Allwinner H6

[danboid]

I agree with awawa regarding the overclocking and I don't think its a good idea to run them at max speed by default but it should be made easy to do that for anyone who wants to, of course.

 

These TV box CPUs are pretty weedy. Anyone who needs a bit of grunt would be well advised to get a rockpi4 instead if you really want to stick with ARM Linux. I wouldn't try to do anything too CPU heavy with a TV box.

 

I too would like to see the eMMC install patch MBB mentioned included in awawas fork. It sounds like MBB has tested this quite well already so why not?

[awawa]

@Pic55 after creating a backup I tried to install on eMMC. But the system doesn't boot from eMMC, starting from SD is still working.

During installation using armbian-config there are some errors:

sed: can't read /mnt/nand-sata-install.yi7VMe/bootfs/boot/boot.cmd: No such file or directory
sed: can't read /mnt/nand-sata-install.yi7VMe/bootfs/boot/boot.cmd: No such file or directory
grep: /mnt/nand-sata-install.yi7VMe/bootfs/boot/armbianEnv.txt: No such file or directory

/mnt/nand-sata-install.yi7VMe/bootfs is empty

[Pic55]

3 hours ago, awawa said:

@Pic55 after creating a backup I tried to install on eMMC. But the system doesn't boot from eMMC, starting from SD is still working.

During installation using armbian-config there are some errors:

sed: can't read /mnt/nand-sata-install.yi7VMe/bootfs/boot/boot.cmd: No such file or directory
sed: can't read /mnt/nand-sata-install.yi7VMe/bootfs/boot/boot.cmd: No such file or directory
grep: /mnt/nand-sata-install.yi7VMe/bootfs/boot/armbianEnv.txt: No such file or directory

/mnt/nand-sata-install.yi7VMe/bootfs is empty

Thanks for the info @awawa. I'm currently trying to apply the guidelines provided by @MBB. I'll share if it works as well for my two models of TX6.

[danboid]

3 hours ago, awawa said:

@Pic55 after creating a backup I tried to install on eMMC. But the system doesn't boot from eMMC, starting from SD is still working.

During installation using armbian-config there are some errors:

sed: can't read /mnt/nand-sata-install.yi7VMe/bootfs/boot/boot.cmd: No such file or directory
sed: can't read /mnt/nand-sata-install.yi7VMe/bootfs/boot/boot.cmd: No such file or directory
grep: /mnt/nand-sata-install.yi7VMe/bootfs/boot/armbianEnv.txt: No such file or directory

/mnt/nand-sata-install.yi7VMe/bootfs is empty

 

Sorry if this is a stupid question but I presume you rebuilt your kernel using the emmc patch in MBBs .odt guide and installed the patched kernel before running nand-sata-install did you?

[awawa]

23 minutes ago, danboid said:

 

Sorry if this is a stupid question but I presume you rebuilt your kernel using the emmc patch in MBBs .odt guide and installed the patched kernel before running nand-sata-install did you?

Not yet, but these errors are unrelated because they are happen at the old host SD system before booting new system from eMMC.

[awawa]

TX6 design summary and of course new release.
Today was the day I decided to promote the TX6 as a my main native ARM development center. This brought some improvements and I finally decided to open it. There were no screws, just plastic snaps.

It seems that the manufacturer tried to improve the thermal characteristics of this device. On the right side: a flat metal block and a plastic mass.
At first I removed them but to my surprise the temperatures were worse. So this thermal bridge helps somehow.

The next step was to drill a few holes at the bottom and turn the box upside down (which meant putting it back in its "right" position). I also included some new rubber feet on the "new" bottom.
The box is cooler now, but the idle CPU temperature remains the same (it's better under load and the temperature returns to normal very quickly when the load is gone). So probably the TX6 design is not as flawed as I thought and the high temperature must be for some other reason.

I've managed also to enable installation on the eMMC storage: the installer works now without errors and uboot's DTS was updated in bit different manner (from Aarch DTS patches).
The speed is not great:


Images are being uploaded:
https://github.com/awawa-dev/build/releases/tag/v2022.03.08

[Pic55]

@awawajust tested your new image on both the TX6-A and TX6-P, it works well on both and the install on the TX6-P eMMC is sucessfull. That said FYI during the install on the eMMC I saw few errors messages, unfortunatly a bit fast to be noted (and so to asses if they are real problems or not). Do you know if the errors are logged somhewere ?

[MBB]

Those errors also happen on my builds right at the end of the process.  I haven't looked into them but they do not seem to cause any issues.

