Armbian on RK3228A 2g/16g H96mini - NO SD SLOT

[SirRedZ]

Hello experts!

 

Yet another person asking for help! (YAPAFH)

 

I have made a purchase of a very cheap Android box with the sole intention of running Armbian on these boxes. I have purchased 3 of them.

To my surprise I couldn't find the SD card slot, so opening it up I see the SD card slot is missing, but the footprint is on the board, and looks like the related components were not placed.

 

Is there any point in trying to get Armbian working on this box? Can I load via USB? (with no SD card initially)

 

Thank you in advance for your time!

 

SirRedZ

 

[hexdump]

@SirRedZ - you might give this approach a try:

best wishes - hexdump

[jock]

Oh God, no sd card slot is something which is over the red-line-of-dignity for such boards. That's a pity anyway, because the board looks like quite well arranged and of good quality.

Maybe there is a chance to let something boot from the USB with the existing u-boot and maybe even maskrom. The rockchip boot flow (here) talks about booting from USB.

I never had experience of that and never read about, but if it is possible it could be really useful!

[Mr. Red]

Hello all, 

I got same box. I have tried couple of roms In it. Havent found anything stable, but libreElec. Im mainly Fedora Man and all other than rpm got my nipples twist. I recomend to use usb male to male cable and rkdeveloptools. If you got the box jammed just touch the Samsung memory chip pins opposite side of 0 pin (use usb via computer as power source because it cuts power if you short cut it too long and you wont lose emmc forever) . I would like to say to all that old way beats New ways with arm7 boards sdcard install gives my balls to ich but usb link cable booyeah! I would like to ask why this  "New OS" never Come with direct connect via ip because Basic users Will install wrong packages and via telnet serial ip port 22 would be easy to fix instead of reinstall hardboot etc. I mainly install to emmc and use Steel fork or knife to hardboot because boards are missing the mem off button... Anyway great work and if you go around Rk322x series which mainly are same architecture than raspberry pi 2b boards tell me what is so hard to make stable os... Both use same cortex a7, but memory is like 2gb ram and 16gb rom vs raspberry cheese slicer 1gb ram but still it got stable os century ago...  Then you are like our 3399 have better processor... well In 15-20euros budget gadget no see better processor...  I got informaation that AMD ruled arm is getting company by Intel and after that your better processor are cheese slicers... That is how cookie crumples. Im tired even Fedora went shit In past 5 years most advanced distro is now most retarted. I Will do some work after my burnout ends now im just telling and yelling. We must act fast because storm is coming. 

[jock]

You may take a look to my rk322x armbian fork, I finally found a way to let U-boot boot from USB!

Pick the legacy kernel xt-mx4vr-v01 image since you got an rk3228a:

 

 

You should be able to install the armbian image into the internal eMMC via usual rkdeveloptool and male-to-male cable.

Once there, u-boot is programmed to boot first images from SDcard, then USB and finally from internal eMMC.

This provides some flexibility to use it either as a stable server/desktop system or do some tests without having to erase the internal eMMC each time.

 

[Matteo Venturi]

Hi, I have H96mini (RK3228A). With RKDevTool v2.74 I erased flash and now the box TV is in maskrom status. I tryed to power on the tv box with usb into OTG USB with Multitool but no luck. Usb stick does not blink so I thing the tv box does not reading it.
Any ideas?

Thanks.

[jock]

6 hours ago, Matteo Venturi said:

Hi, I have H96mini (RK3228A). With RKDevTool v2.74 I erased flash and now the box TV is in maskrom status. I tryed to power on the tv box with usb into OTG USB with Multitool but no luck. Usb stick does not blink so I thing the tv box does not reading it.
Any ideas?

Thanks.

Use rkdeveloptool to directly flash one of the images for rk322x. It should work without any other step.

[Matteo Venturi]

15 hours ago, jock said:

Use rkdeveloptool to directly flash one of the images for rk322x. It should work without any other step.

Thank you jock.
This is lsusb command output about tv box : 
"Bus 003 Device 005: ID 2207:320b Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Company RK3228/RK3229 in Mask ROM mode"

I tryed to execute "./rkdeveloptool wl 0x0 Focal_legacy_desktop.img" but i received "Write LBA failed!"
I tryed also "./rkdeveloptool ul rk322x_loader.bin" (rk322x_loader.bin downloaded from forum) but i received "Upgrading loader failed!"
Finally i tryed "./rkdeveloptool ef" and i received "Getting flash info from device failed!"

[jock]

6 hours ago, Matteo Venturi said:

Thank you jock.
This is lsusb command output about tv box : 
"Bus 003 Device 005: ID 2207:320b Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Company RK3228/RK3229 in Mask ROM mode"

I tryed to execute "./rkdeveloptool wl 0x0 Focal_legacy_desktop.img" but i received "Write LBA failed!"
I tryed also "./rkdeveloptool ul rk322x_loader.bin" (rk322x_loader.bin downloaded from forum) but i received "Upgrading loader failed!"
Finally i tryed "./rkdeveloptool ef" and i received "Getting flash info from device failed!"

You forgot the most important command: rkdeveloptool db rk322x_loader.bin

This one loads a minimal loader into the device RAM that let rkdeveloptool work. This is called rockusb mode.

 

You should then be able to directly write the image using rkdeveloptool wl 0x0 your_image.img

 

[Matteo Venturi]

21 hours ago, jock said:

You forgot the most important command: rkdeveloptool db rk322x_loader.bin

This one loads a minimal loader into the device RAM that let rkdeveloptool work. This is called rockusb mode.

 

You should then be able to directly write the image using rkdeveloptool wl 0x0 your_image.img

 

Thank you jock very much.
These are the commands I executed:
rkdeveloptool db rk322x_loader.bin -> Downloading bootloader succeeded.
rkdeveloptool wl 0x0 Focal_legacy_desktop.img -> Write LBA from file (100%)
rkdeveloptool rd -> Reset Device OK.
But...Tv box is still in maskrom mode.....

[jock]

17 minutes ago, Matteo Venturi said:

Thank you jock very much.
These are the commands I executed:
rkdeveloptool db rk322x_loader.bin -> Downloading bootloader succeeded.
rkdeveloptool wl 0x0 Focal_legacy_desktop.img -> Write LBA from file (100%)
rkdeveloptool rd -> Reset Device OK.
But...Tv box is still in maskrom mode.....

If the image is missing the right signature the soc will stay in maskrom mode.

Maybe you wrote the wrong image? Where did you take that Focal_legacy_desktop.img file?

 

The right images are from the Download page or from the forum thread if you want the cutting edge features, don't forget to decompress them first!

 

[Matteo Venturi]

On 9/7/2020 at 9:26 AM, jock said:

If the image is missing the right signature the soc will stay in maskrom mode.

Maybe you wrote the wrong image? Where did you take that Focal_legacy_desktop.img file?

 

The right images are from the Download page or from the forum thread if you want the cutting edge features, don't forget to decompress them first!

 

Damn....i downloaded image with wget and flashed it as is because file had not extension.
Thanks for patience and help!!!!!

[jock]

36 minutes ago, Matteo Venturi said:

Damn....i downloaded image with wget and flashed it as is because file had not extension.
Thanks for patience and help!!!!!

If you wish to report on the RK322X CSC thread what works and what not I will be very happy to put it into the statistics and adjust the configuration to support more hardware