CSC Armbian for RK3318/RK3328 TV box boards

[Seth]

@FatalWorld

there is a kernel oops about swapper being tainted. your board is the same as mine albeit with different wifi chip. these are the things i would try if that was my board:

1. backup original firmware and try flashing different firmwares on the emmc chip from the github page.

2. if running from sd card, i would try a different sd card just to test filesystem stability.

3. i would also try ram testing.

4. upload logs for different test image used. just do a "dmesg >> dmesg519.log", download that log using winscp and include it in your next post, it would help jock and others with debugging where your problem is coming from. got mine solved that way.

 

cheers and good luck!

Edited October 27, 2022 by Seth

[Jacek]

Quote

Seondly; Kivy finally *bleep* works. After compiling 20+ builds with different configurations, throwing the tv off the wall, buying a new tv and starting all over again, i found out that the issue was to do with Mesa not playing nice with the anti-aliasing Kivy applied, which resulted in a black screen. It still runs at 10-15 fps, but i think that's due to this build of Kivy being built with OpenGL instead of OpenGL ES, so i'm currently in the process of building Kivy with GLES support. At least we're making progress and i can't thank you guys enough for thinking this trough with me (or actually 'for me').

@AlwinLubSorry for replying a year late to your post. But honestly you are a lifesaver, I was trying to fix the same issue for a week, until I finally found your post. Thank you a ton for that.
I have questions though. Disabling multisampling does fix the issue when the app is a window in X11, but when writing directly to screen using SDL2 the whole image is scrambled.

Improvement compared to a black screen, but still not great. Did you find a way to write directly to screen without artifacts?
If not what display server you had the best results with, Weston or X11? Did touch work with it, touch doesn't work for me on X11

[Vidor]

Hi, could you recommend a small tactile screen that I can use with H96 Max V11?

 

Thx

[Taz]

Oh yes, it seems X88 pro RAM amount is detected wrong. I have https://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/view/347892/SAMSUNG/K4B4G0446C.html

8 chips so 4000000000 * 8 / 8 / 1024 / 1024 / 1024 = 3.7253 GB. Have not really needed the extra memory for anything yet.

Any ideas on what to do about it?

[jock]

2 hours ago, Aapo Tahkola said:

Oh yes, it seems X88 pro RAM amount is detected wrong. I have https://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/view/347892/SAMSUNG/K4B4G0446C.html

You have what? That datasheet is describing memory chips that range from 64 megabytes up to 512 megabytes each.

 

 

[MattWestB]

@Aapo Tahkola Pleas post one photo if you PCB so can see the model printed on the memory IC then the data chest is for the family if the chips and we is not knowing your box is having for model.

[Taz]

One picture is more than 1000 words. 4 more chips on the other side.

[MattWestB]

So :

 

Density: DDP 4Gb C-die

Banks: 8Banks

Part Number: K4B4G0446C

Package & Power, Temp. (-C/-L) & Speed: MC(L)F7/F8/H9

Org.: 1G x 4

 

and organized in 1Gb in 4 banks and 8 chips = 4 * 8 = 32 bit data bus on the SOC  * 1 Gb.

 

In your example you was having 8 bit databus for the RAM and i think its one 32 bit CPU and its using 32 bit databus for the RAM.

 

But the normal for CE (Chinese Export) marked products is 32 G RAM in the device.

[MattWestB]

You is having one good CH340 connected so look wot the bootloader is writing, its the true RAM the board is having

[Taz]

DDR version 1.16 20190713
ID:0xFFF
In
SRX
DDR3
666MHz
Bus Width=32 Col=11 Bank=8 Row=15 CS=1 Die Bus-Width=16 Size=2048MB
ddrconfig:2
OUT

I am not very good at reading these. I think I'll grab another box soon. These go as low as 25e for 2gb model from aliexp eu warehouses.

Edited November 23, 2022 by Aapo Tahkola

[MattWestB]

The same with my.

I dont knowing how the SOC is doing all things but the bus is 32 bit and the Die bus is using 16 bit and and then the Size is 2048 MB ?

I think @jock can explaining it better.

