_6.1.161_server_2026.02.02.img.gz been using this dtb meson-gxl-s905x-p212.dtb been using this u bootfile named: u-boot-s905x-s912 To reboot the system there is no button in the AV port and the box refuses to download any apk or app for terminal emulator, Developer tools are not available,threfore i prefer to do it through the update method. the file structure Ive been following these instructions from gemini https://gemini.google.com/share/1e335432197f https://gemini.google.com/share/0a6ce8a19d0c Please ask me if you need more info I also asked in reddit btw

Did someone test the build on TV98 Rockchip RK3528 4GB RAM + 64GB Storage TV box? If yes, is it possible to install from SD Card?

I don’t have an SD card for testing, only a USB stick. The idea is to turn this TV box into a KDS for a restaurant, it will only run this program. However, it needs to be done in Linux. I downloaded a new image, it booted through Android, it detected the USB stick but reported that it couldn’t find the installation package.

I am trying to boot from a USB stick, but it shows the error you can see in the screenshot. I am using the update button on the back of the TV box. It does start the boot process from the USB, but according to the error message it seems unable to actually read the drive. I have been stuck on this issue for several days now.

Can I enable wifi (SV6256P) in H616 DDR3 Tv box https://github.com/paolosabatino/ssv6x5x/tree/master or build from old kernel 4.4.x

DISCLAIMER (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. 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). Thank you! This is CSC Armbian for XT-Q8L-V10 boards, also known as Chiptrip Q8, Vsmart Q8, ENY 3288 Q8, etc... All source code has been merged into Armbian mainline project. I still keep my personal public Armbian fork for experimental features: https://github.com/paolosabatino/armbian-build Nightly images: download directory Quick installation instructions on eMMC: Build or download your preferred Armbian image from Download directory 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 sd card, then push the power button for 1 second (the led will turn blue) After 10 seconds HDMI will turn on and you will get logging messages; 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 armbian-config to configure timezone, locales and other personal options Congratulations, Armbian is now installed! Boot from SD Card/USB stick (with Armbian already installed in eMMC, empty eMMC or no eMMC😞 Build or download your preferred Armbian image from Download directory; Burn the image on your SD card/USB stick; Plug the SD card/USB stick in the device; Push the power button for 1 second (the led will turn blue); After 10 seconds HDMI will turn on and you will get logging messages; 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 armbian-config to configure timezone, locales and other personal options Congratulations, Armbian is now installed! Boot from SD Card/USB stick (with original firmware or other firmware): In case your box has the original firmware installed, use the Multitool to erase the internal flash. Don't worry, you will not brick your box: once the eMMC is emptied, the box will automatically boot from SD Card. This is called Maskrom mode and is common to all Rockchip devices. Instructions and download links for the Multitool are at the bottom of this post. After erasing the internal eMMC, just follow the "Boot from SD Card" procedure above and then you are fine. Boot priority: Newer images (those with mainline kernel >= 4.14.50) now support booting from multiple devices. Priority is fixed and boot devices are probed in this order: External SD card External USB storage device (Any USB Stick/Hard drive attached to USB host ports) Internal eMMC This way even if you install armbian to internal eMMC, you can still easily test different images booting from external devices. Experts notes: when armbian is installed into eMMC you get U-boot installed too in eMMC. This is important to know because the box won't boot in Maskrom Mode, but instead will always boot the embedded U-boot, no matter if you put an sdcard/usb stick. In practice the embedded U-boot is totally responsible for the boot priority. If you want to restore the Maskrom Mode, just erase U-boot from eMMC using this command: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk2 seek=64 count=8128 conv=sync,fsync Current status: Wireless: works. pretty fast and stable, signal is strong on my box; Bluetooth: works. I was able to transfer files and stream audio without problems USB ports: works, with autosuspend too. A quick benchmark show that transfer rate is quite good (topped at 34 MB/s) USB OTG: works in host mode. Transfer rate is very good (> 40 MB/s) MMC: works and is perfectly accessible as storage device. The images above with "eMMC friendly" have been tested and work when installed in eMMC using the standard armbian-config eMMC installer SDCard: works. legacy kernel is limited to high speed, while mainline works fine in UHS mode too. A quick benchmark with a Samsung EVO card shows the promised 48Mb/s read speed. Gigabit Ethernet: works, fast and reliably HDMI: works perfectly Serial: works Audio: both HDMI audio and SPDIF connector works IR remote: works on legacy and mainline kernels Reboot/Suspend process: rebooting the device is a working in progress, at the moment sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Suspend is still not available. Hardware acceleration: everything which works for rk3288 boards applies here too. This guide or maybe the Media Testing Script will help you gain an hardware accelerated X11 and Chromium (using GL4ES I enjoyed Quake 2 from the start till the end, but also Quake and Quake III Arena work flawlessy, here a quick how-to to compile and install GL4ES) Multimedia: On mainline kernel 3D acceleration is provided by Panfrost driver and is already enabled. Hardware video decoding: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/19258-testing-hardware-video-decoding-rockchip-allwinner/ Multitool: The Multitool is a small but powerful tool to easy operate on internal eMMC flash of RK3288 devices. Features: Backup the content of internal eMMC Restore a previously backed-up image to eMMC Erase the eMMC (via fast blkdiscard or zero-fill as fallback) Burn an Armbian (or LibreELEC) image directly on the eMMC Provide a recovery shell for manual maintenance Windows-friendly: everything is placed in a NTFS partition Image compression format autodetection: they are decompressed on-the-fly during burn process Network support for remote maintenance via SSH (instructions to access via network here) Instructions are simple: Download the image from here Burn it on an sdcard Open the NTFS partition with your preferred file manager Place the images you want to burn on the device in images directory (backups will be stored in backups directory) Plug the sd card in the RK3288 device Power the device and wait few seconds, the Multitool menu will appear on screen and can be navigated with the keyboard Last edit: 07/06/2020 - updated installation instructions

