CSC Armbian for RK322x TV box boards

[jock]

@Alex83 can't really say what is broken with your configuration.

ssv6051p received little to nothing changes, except for an optimization compile flag and the disable of the p2p interface which was causing reboots and crashes and slowing down the connection.

Slow boot times may be due to many things. Not able to connect is one of them, but can be a faulty NAND, a network device mount that is not waiting for timeout, etc... etc...

Try to do apt update && apt upgrade to get the latest packages up to date.

Post armbianmonitor -u link the help in troubleshooting

[JVMS]

On 1/14/2021 at 12:03 PM, JVMS said:

I tried the way you said, the yellow LED is blinking . tried on two different monitors and different cables and nothing, no signal

new information about my boxform rkflashtool:

FIRMWARE_VER:7.0.0
MACHINE_MODEL: hx322x_box
MACHINE_ID:007
MANUFACTURER:RK30SDK
MAGIC: 0x5041524B
ATAG: 0x60000800
MACHINE: 3228
CHECK_MASK: 0x80
KERNEL_IMG: 0x60408000
#RECOVER_KEY: 1,1,0,20,0
CMDLINE:console=ttyFIQ0 androidboot.selinux=permissive androidboot.hardware=rk30board androidboot.console=ttyFIQ0 init=/init mtdparts
=rk29xxnand:0x00002000@0x00002000(uboot),0x00004000@0x00004000(trust),0x00002000@0x00008000(misc),0x00000800@0x0000A000(baseparamer),
0x00007800@0x0000A800(resource),0x00006000@0x00012000(kernel),0x00006000@0x00018000(boot),0x00010000@0x0001E000(recovery),0x00020000@
0x0002E000(backup),0x00040000@0x0004E000(cache),0x00008000@0x0008E000(metadata),0x00002000@0x00096000(kpanic),0x00260000@0x00098000(s
ystem),-@0x002F8000(userdata)

 

[fabiobassa]

@JVMS
good morning, in a previous post you said that your chip is a 3229 but it seems effectively it is a 3228.

Anyway it should work smoothly with the desktop version here

I assume with android you have hdmi output, isn't it ?

[edouard_k]

Hello, 

 

I have an mxq pro 4k 5g box based on rk322x cpu. In the board, with 2 Go and 16Go storage.

 it's written 3229 on the board, but when i run rk322x-config to set 3229 as cpu, the next boot, I have a kernel panic.

 

I can run legacy kernel, but i only see 1Go of RAM.  Any idea to debug this and to use all storage and memory ?

 

Regards, 

 

Edouard

[Seth]

Hello, i managed to find the emmc pinout for the clk pin here, i was able to flash my backup from 0x0 to 0x10000h. Now the box can be detected in loader mode. My question is, should i flash a uboot to support booting from usb flash drive or should i just use the multitool? how much and what part of the flash should i erase so i can boot from multitool? i never tried finding the rx and tx pins on the board so i have not tried debugging it with uart yet.

[Alvaro Fernandez]

On 2/25/2020 at 4:00 PM, Alessandro said:

Thanks so much @jock and of course @hexdump and @fabiobassa...

 

I followed the @hexdump instruction about how to mix the LibreELEC for the mk809iv and one of the latest Armbian image from this page (the Armbian 20 05 0 trunk R329q bionic legacy 4.4.194 desktop). 
 

it worked at first try... wired eth working. Imam checking all the other features.

 

I‘ll keep you posted.

 

thanks so much, Alessandro 

Hi everybody.  I have a MK809IV PRO. Wich houses a RK3229 processor. 

I can successfully boot LibreELEC-RK322x.arm-9.2-devel-20200114140401-0bca75f-rk3228b-mk809iv.img on it. But was unable to make Armbian boot following the steps from @jock. I even tried to mix the images following (the best I could) the directions given by @hexdump.

 

Since I can't find a uart port in my board, I cannot gather any information about why Armbian is not booting or showing anything on screen.