[awawa]

@Pic55 These are the same errors as earlier: now they disappear so fast that I didn't notice them too.
I just uploaded new experimental undervoltage image to the release (switch voltage table designed for better CPU batch). Seems safe jugging by some old alternative patches but can't guarantee it.
As a "side-effect" 1.8GHz works now. Still need to test it in long-term.

[Pic55]

Thanks @MBBand @awawafor the information. I'll let the box running for few days to see if it's stable.

 

[awawa]

After few days of heavy testing, "undervoltage" version installed on eMMC seems stable. Since I do a lot of builds where all the cores are used, I switch to 1.3GHz using armbian-config and replace the stock heatsink with an SSD heatsink (3  x times in size, same height). It's enough for 20 minutes of continues building without any throttling, then after that time it's slowly going down to 800MHz. Because it only takes 25 minutes to build from scratch (we do it only once) and re-building after changes are just around minute or two, I'm perfectly fine with that.

[Hemin]

Hello,

 

I have a tv box with and old buster image from balbes installed on the emmc. Now I want to install the las image from balbes Armbian_21.11.0-trunk_Aw-h6-tv_bullseye_current_5.10.82. I boot from the sd card but when I want to install to the emmc the script nand-sata-install only shows the option  to install update bootloader. I have missed something or doing something wrong?.

My box work without problems with the dtb sun50i-h6-tanix-tx6.dtb.

 

I see on the forum a new image from awawa, May be its more reliable than balbes image?

 

Regards

[MBB]

Yes, use @awawa's image.

[danboid]

Does anyone know of any working alternatives to the Phoenix USB Pro or Phoenix Card for flashing the internal memory (FES) of H6 TV boxes for Linux?

 

I've found FELix which builds OK under Ubuntu 20.04 but I've not been able to successfully flash a box with it yet. I suspect it never officially supported the H6 and it looks like the author has abandoned it.

 

https://github.com/jankowskib/FELix

[jernej]

If you have image with mainline U-Boot, you can first burn it to SD card, boot it and then butn same image to emmc directly. Only precondition is that emmc is enable in both, U-Boot and Linux.

[Hemin]

On 3/13/2022 at 9:38 PM, MBB said:

Yes, use @awawa's image.

thanks @MBB! @awawa image is superb. Seems that all is working

[danboid]

To sort of answer my own question, I was going wrong by using Phoenix USB Pro when I should've been using Phoenix LiveSuit which works much more reliably under Windows 10. I suspect USB Pro was a XP or Windows 7 app.

 

It would be nice to see FELix updated to support flashing H6. I have tried using dd under Armbian to copy H6 Android images onto the internal mmc but that doesn't work.

[bthoven]

Hi,

 

I have X96H 4GB/32GB. Which Armbian (Ubuntu 20.04 or newer) version with working wifi I should use?

Can it run from emmc too?

 

Thank you.

[bthoven]

On 3/26/2022 at 2:56 PM, bthoven said:

Hi,

 

I have X96H 4GB/32GB. Which Armbian (Ubuntu 20.04 or newer) version with working wifi I should use?

Can it run from emmc too?

 

Thank you.

Okay. I flashed Armbian_21.08.0-trunk_Aw-h6-tv_focal_current_5.10.53_xfce_desktop.img to my sdcard. The content inside  the flashed sdcard can't be viewed by Windows 10, so I just insert the card to my box, and it boots right to Armbian with working wifi. The Wifi AC mode is very fast too. The first boot shows only 2GB ram. Whilst still running Armbian, I amended /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf file and change mem=2048 to mem=3072, save, reboot, and now it shows 3GB ram.

 

The X96H is running hot at between 70-90+c (my X96 mini 50-60c). Using armbian-config to change the CPU min/max speed and power saving mode did not help much. I don't know how to decrease the heat.

 

The GUI response time is still great when operating with mouse/keyboard attaching to the box.

However, with the x11vnc server running and with my Win 10 VNC viewer, the screen response time is sluggish (it is fast for my Armbian X96 mini (S905x)). How to improve the speed?. XRDP is much worse and unuseable.

[awawa]

Reaching over 90C indicates that probably there is something wrong with the CPU governor. In modern 5.15 when 85C for H6 is reached then almost instantly hard CPU throttling occurs (you can observe temperature and CPU frequency in htop). Temperate over 85C like 86C (the max I reached) could happen only for a moment and only under very heavy load.

