CSC Armbian for RK3318/RK3328 TV box boards

[jock]

double post - deleted

[Giacomo Tonelli]

hi all how can I make a backup of the armbian of the emmc? with multitool it does not work. Thank you

[MX10.AC2N]

Hi all, So I started from scratch, everything works fine without any overlays but this morning I tried adding overlays=rk3318-box-led-conf3 in armbianEnv.txt and the box freezes at startup

[jock]

@MX10.AC2N Gosh, this cannot be true... 

it should be the same led-conf3 I published before for testing, just recompiled by armbian this time.

Don't even understand why it is freezing since cpu-hs overlay is not set and cpu is limited to 1.0 ghz

[jock]

This is the led-conf3 overlay compiled manually again: rockchip-rk3318-box-led-conf3.dtbo

[MX10.AC2N]

29 minutes ago, jock said:

This is the led-conf3 overlay compiled manually again: rockchip-rk3318-box-led-conf3.dtbo

Thank you again for your responsiveness ...
Well I have just tested with the file you just gave me, indeed it was slightly lighter than the one available in the base image (7912 bytes against 8052) .. So I believed in it but the result is the same, the startup freezes at the same time (as in the photo ..), sorry for the bad news ..

edit : Do you think that I should install full firmware via armbian-config or I can stay in mini?

 

[Gausus]

On 10/21/2021 at 5:27 AM, RetroFan90 said:

i'll check for other monitors with dvi-d.

hope we can turn this into a full blown computer that supports nearly all hdmi / dvi-d displays

basic resolutions

640x480

720x480 / 720x576

800x480 / 800x600

1024x600 / 1024x768

1152x864

1280x720 / 1280x768 / 1280x800 / 1280x960 / 1280x1024

1360x768 / 1366x768

1440x900

1600x900 / 1600x1200

1680x1050

1920x1080 / 1920x1200

2048x1536

and so on

 

EDIT:

 

Try forcing mode on HDMI

Add new line inn armbianEnv.txt

 

sudo nano /boot/armbianEnv.txt

extraargs=video=HDMI-A-1:D drm.edid_firmware=edid/1920x1080.bin

 

# OR you can test this setting

extraargs=video=HDMI-A-1:D drm.edid_firmware=HDMI-A-1:edid/1920x1080.bin video=HDMI-A-1:1920x1080

 

# IF not working test lower res like 1024x768 

 

# Y can set different refresh rate to :  1024x768@30

extraargs=video=HDMI-A-1:D drm.edid_firmware=HDMI-A-1:edid/1024x768.bin video=HDMI-A-1:1024x768@30

 

If working change res after login from Settings > Display ( Xfce)

 

More info her LINK1 : LINK2

 

 

 

 

[jock]

9 minutes ago, MX10.AC2N said:

Thank you again for your responsiveness ...
Well I have just tested with the file you just gave me, indeed it was slightly lighter than the one available in the base image (7912 bytes against 8052) .. So I believed in it but the result is the same, the startup freezes at the same time (as in the photo ..), sorry for the bad news ..

edit : Do you think that I should install full firmware via armbian-config or I can stay in mini?

 

Very strange...

May I ask you if you're using the sdcard or the system is installed on emmc?

Also if you can edit armbianEnv.txt and set verbosity=10 maybe the kernel provides some more hints.

 

At the moment I'm running out of ideas: a full dmesg from serial would give some hints on what is going on

I need some time to think about the issue...

[MX10.AC2N]

57 minutes ago, jock said:

Very strange...

May I ask you if you're using the sdcard or the system is installed on emmc?

Also if you can edit armbianEnv.txt and set verbosity=10 maybe the kernel provides some more hints.

 

At the moment I'm running out of ideas: a full dmesg from serial would give some hints on what is going on

I need some time to think about the issue...

At moment, I have system just on sd-card..

I switched to verbosity = 10 but then it scrolls too fast on the screen, suddenly I tried to film it and bring out some photos but hey it's not super easy ..

It gives a lot of image very blurry finally I did the best, at the end I only have 5 lines with the rest of the black screen .. Hope that can help you ..

[MX10.AC2N]

copy of dmesg without rk3318-box-cpu-hs and rk3318-box-led-conf3 => https://paste.yunohost.org/ogasoqumeq.vbs

[jock]

@MX10.AC2N

What is a sec... there is something that definitely should not be there. In your dmesg log I see:

[    2.326648] rk3328-dmc ff780000.dmc: current ATF version 0x101

 

Instead the expected message from a freshly installed system (debian bullseye) is this:

[    2.307538] rk3328-dmc ff780000.dmc: trusted firmware need to update or is invalid

 

On you system the DRAM memory controller (DMC) driver is definitely active, while it should not be! This is incredibly unexpected!