 

If someone whoom succeeded like @Alessandro could give me a hint or provide me the image that they used for me to study I will be very gratefull.

 

Off course, I must confess I am too noob and english is not my first language.

 

Thanks in advance and excuse my ignorance if my post somehow breaks the rules or good practices.

 

[fabiobassa]

@Alvaro Fernandez
bom dia Alvaro,

 if we are speaking of this

https://it.aliexpress.com/item/32844721184.html?

 

it has a sd card reader so you can use the multitool from @jock to confirm that it is booting fine

If libreelec starts, also multitol and linux will start , may be we must only find the right mixt of uboot and trustos to burn on the sd card.
so please try multitool first ( first page)

 

 

 

[jock]

12 hours ago, Seth said:

Hello, i managed to find the emmc pinout for the clk pin here, i was able to flash my backup from 0x0 to 0x10000h. Now the box can be detected in loader mode. My question is, should i flash a uboot to support booting from usb flash drive or should i just use the multitool? how much and what part of the flash should i erase so i can boot from multitool? i never tried finding the rx and tx pins on the board so i have not tried debugging it with uart yet.

Beware that loader mode does not allow you to write the first 0x2000 absolute sectors: that's the very first 4 megabytes of eMMC, where the idbloader is placed. The idbloader is the first part of the booting process, where the clocks and RAM is initialized. When in this mode, sectors are hidden and address space is translated, so what appears as sector 0x0 is in reality absolute sector 0x2000 on the eMMC.

 

Maskrom mode instead allows you to write from absolute sector 0x0. Regular armbian images are required to being wrote from sector 0x0 because they have their own idbloader - stripping the first 0x2000 sectors from an armbian image and burning in loader mode won't work. So if you want to write an Armbian image directly, be sure the rkdevtool tells you that you are in maskrom mode - and not loader mode.

 

If your goal is just to get the USB boot, you can take uboot.img file from the multitool image (you can find it in bsp folder) and then burn it onto the eMMC to the absolute sector 0x2000 (which is 0x0 in loader mode): it's a small 4 megabyte file and that should be enough to get USB boot. If this works, you may be able to put the multitool and the armbian image on a USB stick, boot from there are burn the armbian image onto the eMMC.

 

Another way to install armbian is this: the multitool can be burnt on eMMC even in loader mode stripping away the first 0x2000 sectors from the image. The multitool can help you erase the whole eMMC: once the eMMC is completely erased, the board will boot automatically in maskrom mode, letting you install the armbian image via rkdevtool.

 

All of this is true and relatively safe if you have an eMMC on board. If you have a NAND chip things changes and absolutely avoid the last erase eMMC procedure!

[jock]

On 1/31/2021 at 4:21 PM, edouard_k said:

Hello, 

 

I have an mxq pro 4k 5g box based on rk322x cpu. In the board, with 2 Go and 16Go storage.

 it's written 3229 on the board, but when i run rk322x-config to set 3229 as cpu, the next boot, I have a kernel panic.

 

I can run legacy kernel, but i only see 1Go of RAM.  Any idea to debug this and to use all storage and memory ?

 

Regards, 

 

Edouard

Hello!

Specs from the external package often lie. We discovered that what is sold as rk3229 often is a rk3228a/b, and it happened that RAM and storage figures also were sometimes wrong.

We discovered also that some SoCs which have "rk3229" printed on them are in reality rk3228 chips.

 

The best way to be sure is to open the box, take note of the signatures on the chips and search them on the internet. These boxes get very random hardware in them, so being aware of what is phisycally present is of great help.

If you can open the box and make some photos of the board being sure chip characters are readble can be very useful to spot the problem.

 

Besides this, posting dmesg or armbianmonitor -u output is a starting point for debug.

[edouard_k]

Hello, 

 

Here are pictures of inside the box.

 

https://ibb.co/j4NgFt2

https://ibb.co/QkBFkF1

 

And the logs: 

 

http://ix.io/2NZu

 

Regards, 

 

Edouard

 

 

Edited February 1, 2021 by edouard_k

[jock]

4 hours ago, edouard_k said:

Hello, 

 

Here are pictures of inside the box.