[bthoven]

12 hours ago, awawa said:

Reaching over 90C indicates that probably there is something wrong with the CPU governor. In modern 5.15 when 85C for H6 is reached then almost instantly hard CPU throttling occurs (you can observe temperature and CPU frequency in htop). Temperate over 85C like 86C (the max I reached) could happen only for a moment and only under very heavy load.

Is it possible the CPU governor may have reported temperature higher than the actual values? I found the box chassis temperature is not much hotter than my X96 mini.

[bthoven]

Armbian by default boots up with user auto login. However, after sudo apt upgrade, I lost the auto login and have to enter password at every boot up.

( Armbian_21.08.0-trunk_Aw-h6-tv_focal_current_5.10.53_xfce_desktop.img)

 

For those who are interested, this is the solution I made to make it auto login again.
    edit /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/10-slick-greeter.conf, and add these two commands below
            autologin-user=yourloginusername
            autologin-user-timeout=0
    save and reboot

[Mod81]

On 4/1/2022 at 3:46 AM, bthoven said:

Is it possible the CPU governor may have reported temperature higher than the actual values? I found the box chassis temperature is not much hotter than my X96 mini.

I have also experienced the issue of my T95 mini hitting 90C + and under both Armbian and LibreElec its caused the system to first throttle the CPU down to 400mnz and then eventually shutdown. Yet the load on the CPU was not that high maybe 30% utilisation.

I think that maybe both of these OS are getting incorrect readings from the temperature sensor. As when I ran a CPU stress test on Android I left it maxing out the CPU for over 15 minutes i got a maximum of 91C for a few seconds then it dropped back to the 80s temperature as the cpu throttled to a lower speed.

 

Is there a way of altering the temperature value that Armbian will throttle and then shutdown the system? As i believe its doing so prematurely as I haven't experienced any crashes or shutdowns of the same box running Android.

[Mod81]

It appears that my T95 box was only running at 1.49Ghz (not 1.8Ghz) under Android according to a CPU info app I installed. So I set Armbian to run at that CPU speed by changing the value in cpufrequtils file but that didn't resolve the overheating problem in Armbian as I had hoped.

 

My next solution was to add maxcpus=2 into /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf and that did keep the temperatures low enough to stop the box overheating and shutting down. Even after a 15 min stress test of both cores running at 100% the box remained stable at a temperature of about 85C.  But obviously this was at the expense of loosing 2 CPU cores and when it did get to 85C it has to throttle the CPU speed down to about 1Ghz - 800mhz. But I would much prefer to have a stable box with only 2 cores than a 4 core one that is overheating.

 

I tried maxcpus=3 hoping I might get one more core going but the temps soon got up to similar as with all 4 cores enabled and the box shutdown after only a few mins of stress testing. So 2 cores is the sweet spot for my box apparently.

 

I still think there is some software issue here though as unless they have set up the Android build to report fake info, then its running all 4 cores under Android at 1.49Ghz and not having any overheating problems.

[bthoven]

I found some boxes run Android at one core only, even the CPU has four cores. That could explain why it can maintain the CPU temp at an acceptable level.

Sent from my M2007J3SG using Tapatalk

[zille]

I have a T95max and it runs fine. There is a red/blue LED on front side. It doesn't work. How can I switch it on/off? Are there a pwm pin where I can soldering a cable?

[MBB]

For the T95 Max, blue is 356, Red is 359, active low.  T95 mini is reversed.  Easy way to control is sysfs.

[Mod81]

On 4/26/2022 at 1:04 PM, bthoven said:

I found some boxes run Android at one core only, even the CPU has four cores. That could explain why it can maintain the CPU temp at an acceptable level.

Sent from my M2007J3SG using Tapatalk
 

Is there anyway to reliably find out how many cores are enabled in the Android build on my T95? Aida64 and a few other apps ive installed all show 4 cores, but i have seen while looking online that some dodgy Chinese Android ROMS are set up to report fake info to make them seem better than they really are.

[Marcio Torres]

@awawaHello, how are you?, first I want to thank you for the work you have been doing around the TX6 box. I couldn't find where I can download this image to install on my Box, can you guide me? Thank you and success.

[awawa]

Hi @Marcio Torres I have committed tutorial how to install the OS for Tanix TX6 here: review Link to the TX6 images repo is in the review. You can skip the part about installing HyperHDR if you don't need it. I use the undervoltage image variant (console) for a quite long time and it is stable so far. Installed on eMMC using armbian-config.