Hi all, I'm trying to boot Armbian from USB on a Foxconn BANDOTT BA101 (Amlogic S905D, 2GB RAM, 8GB eMMC — same SoC/RAM/storage as a Phicomm N1, originally shipped with Android TV 7.1.2). I'm running purely from USB, never touching eMMC. What works Armbian_24.5.0_amlogic_s905d_jammy_6.6.28_server_2024.04.25.img (ophub build) Flashed to USB with balenaEtcher Plugged into the box, powered on Boots directly with no modifications — no manual u-boot.ext, no dtb edits, no extlinux changes Network, IR, HDMI all good What doesn't work Armbian_community_26.2.0-trunk.821_Aml-s9xx-box_resolute_current_6.18.26.img (official community build) I tried the following on this image, in order: As-is flash to USB → stuck at the Android boot logo, never proceeds. Generated/copied u-boot.ext for S905D into the boot partition → still stuck at Android logo. Selected meson-gxl-s905d-phicomm-n1.dtb as the FDT (this is the dtb that the working 24.5.0 image uses). Edited /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf to match the working 24.5.0 image exactly — same kernel/initrd path style, same APPEND line (root=, rootflags, console=, etc.), same FDT pointing at meson-gxl-s905d-phicomm-n1.dtb. After all four steps, the 26.2.0 image still won't boot — the box hangs at the Android logo and never hands off to U-Boot/kernel from USB. Question Given that the 24.5.0 ophub S905D server image works out of the box, and the 26.2.0 community Aml-s9xx-box image fails even after replicating the working boot chain (u-boot.ext + N1 dtb + matching extlinux.conf), what else differs between these two images that could prevent USB boot on a stock-Android S905D box? Specifically I'd like to understand: Does the community 26.2.0 / kernel 6.18 image use a different boot script signature (aml_autoscript / s905_autoscript) that the stock Android U-Boot on these boxes won't chain-load? Is there a known incompatibility between kernel 6.18 / the resolute-current package set and the S905D mainline u-boot used by the 24.5.0 build? Is the official "Aml-s9xx-box" community image even intended to boot on locked Android TV boxes from USB, or is it built only for boards that already run mainline u-boot from eMMC? Any pointers appreciated. Happy to attach a serial console log if someone can suggest where in the boot chain to look. Thanks! extlinux.conf uEnv.txt

I don't own that box so I can only give you generic help. You really would need to hook up a usb-uart adapter to access the uboot debug output to see what is happening. The second thing I would say is that I have no idea what ophub builds do as they are not Armbian builds, ophub is a fork, they don't contribute to Armbian development nor do they participate in these forums. So per the Armbian amlogic TV box instructions, the boot environment must be a clean android boot environment. Installing or running any other distribution may cause Armbian to not boot. So I'd recommend either reinstalling a clean Android image to test from, or investigate any differences in boot scripts to see what might be going on. But again getting access to the new boot serial console would help a lot.

Hi Everyone! I'm trying to install it on a TV Box with an Allwinner IK316 SOC and a NANYA 1303 eMMC, but Armbian can't find the eMMC at all... has anyone found a solution for this NAND?

I'm trying to install Armbian on the Tanix Tx1 Soc Allwinner H313 Mini TV Box, but this box doesn't have an SD card slot. How do I install Armbian on this box without an SD card?

@well0nez I didn't even think about that. When I made the original post almost two years ago, AI was much less capable than today. You just gave me a few ideas for different projects. As I said, unfortunately I don't have the HY300 anymore, but I do have a Magcubic L018(same chip I think), though it's in use every day as a bedroom TV. I don't think my girlfriend would appreciate if I started to hack it 😉 Especially if core functions like projecting the things coming through the HDMI port to the wall. The L018 has worse software than the HY300, in my opinion, so I've connected it to a certified Android TV 14 Box.

Hello, I have some troubles with this TVBOX: it runs armbian and other distros correctly, using the meson-gxm-t95z-plus.dtb but sometimes wifi goes into kernel panic at boot, and when it does, the whole system becomes unstable (i.e. not rebooting, eth0 hangs...). I have extracted the original .DTB from the only firmware that exists for this box, the ancient 6.0 Marshmellow Android (I guess it's a 3.x kernel...). I attach it to this message hoping someone more expert than me can help in making it work ina more stable manner. I attach a picture of the board also, it reads "M8S". Box has 2GB ram and 16GB eMMC, brcmfmac wifi/bt and ZTE PHY chip. meson1.dtb

Hi, I would like to know if its possible to boot from SD card in my model of Android TV BOX. It does not have a reset button but has an update app. Its a Giga TV Box HD890 4K. It has an Amlogic CPU I do all the process of installing Armbian in the SD card, Android starts an update and it says: "Map file is too short". I really dont know what I have to do to enable multi boot. Installation is aborted. Im getting really upset for not being able to install Armbian. Any help to this issue would be really welcome. Sorry for my bad english