 

https://ibb.co/j4NgFt2

https://ibb.co/QkBFkF1

 

And the logs: 

 

http://ix.io/2NZu

 

Regards, 

 

Edouard

 

 

 

Taking a look to the pictures it results that the memory chips are 1Gbit each (https://www.digikey.ch/product-detail/en/micron-technology-inc/MT41J256M4JP-15E-G/MT41J256M4JP-15E-G-ND/2663621), you got 8 of them, so 8Gbit of RAM, or 1 gigabyte if you prefer.

 

The eMMC memory is 8 gigabyte (see https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/estorage/emmc/KLM8G1GESD-B03P/). It's an interesting part because it has a very fast bus (HS400), but for compatibility once you select eMMC in rk322x-config it will be configured in DDR mode, which is yet fast enough.

 

I can't read very well the wifi chip, but from the shadows it looks like it says sv6051p, so no 5Ghz but just 2.4Ghz connectivity.

 

Despite the board says rk3229-mxq-v3.0 it does not mean that the chip mounted is really a rk3229. rk3228a/b are pin to pin compatible to rk3229 and often they are exchanged without any comunication. They are both grappy socs, but rk3229 is a tiny bit better than rk3228a/b.

 

Since your board is a new one, I would like to ask you if both leds are working on your board once you configure it with rk322x-config: usually the power leds is always working on all boards, but the secondary one changes among the boards. If you have the original device tree or the original firmware it will be useful to add full led support for this board too.

[Seth]

9 hours ago, jock said:

Beware that loader mode does not allow you to write the first 0x2000 absolute sectors: that's the very first 4 megabytes of eMMC, where the idbloader is placed. The idbloader is the first part of the booting process, where the clocks and RAM is initialized. When in this mode, sectors are hidden and address space is translated, so what appears as sector 0x0 is in reality absolute sector 0x2000 on the eMMC.

 

Maskrom mode instead allows you to write from absolute sector 0x0. Regular armbian images are required to being wrote from sector 0x0 because they have their own idbloader - stripping the first 0x2000 sectors from an armbian image and burning in loader mode won't work. So if you want to write an Armbian image directly, be sure the rkdevtool tells you that you are in maskrom mode - and not loader mode.

 

If your goal is just to get the USB boot, you can take uboot.img file from the multitool image (you can find it in bsp folder) and then burn it onto the eMMC to the absolute sector 0x2000 (which is 0x0 in loader mode): it's a small 4 megabyte file and that should be enough to get USB boot. If this works, you may be able to put the multitool and the armbian image on a USB stick, boot from there are burn the armbian image onto the eMMC.

 

Another way to install armbian is this: the multitool can be burnt on eMMC even in loader mode stripping away the first 0x2000 sectors from the image. The multitool can help you erase the whole eMMC: once the eMMC is completely erased, the board will boot automatically in maskrom mode, letting you install the armbian image via rkdevtool.

 

All of this is true and relatively safe if you have an eMMC on board. If you have a NAND chip things changes and absolutely avoid the last erase eMMC procedure!

So if i boot in maskrom by shorting clk pin to ground and start flashing armbian image at 0x0 with rkdevtool for windows, i don't have to go through the sd card and usb booting steps? i'll try that right away.

[Seth]

I gave up using rkdevtool in windows. maybe i'll have better luck with windows subsystem for linux and use rkdeveloptool instead.

[jock]

7 hours ago, Seth said:

So if i boot in maskrom by shorting clk pin to ground and start flashing armbian image at 0x0 with rkdevtool for windows, i don't have to go through the sd card and usb booting steps? i'll try that right away.

Yes, that's true. But beware you need to short the clock just for a little time during startup.

Also the serial is essential to debug such situations, even because your board is not a well-known one and may have some specifics.