[jock]

@MattWestB @Aapo Tahkola sorry but I have no real explanation for this, chips are marked as 4 gigabit each, there are 8 of them, so it is 32 gigabit which is 4 gigabyte of RAM.

Can't correlate the bus widths with anything, I don't really know to what those buses refer to so I avoid to do any math with them, but my best guess is that they should not change the amount of memory shown by the system.

 

The ddrbin that does the RAM initialization and shows that information is a piece of binary supplied by rockchip itself, so there are two chances:

• the ddrbin is failing to detect the ram, because it is buggy or does not like your board
• the chips are somehow fake and they are advertised as 4 gigabit instead they are 2 gigabit

Now, for what is worth, you can reinstall an original Android image and see what the original ddrbin tells you about the RAM. If the original Android detects 4 gigabyte of RAM, then the first chance is the true one; if the original Android image detects 2 gigabyte of RAM, the second option is true.

 

[Hqnicolas]

@jock My Hero!

 

Quote

 

installed with dpkg -i Kernel 5.19.15 image

installed with dpkg -i kernel 5.19.15 dtb

 

5.15 ~ 5.18 fells laggy
this 5.19 from @jock needs to be the standart

H96 MAX V12 RK3318 4gb/64gb Board v1.4
Desktop 1.3ghz verry responsive and also fix HDMI 4K display problems
LOG: http://ix.io/4gJ6
GeekBench: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/18845814
 

Edited November 24, 2022 by hotnikq

[Taz]

@jock I'll check the original firmware once I get H96 MAX 4gb. Do not wanna risk downtime on PiVPN(which works fine BTW once you figure out the fw kinks) and HA. I did pay premium for the 4gb and there is a little "4GB" sticker inside so I am leaning towards ddrbin having some issue. Does this ddrbin have sources, named author somewhere ?

[MattWestB]

Look  here for the Gb and GB problematic https://telcom.uk/faqs/49/what-is-the-difference-between-megabit-mbit-and-megabyte-mbyte#:~:text=So%2C in short%2C 1 Megabit,used to measure file size.

[jock]

6 hours ago, Aapo Tahkola said:

I'll check the original firmware once I get H96 MAX 4gb. Do not wanna risk downtime on PiVPN(which works fine BTW once you figure out the fw kinks) and HA. I did pay premium for the 4gb and there is a little "4GB" sticker inside so I am leaning towards ddrbin having some issue. Does this ddrbin have sources, named author somewhere ?

Perhaps you did not pay attention to what I already wrote several times, so I highlight a bit it here: the ddrbin is a proprietary code from rockchip with no public source code.

I don't see any value in checking the original firmware on a different board, that's your precise board that is having issues, other boards are known to work well even with 4GB of RAM.

[jock]

@hotnikq

Thanks for reporting, that 5.19.15 kernel has LibreELEC patches in.

Unfortunately they were not accepted into mainline armbian, the 5.19 train is gone and I won't do all the rebasing work again for 6.0 or future kernels, so I suggest you to stay stick with that and hold the kernel packages if you're happy with them.

[Taz]

@jock Oh I totally missed the part of ddrbin being proprietary. armbian forum search functions do not work anymore so I could not search the old posts anymore. Hmm, that kind of sucks actually. So in the event that the ddrbin versions are different then would have to find version that works on all.  I would much rather rockchip deal with this.

Yes, I meant that I cannot test the original firmware on X88 pro until I back it up to another rk3318.

 

Too bad about the LibreELEC patches. I could see myself wanting 6.0 kernel at some point when the time comes. Perhaps it would be possible to filter out which of the patches fixes hdmi.

 

Oh yeah, if someone is considering running like web services on these kinds of boxes I would suggest using ethernet instead of 5ghz wifi. 5ghz wifi on Linux at least in my experience is nowhere near as stable as eth.

Edited November 29, 2022 by Aapo Tahkola

[jock]

1 hour ago, Aapo Tahkola said:

Oh I totally missed the part of ddrbin being proprietary. armbian forum search functions do not work anymore so I could not search the old posts anymore.