Now I tried both the latest images on my box and the DMC does not activate because there is the need for a bootloader piece of code I didn't yet plugged into, so I wonder what the hell is going on!

 

Do you ever installed the older image with legacy kernel in eMMC or is there original Android in eMMC?

This is absolutely strange, it looks like the bootloader is not what it is expected to be!

 

By the way to fix this issue, which is potentially causing you a system freeze or kernel fault, substitute /boot/dtb/rockchip/rk3318-box.dtb with the one attached here.

 

 

 

 

rk3318-box.dtb

[MX10.AC2N]

Thank again @jock

So on the emmc I still have the armbian bulleyes system from the station-m1 image

So I replaced the rk3318-box.dtb file (yours is slightly heavier 63761 bytes against 62913 for the dtb already present in the image) here is the new dmesg => https://paste.yunohost.org/alatoyakud.md

[jock]

50 minutes ago, MX10.AC2N said:

Thank again @jock

So on the emmc I still have the armbian bulleyes system from the station-m1 image

So I replaced the rk3318-box.dtb file (yours is slightly heavier 63761 bytes against 62913 for the dtb already present in the image) here is the new dmesg => https://paste.yunohost.org/alatoyakud.md

 

Ahhh ok, we got the right explanation.

Now the message is properly gone from dmesg.

 

The problem is this: the box always boots from eMMC because there is a valid bootloader there. The bootloader is in reality composed of many parts executed one after another.

The station-m1 bootloader contains a thing that is called ATF (Arm Trusted Firmware). This piece of software is like a protected sandbox, something that runs outside the kernel or, if you prefer, above the kernel. It can whatever do it wants, can even stop the linux kernel. In fact it controls some very low level things, like system reset, core initialization, standby/resume, and so on...

 

It also controls the RAM frequency scaling, so memory can switch from 300 Mhz up to 800 Mhz and more.

 

Now there are two "flavours": the proprietary rockchip ATF (compiled by rockchip with their own customizations) and the public one provided by ARM.

The proprietary ATF is fully-fledged, but actually we don't really know what is inside: it's a blob provided by rockchip.

The public opensource ATF has just basic features, but we know it is harmless.

 

When I say harmless I want to stress out the fact that the ATF can peek his nose everywhere in the system, in fact it is widely used to implement DRM (Digital Rights Management) and HDCP (HDMI Copy Protection) features in tv boxes, to prevent piracy and restrict user rights in some form.

 

A proof of some harmful behaviour (not yet fully understood) is the fact that if I run rk3318 boards with proprietary ATF, the system crashes when cpu frequency is > 1.1Ghz. 1.1Ghz is the advertised speed for the rk3318 chip.

When I run the opensource ATF, rk3318 boards runs happy at 1.3 Ghz or even above.

 

Now this behaviour is a bit suspect: I don't want to state that the rockchip ATF is crashing the system on purpose to limit the frequency speed of the chip, but if we consider the final effect, it is so.

 

All this long explanation is to say that maybe the bootloader installed in the eMMC may cause headaches of some sort. I don't know if there are limiting behaviours on rk3328 too, but as we are used to say in Italy, the wolf loses the hair but does not lose the vice (ie: what they do once, they can do again)

 

It would be wise to clean the eMMC bootloader. If you're not afraid to lose the eMMC installation, you could erase the eMMC with blkdiscard.

If you don't want to lose it, you may make a backup of the first megabyte of the eMMC on the sdcard, zero-fill the first megabyte of the eMMC, and finally reboot.

Otherwise leave it as-is and just and see what happens with led-conf3 overlay again.

 

[Ben N Voutour]

can the verbosity level go higher than 10?

if so then set it to the highest available.

and now getting into MaskROM is easier if you solder on a push button to the emmc clock then anywhere on ground and use 2 wifi antennas pcba and solder the button to it and make sure that the button when pressed , makes connection and goes into MaskROM mode and all you need is 2 wires on the button and 1 wire on emmc clock and the other one on on ground and tape the button pcb with capton / polyamide adhesive tape so you don't short out the cpu otherwise it will halt and restart

 

[Ben N Voutour]

22 minutes ago, RetroFan90 said:

can the verbosity level go higher than 10?

if so then set it to the highest available.

and now getting into MaskROM is easier if you solder on a push button to the emmc clock then anywhere on ground and use 2 wifi antennas pcba and solder the button to it and make sure that the button when pressed , makes connection and goes into MaskROM mode and all you need is 2 wires on the button and 1 wire on emmc clock and the other one on on ground and tape the button pcb with capton / polyamide adhesive tape so you don't short out the cpu otherwise it will halt and restart