 

edit: as a test for rkdevtool for windows, you may burn the multitool image and see if works. If the multitool image works this way, the problem is in the Armbian image, otherwise the problem is rkdevltool for windows

 

[Seth]

weeee! i got it booting. orange light blinks. flashed it in maskrom mode. flashed the loader from first post at 0xcccccccc and armbian image at 0x0. it worked. now i need to hunt for uart rx and tx pins. thanks @jock and @fabiobassa. i just hope i don't break the board while searching for uart pins.

[fabiobassa]

@Seth

very very glad to see your board is working, so happy !!!!!

For further infos and helping more people would you be so kind to post some screenshots and a more detailled procedure !?

And don't forget a " like" ( the heart symbol)  for  authors to help them in good forum reputation !!!



 

[jock]

8 minutes ago, Seth said:

weeee! i got it booting. orange light blinks. flashed it in maskrom mode. flashed the loader from first post at 0xcccccccc and armbian image at 0x0. it worked. now i need to hunt for uart rx and tx pins. thanks @jock and @fabiobassa. i just hope i don't break the board while searching for uart pins.

Glad to hear it worked! Often the serial pins are easy to spot because there are three or four receptacles in a row, sometimes with RX/TX/GND printings, but sometimes they are hidden or not exposed at all.

PS: why the loader from the first post has to be flashed at oxcccccccc is still a mistery of rkdevtool for windows... Normally you don't need that loader and definitely it does not need to be flashed at oxcccccccc Maybe it is a limitation of the tool for windows, the Armbian image already has everything required to boot properly.

[Alvaro Fernandez]

On 2/1/2021 at 7:38 AM, fabiobassa said:

@Alvaro Fernandez
bom dia Alvaro,

 if we are speaking of this

https://it.aliexpress.com/item/32844721184.html?

 

it has a sd card reader so you can use the multitool from @jock to confirm that it is booting fine

If libreelec starts, also multitol and linux will start , may be we must only find the right mixt of uboot and trustos to burn on the sd card.
so please try multitool first ( first page)

 

 

 

HI @fabiobassa! Thanks for your reply! It would't let me post in the same day, sorry for the delay.

 

It's similar to the link you posted. And yes, I tried multitool wich booted propperly, although i have to force maskrom mode after flashing the Armbian image because the device won't boot at all or show any signs of life.

 

About uboot and trustos, I didn't find any directions in how to extract them and pair them with Armbian. I just don't have enough knowledge to figure it out myself.

 

Again, thanks for your time!

[Seth]

@fabiobassa @jock

For further infos and helping more people would you be so kind to post some screenshots and a more detailled procedure !?

 

Hi again. so i got the box for about $13.00 online. it was marketed as an MXQ Pro 5G 4G/32G which was totally fake so i opened it and found out that is was just 1G/8G and that it was an RK3228. I tried backing up the firmware with rkdevtool in loader mode and only got about 0x0h to 0x10000h. i tried to write it back and it wouldn't boot anymore. I tried flashing it with armbian and rkdevtool and still no luck then i saw @qiheng's post (thank god he posted pictures) and copied his rkdevtool config and placed the box in maskrom using the pin short method. pinout is here. i just shorted clk to vss/gnd pin. and the flashing worked! Here are the pics of the board, it's marked R28-MXQ-00813, has DDR3 and 8GB flash. I also found the UART pins at the back of the board the 2 pads close to a bunch of capacitors under the cpu, the closest pad to the capacitors is the TX pin and the pad next to it is the RX pin, i just connected the gnd pin to power gnd. Here's the pic, green is tx and white is rx. uboot boots fine but it can't continue booting. i used legacy buster with 4.4 kernel. Orange led is blinking and i got the log below from putty.  Apparently, it can't find boot.env.