The search function? It was two posts above yours: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/24085-csc-armbian-for-rk3318rk3328-tv-box-boards/?do=findComment&comment=153877

 

[Taz]

I just let you know if I ever manage to fix it. I kind of think these bugs reports should go to kernel has bugzilla or somewhere not here but that is just my opinion.

[jock]

On 11/29/2022 at 5:56 PM, Aapo Tahkola said:

I kind of think these bugs reports should go to kernel has bugzilla

This is exactly the reason why the linux has no bugzilla-like issue tracker, because people would abuse of that since this is not a bug of the kernel.

Please, stop posting nonsense.

[r00tl3ss]

@jock would it be possible to run armbian on a rk3328 box that has a faulty emmc? the module is recognized a Samsung but flash size is 0Mb (due a powercut during erasing, should be 64Gb), any attempt to create a partition table does not work.. the box always boots in maskmode.

 

i tried to write multitool on a sdcard with armbian but it does not boot from there, stays in maskmode, i was thinking of desoldering the emmc but i'm not sure if it's worth and that is would boot from the sd slot.. shorting the clock could maybe help to hide the module instead of desoldering it completly?

 

board is a mxq v1.2, should be a H96Max but i only have the board not the enclosure so i'm not sure.

[jock]

@r00tl3ss

Hello, the answer to your question is "yes, but depends".

 

Normally you're in the perfect condition to boot from sdcard: the emmc is not recognized or has and invalid bootloader, so the SOC tries to boot from sdcard. You should be able to boot anything (except Android) from sdcard: armbian, libreelec, multitool or whatever...

 

You're both right either about completely desoldering the emmc and shorting the clock pin: shorting the emmc clock pin should be enough to mask it from the soc and desoldering should not be necessary.

 

Now comes the bad news: unfortunately if you're not able to boot from sdcard in your condition, I'm afraid the sdcard slot is wired to the "alternative" (also called sdmmc_ext) controller and not the usual one. The SOC, as far as we experienced here on the forum, does not look for alternative controller during its very first boot phase. It turns out that, on those boards like yours, it just does not see the sdcard because it is not wired where expected.

 

If you have the serial uart attached, you could post the output you get when you run rkdeveloptool db your_loader.bin from your computer. Maybe it has some hints about the emmc or sdcard controller. Also be sure to get a loader which is recent or up to date; if it is too old it may not detect the emmc correctly.

 

[MattWestB]

@jockThen the device is MASK ROM is it also looking for bootloader on the USB or is it only then having bootloader on the MMC ?

[r00tl3ss]

mm it seems i cannot quote messages, wierd.

 

yeah I was afraid of that scenario you are mentioning, with my luck it still will not boot from SD card and the box is now pretty much a paperweight.

 

i have a cp210x USB serial but i don't think it can handle that serial speed com.

[jock]

@MattWestB AFAIK rockchip devices don't look for USB boot as Amlogic instead do. I don't know if newer SOCs like rk356x or rk3588 do that, but for older SOCs USB boot it is not mentioned anywhere.

 

@r00tl3ss you have to select a piece of text and a quote popup will appear.

You may indeed try the cp210x USB serial, maybe it can reach the 1.5mbps speed even if it is not officially rated for.

 

 

[paradigman]

I'm very like the libreelec patched 5.19.15 version. 
Where can I find the correct header .deb file for it?

[dam74]

hi,

i want to stop led blinking red and blue . Is it possible ?

 

thanks

[MR01]

I installed 5.19.15 image on RK3318 box, but then i lost the driver of realtek usb wifi card i use.

There is a way to simply choose the next boot kernel? so that i can clone repo and get .deb headers then boot to 5.19.15 kernel e test/install? (Ps: where can i find the correct 5.19.15 headers for build drivers from source?)

 

Im using this box daily so moving it to ethernet port of router is complicated (is away from pc and im using it for pc connection)

 

Thanks

 

 

Edited January 1, 2023 by MR01

[jock]

@MR01 that 5.19.15 version was an experimental version; I compiled it without the extra wifi drivers because they were causing compilation issues. If you need something "stable" you should stay stick with the community version available on github which is updated regularly and prefer the "current" kernel flavour in place of edge.