 

 

[MX10.AC2N]

Hi @jock and thank you for these explanations it enlightens my knowledge a little more, suddenly I left the emmc as it is and tried adding overlays, it works I was able to put led-conf3 and cpu-hs without problem here is the copy of dmesg => https://paste.yunohost.org/ewutojutal.md

 

However I come back to your explanations, you indicate that ATF would be useful for DRM rights, suddenly this attracts my interest because I am looking for a solution to be able to read the amazon prime videos and unfortunately I still have this damn message missing drm rights .. do you know a parade with this problem? I looked a lot on Github, I even tried a few installs but nothing convincing, often the problem is that we are under arm64 (no drm rights under arm64) because with armhf apparently there will be solutions .. Y -will there be a way to build a multiarch arm64 / armhf image or maybe just an armhf image ..? For the moment I am in the idea of using a docker like https://github.com/HenningThiemann/docker-chromium-armhf ..

 

Thanks again, apparently the problems seem to be solved, I will go back to 1.3GHz.

[jock]

On 10/23/2021 at 9:25 AM, MX10.AC2N said:

Hi @jock and thank you for these explanations it enlightens my knowledge a little more, suddenly I left the emmc as it is and tried adding overlays, it works I was able to put led-conf3 and cpu-hs without problem here is the copy of dmesg => https://paste.yunohost.org/ewutojutal.md

 

However I come back to your explanations, you indicate that ATF would be useful for DRM rights, suddenly this attracts my interest because I am looking for a solution to be able to read the amazon prime videos and unfortunately I still have this damn message missing drm rights .. do you know a parade with this problem? I looked a lot on Github, I even tried a few installs but nothing convincing, often the problem is that we are under arm64 (no drm rights under arm64) because with armhf apparently there will be solutions .. Y -will there be a way to build a multiarch arm64 / armhf image or maybe just an armhf image ..? For the moment I am in the idea of using a docker like https://github.com/HenningThiemann/docker-chromium-armhf ..

 

Thanks again, apparently the problems seem to be solved, I will go back to 1.3GHz.

Glad to hear everything is back to normal.

About the Amazon DRM etc... I don't know anything about. I see that libreelec is downloading chrome and extracting the widewine DRM binary to let some plugins work, but I did not ever try Amazon Prime and don't know what are the requirements for that.

The proprietary ATF may provide a "secure" application of some sort for DRM, but this is a guess. I never digged into what in reality there is. I may guess that "secure" ATF software is tailored with some other userland software which I'm not aware of that may lie in the Android image, but this is all purely guessing

[Tarzanus]

I tried downloading and running the latest image from SD card. I get kernel panic at boot. Anyone knows how to start it successfully? It's Rockchip based box A95X Z2.

[chinhhut]

I have a T9 box (2G memory & 16GB flash) and just install Armbian 21.11 - Debian Bullseye minimal - mainline kernel 5.14.14 successfully to eMMC according to the guide.

Everything seems to work well until I tried to unplug the adapter and then replug the adapter again. After that,  the box unable to start even I tried to unplug/replug the adapter several times again. There is only black screen via HDMI output.

Of course, I can install Armbian to the eMMC from scratch again but I'm afraid the "black screen" error above will happen.

@jockdo you have any suggestions to fix this? Please let me know if you need any detail steps or log to debug.

Thank you very much for your great work again.

[jock]

36 minutes ago, chinhhut said:

I have a T9 box (2G memory & 16GB flash) and just install Armbian 21.11 - Debian Bullseye minimal - mainline kernel 5.14.14 successfully to eMMC according to the guide.

Everything seems to work well until I tried to unplug the adapter and then replug the adapter again. After that,  the box unable to start even I tried to unplug/replug the adapter several times again. There is only black screen via HDMI output.

Of course, I can install Armbian to the eMMC from scratch again but I'm afraid the "black screen" error above will happen.

@jockdo you have any suggestions to fix this? Please let me know if you need any detail steps or log to debug.

Thank you very much for your great work again.

 

The mysterious adapter is the power plug?

However yes, logs are important (expecially those coming from the serial port). You should clarify what you did in your first session: for example, did you run rk3318-config and what settings you enable?

 

edit: of course all other details described in paragraph "How to partecipate" in first page are useful

[chinhhut]

15 hours ago, jock said:

 

The mysterious adapter is the power plug?

However yes, logs are important (expecially those coming from the serial port). You should clarify what you did in your first session: for example, did you run rk3318-config and what settings you enable?