 

Serial baud rate is 115200

DDR Version V1.10 20190926
In
ID:0xFFF
600MHz
DDR3
Bus Width=32 Col=11 Bank=8 Row=14 CS=1 Die Bus-Width=16 Size=1024MB
mach:4
OUT

U-Boot SPL 2020.10-armbian (Dec 12 2020 - 01:47:28 +0100)
Trying to boot from MMC2
I/TC:
I/TC: Non-secure external DT found
I/TC: Switching console to device: /serial@11030000
I/TC: OP-TEE version: 3.10.0-40-ga1d5c81f (gcc version 9.2.1 20191025 (GNU Toolc                                                                                        hain for the A-profile Architecture 9.2-2019.12 (arm-9.10))) #6 Wed Sep 16 21:36                                                                                        :15 UTC 2020 arm
I/TC: Primary CPU initializing
M/TC: Not protecting region 1: 0x68400000-0x68600000
I/TC: Primary CPU switching to normal world boot


U-Boot 2020.10-armbian (Dec 12 2020 - 01:47:28 +0100)

Model: Generic Rockchip rk322x TV Box board
DRAM:  992 MiB
MMC:   dwmmc@30000000: 1, dwmmc@30020000: 0
Loading Environment from EXT4... ** File not found /boot/boot.env **

** Unable to read "/boot/boot.env" from mmc0:1 **
In:    serial@11030000
Out:   serial@11030000
Err:   serial@11030000
Model: Generic Rockchip rk322x TV Box board
Net:   eth0: ethernet@30200000
starting USB...
Bus usb@30040000: USB DWC2
scanning bus usb@30040000 for devices... 1 USB Device(s) found
       scanning usb for storage devices... 0 Storage Device(s) found
stopping USB..
starting USB...
Bus usb@30040000: USB DWC2
scanning bus usb@30040000 for devices... 1 USB Device(s) found
       scanning usb for storage devices... 0 Storage Device(s) found
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0
Card did not respond to voltage select!

Device 0: unknown device
switch to partitions #0, OK
mmc0(part 0) is current device
Scanning mmc 0:1...
Found U-Boot script /boot/boot.scr
2909 bytes read in 3 ms (946.3 KiB/s)
## Executing script at 60000000
Boot script loaded from mmc 0
214 bytes read in 3 ms (69.3 KiB/s)
5694356 bytes read in 140 ms (38.8 MiB/s)
8771432 bytes read in 206 ms (40.6 MiB/s)
49812 bytes read in 7 ms (6.8 MiB/s)
Failed to load '/boot/dtb/overlay/-fixup.scr'
## Loading init Ramdisk from Legacy Image at 64000000 ...
   Image Name:   uInitrd
   Image Type:   ARM Linux RAMDisk Image (gzip compressed)
   Data Size:    5694292 Bytes = 5.4 MiB
   Load Address: 00000000
   Entry Point:  00000000
   Verifying Checksum ... OK
## Flattened Device Tree blob at 61f00000
   Booting using the fdt blob at 0x61f00000
   Loading Ramdisk to 67e91000, end 683ff354 ... OK
   Loading Device Tree to 67e1c000, end 67e90fff ... OK

Starting kernel ...

I/TC: Secondary CPU 1 initializing
I/TC: Secondary CPU 1 switching to normal world boot
I/TC: Secondary CPU 2 initializing
I/TC: Secondary CPU 2 switching to normal world boot
I/TC: Secondary CPU 3 initializing
I/TC: Secondary CPU 3 switching to normal world boot

 

I tried flashing kernel 5.9 minimal buster and i get this:

DDR Version V1.10 20190926
In
ID:0xFFF
600MHz
DDR3
Bus Width=32 Col=11 Bank=8 Row=14 CS=1 Die Bus-Width=16 Size=1024MB
mach:4
OUT

U-Boot SPL 2020.10-armbian (Dec 12 2020 - 01:48:33 +0100)
Trying to boot from MMC2
I/TC:
I/TC: Non-secure external DT found
I/TC: Switching console to device: /serial@11030000
I/TC: OP-TEE version: 3.10.0-40-ga1d5c81f (gcc version 9.2.1 20191025 (GNU Toolchain for the A-profile Architecture 9.2-2019.12 (arm-9.10))) #6 Wed Sep 16 21:36:15 UTC 2020 arm
I/TC: Primary CPU initializing
M/TC: Not protecting region 1: 0x68400000-0x68600000
I/TC: Primary CPU switching to normal world boot


U-Boot 2020.10-armbian (Dec 12 2020 - 01:48:33 +0100)

Model: Generic Rockchip rk322x TV Box board
DRAM:  992 MiB
MMC:   dwmmc@30000000: 1, dwmmc@30020000: 0
Loading Environment from EXT4... ** File not found /boot/boot.env **

** Unable to read "/boot/boot.env" from mmc0:1 **
In:    serial@11030000
Out:   serial@11030000
Err:   serial@11030000
Model: Generic Rockchip rk322x TV Box board
Net:   eth0: ethernet@30200000
starting USB...
Bus usb@30040000: USB DWC2
scanning bus usb@30040000 for devices... 1 USB Device(s) found
       scanning usb for storage devices... 0 Storage Device(s) found
stopping USB..
starting USB...
Bus usb@30040000: USB DWC2
scanning bus usb@30040000 for devices... 1 USB Device(s) found
       scanning usb for storage devices... 0 Storage Device(s) found
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0
Card did not respond to voltage select!

Device 0: unknown device
switch to partitions #0, OK
mmc0(part 0) is current device
Scanning mmc 0:1...
Found U-Boot script /boot/boot.scr
2909 bytes read in 3 ms (946.3 KiB/s)
## Executing script at 60000000
Boot script loaded from mmc 0
243 bytes read in 3 ms (79.1 KiB/s)
6017211 bytes read in 148 ms (38.8 MiB/s)
9681360 bytes read in 226 ms (40.9 MiB/s)
40937 bytes read in 6 ms (6.5 MiB/s)
410 bytes read in 5 ms (80.1 KiB/s)
Applying kernel provided DT overlay rk322x-emmc-nand.dtbo
1286 bytes read in 6 ms (209 KiB/s)
Applying kernel provided DT overlay rk322x-led-conf1.dtbo
232 bytes read in 6 ms (37.1 KiB/s)
Applying kernel provided DT fixup script (rk322x-fixup.scr)
## Executing script at 600f0000
## Loading init Ramdisk from Legacy Image at 64000000 ...
   Image Name:   uInitrd
   Image Type:   ARM Linux RAMDisk Image (gzip compressed)
   Data Size:    6017147 Bytes = 5.7 MiB
   Load Address: 00000000
   Entry Point:  00000000
   Verifying Checksum ... OK
## Flattened Device Tree blob at 61f00000
   Booting using the fdt blob at 0x61f00000
   Loading Ramdisk to 67e42000, end 683ff07b ... OK
   Loading Device Tree to 67dcf000, end 67e41fff ... OK

Starting kernel ...

I/TC: Secondary CPU 1 initializing
I/TC: Secondary CPU 1 switching to normal world boot
I/TC: Secondary CPU 2 initializing
I/TC: Secondary CPU 2 switching to normal world boot
I/TC: Secondary CPU 3 initializing
I/TC: Secondary CPU 3 switching to normal world boot

Armbian 20.11.3 Buster ttyS2

rk322x-box login: iamgroot
Password:
Last login: Sat Dec 12 10:39:28 UTC 2020 on ttyS2
      _    _________  ____            _
 _ __| | _|___ /___ \|___ \__  __    | |__   _____  __
| '__| |/ / |_ \ __) | __) \ \/ /____| '_ \ / _ \ \/ /
| |  |   < ___) / __/ / __/ >  <_____| |_) | (_) >  <
|_|  |_|\_\____/_____|_____/_/\_\    |_.__/ \___/_/\_\

Welcome to Armbian 20.11.3 Buster with Linux 5.9.14-rk322x

No end-user support: community creations

System load:   27%              Up time:       0 min
Memory usage:  5% of 960M       IP:
CPU temp:      63°C             Usage of /:    8% of 7.0G

[ 0 security updates available, 17 updates total: apt upgrade ]
Last check: 2020-12-12 10:40

iamgroot@rk322x-box:~$

No wifi or x yet but it's a start. serial seems to freeze sometimes, maybe because of my cloned pl2303 usb ttl. maybe i should get a better usb to uart. after repeated reboots, i managed to run rk322x-config successfully. i don't know what the wifi chip, it's marked S9012 and when i searched for it only transistors came up. lol.

[edouard_k]

On 2/1/2021 at 10:08 PM, jock said:

 

Taking a look to the pictures it results that the memory chips are 1Gbit each (https://www.digikey.ch/product-detail/en/micron-technology-inc/MT41J256M4JP-15E-G/MT41J256M4JP-15E-G-ND/2663621), you got 8 of them, so 8Gbit of RAM, or 1 gigabyte if you prefer.

 

The eMMC memory is 8 gigabyte (see https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/estorage/emmc/KLM8G1GESD-B03P/). It's an interesting part because it has a very fast bus (HS400), but for compatibility once you select eMMC in rk322x-config it will be configured in DDR mode, which is yet fast enough.

 

I can't read very well the wifi chip, but from the shadows it looks like it says sv6051p, so no 5Ghz but just 2.4Ghz connectivity.

 

Despite the board says rk3229-mxq-v3.0 it does not mean that the chip mounted is really a rk3229. rk3228a/b are pin to pin compatible to rk3229 and often they are exchanged without any comunication. They are both grappy socs, but rk3229 is a tiny bit better than rk3228a/b.

 

Since your board is a new one, I would like to ask you if both leds are working on your board once you configure it with rk322x-config: usually the power leds is always working on all boards, but the secondary one changes among the boards. If you have the original device tree or the original firmware it will be useful to add full led support for this board too.

 

Hello, If i let the default configuration, i have the blue led blinking. If I change to second option, the red led will blink something.

 

Please find android dump.https://cloud.kleinhans.info/index.php/s/8JoXHHwHFWAH7Z7

[fabiobassa]

@Alvaro Fernandez
bom dia Alvaro, yes forum limitation for new users .
@jock and me we suspect of a strange ddrbin ( in the idbloader) that isn't compatible 100% with some ddr . Nota all ddrs just few .
Jock is trying to assemble an image just for you for this RARE case , for your tests, but give him some time, please.

@Seth

Thank you so much for reporting the experience, so you used 0xccccccc for flashing idbloader !!!

Interesting I will do further  investigations. TY

@edouard_k

ty for sharing the original firmware, always interesting dig into them.
 

[jock]

@Seth thanks for the brief reporting!

It looks to me it is everything ok. I only miss the reason why the legacy image with kernel 4.4 does not boot.

If the led is blinking it means the kernel is running, on first boot it may require some time to give you the prompt because it is enlarging the partition to fit the full size of the device.

The missing boot.env is ok, it's just there because u-boot environment has never been saved, and it is ok that way.

This one:

 

Failed to load '/boot/dtb/overlay/-fixup.scr'

although is strange. Maybe you turned off the board before it was first completing the partition resize? It happens that if something goes wrong during the boot process, /boot/armbianEnv.txt file gets truncated. (this file contains some important u-boot environment variables used during boot).

About the wifi, S9012 is not a name I recognize and the photo is not clear enough to say what you have there.

To get X.org you can either install the packages or use the Ubuntu Focal desktop image.

[Alvaro Fernandez]

On 2/24/2020 at 5:36 PM, hexdump said:

@Alessandro - you may try the following on a linux system, assuming your sdcard is in /dev/mysdcard (whichever device this might be in your case):

"zcat working Librelec-xyz.img.gz | dd of=/dev/mysdcard bs=512 count=32768 status=progress"

then use "fdisk /dev/mysdcard" to create a partition starting at sector 32768 (something like o, n, p, 1, 32768, enter, w, q - might be wrong - all off mind) and then dump the armbian image to it:

"xzcat Armbian-xyz.img.xz | dd of=/dev/mysdcard bs=512 skip=8192 seek=32768 status=progress"

and then try to boot that sd card - i think the armbian image uses an offset of 8192 sectors (@jock please correct me if i'm wrong here) - i never tried it this way, but in theory it should work and maybe be the fastest way to get libreelec boot and armbian rootfs combined

 

good luck and best wishes - hexdump

Good day @fabiobassa, I feel so dumb now. Re-reading the messages I found this one from @hexdump. Turns out, this was the key to make it work. I stupidly focused in more complex (for me) instructions. 

 

I have succesfully booted the device with Armbian, lacking wifi support. I found out that LibreElec loads the module for rtl8723bs and works fine. So now I'm looking into compiling that module for the kernel. Another thing I noticed is that the kernel "sees" only 1GB of RAM, not 2GB of RAM. But those are things I will try to workout once I manage (if I manage) to compile the kernel succefully .

 

Thanks again for your patience and dedication. If you need any information from my device let me know.

 

Once I get all working I would let you guys know!

 

[fabiobassa]

@Alvaro Fernandez
Alvaro you don't need ANYTHING more of what you already have

quite sure it uses 8723cs even if it says 8723bs  so you have to blacklist ssv6051  because quite sure is this one interfering.

don't need to compile really nothing. The legacy image already has every thing, just make sure the other wifi modules don't get loaded and instead is loaded the right one

about ram....please.... don't believe what chinese resellers say and check on internet the right name of one ram chip and just multiply

[jock]

@Alvaro Fernandez please follow @fabiobassa suggestion, it should work. ù

Also if you run rk322x-config it should configure the wifi modules for you automatically.

[Seth]

@jock

Maybe you turned off the board before it was first completing the partition resize?

 

Indeed i have,  i removed the plug because i thought i made a mistake with the flashing procedure . Silly me

 

About the wifi, S9012 is not a name I recognize and the photo is not clear enough to say what you have there.

 

I sort of tried and made sense of what i can see with my deteriorating vision. but crawling the web lead me to others that have the same wifi chip S9012p. I already succcessfully installed armbian 5.9 focal, and it gets identified as  unknown wifi with vid:pid 02e7:9086.

 

Anyway, i disabled the desktop service and will connect it to lan for the moment so i can play with it using putty.  A 1.2GHz quad core processor and 1G ram and 8G flash can do a lot of things. I only flashed the desktop version to be sure i get sshd package and just in case someone gets the hdmi and wifi working someday. This is a nice break from my mundane day job and my other hobbies. 

 

also, i have attached dmesg output.

dmesg.txt

[jock]

@Seth

Found some discussion about a similar wifi chip that uses the 9082xs kernel module. Some people modified an existing kernel module from realtek to make it compatible. Discussion is here: https://forum.libreelec.tv/thread/5457-s905x-unknown-wlan-chip/

 

About HDMI, it should work perfectly fine. At least it works perfectly fine on most boards.

[Seth]

A better pic of the wifi chip. I think it's supposed to be an el cheapo substitute for AP series wifi chips ( similar to what happened to stm32 and cs32/gd32 microcontroller cloning). this drove me bonkers to say the least.

 

*pic cropped and edited in markup with palma filter

[dale]

Hello,

I had a RK3229 box without an SD card slot, so I decided to use rkdeveloptool to flash into eMMC.

Everything has gone OK.

 

Here is what I do

 

Quote

sudo rkdeveloptool db rk322x_loader.bin

Downloading bootloader succeeded.

sudo rkdeveloptool wl 0x0 Armbian_21.02.1_Rk322x-box_focal_legacy_4.4.194_desktop.img

Write LBA from file (100%)

sudo rkdeveloptool rd

Reset Device OK.

 But the device got stuck in Maskrom mode no matter why.

I tried a lot but no success.

Maybe somebody can help me out. Thank you in advance.

[fabiobassa]

@dale

hello dale, would you try this loader and give us feedback , please

 

RK322XMiniLoaderAll_V2.47_spectek_en_ddr2_rd_odt_171127.bin