 

edit: of course all other details described in paragraph "How to partecipate" in first page are useful

I did not run the rk3318-config yesterday, just keep default. But I run the "apt get upgrade" and also forgot to run the following command after installing to eMMC:

Run apt-mark hold linux-image-edge-rockchip64 linux-dtb-edge-rockchip64 to avoid the upgrade of kernel with the armbian official one, since it still does not contain rk3318

That would be the reason the kernel of my box was updated to the latest one from armbian official. It did not contain 3318 dtb so the box was unable to boot.

 

Today, I just re-install from scratch again then run the hold command to prevent to upgrade the kernel. The "black screen" error is not happened again up to now even unplug/plug about 3 times.

 

Thank you very much for your quick response. 

[jock]

7 hours ago, chinhhut said:

I did not run the rk3318-config yesterday, just keep default. But I run the "apt get upgrade" and also forgot to run the following command after installing to eMMC:

Run apt-mark hold linux-image-edge-rockchip64 linux-dtb-edge-rockchip64 to avoid the upgrade of kernel with the armbian official one, since it still does not contain rk3318

That would be the reason the kernel of my box was updated to the latest one from armbian official. It did not contain 3318 dtb so the box was unable to boot.

 

Today, I just re-install from scratch again then run the hold command to prevent to upgrade the kernel. The "black screen" error is not happened again up to now even unplug/plug about 3 times.

 

Thank you very much for your quick response. 

ook thanks for reporting! Much better to know that it wasn't a dtb/kernel fault

[byfa]

Hello everyone. I received my TV BOX from CN today, and I joined the game.

For your information, my box is [HK1 RBOX R1 mini] w/4G/64G.

It's the one with a picture of an eagle on the top.

I installed the files from the SD card.

Armbian_21.11.0-trunk_Rk3318-box_bullseye_edge_5.14.14_minimal.img

I used multitool to back up the stock ROM and then flashed it to eMMC.

Wired LAN, wireless LAN 2.4G, 5G, USB-KB, MOUSE all work normally.

In addition, I installed xfce and Firefox, and it seems to be slow, but it works well.

Thanks to whoever is releasing and maintaining this wonderful thing.
I will write again if there is any movement.

 

Thank you.

 

 

Edited October 31, 2021 by byfa
missed box name

[fabiobassa]

Hello Byfa thank you for reporting your experience

I doubt it is real 64 giga rom and 4 giga ram... but you can check with command

df
free

 Also corious to know how much it costed and how long you waited to have it

[vitaliy.burkut]

Hi all!

In first I want to say thanks to all who make armbian working on rk3318

Thank to @jock for the topic and builds.

 

I burn the minimal version to emmc and its work fine. But wifi no :( (and led display too but its no mater )

 

I want to fix it but not know from what I should to begin

 

I have information:

Multitool write in the header : Wifi device: Broadcom BCM4334/Ampack ap6334 id:02d0:4334

 

but wlan0 device not exists

 

dmesg | grep bcm:

* * *

brcmfmac:brcfm_fw_alloc_request: unknow chip bcm43342/1

 

Скрытый текст

 

 

 

Edited November 1, 2021 by vitaliy.burkut
add images

[curse]

16 hours ago, fabiobassa said:

Hello @Byfa thank you for reporting your experience

I doubt it is real 64 giga rom and 4 giga ram... 

Also corious to know how much it costed and how long you waited to have it

 

The "HK1 RBOX R1 mini 4G/64G" Seems to be around 45 Euros in various places, Banggood for example.

Why wouldn't it be real 4GB/64GB? It seems to be more or less standard nowadays. I know the Allwinner H6 only can handle 3GB RAM but usually is sold with a 4GB chip inside, but I've never heard about it with the Rockship RK3318/RK3328. They seem to have cheaper versions with 2/16 and 4/32 though.

 

[fabiobassa]

I have several hk1 circle , all of them have a note : 4/64

 

Well... When I check them someone's gave (with the two commands "df -h" and "free" ) an amount of 2/16 in most cases and few as less as 1/8 

 

Let's say Chinese producers tend to exaggerate :-)

 

So a check is highly suggested and if ther are 4/64 well .. good for you 

[curse]

Ahh. So it's a HK1 thing...I got a H96 Max+ and at least it seems to have the specified RAM/eMMC size.

 

Welcome to Armbian 21.11.0-trunk Bullseye with Linux 5.10.68-rockchip64

No end-user support: built from trunk

System load:   55%           	Up time:       2 days 21:36	
Memory usage:  17% of 3.88G  	IP:	       192.168.0.13 192.168.0.15
CPU temp:      75°C           	Usage of /:    10% of 57G    	
storage/:      74% of 1.9T   	storage temp:  31°C         
curse@H96MaxPlus:~$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev            1.9G     0  1.9G   0% /dev
tmpfs           398M   44M  355M  11% /run
/dev/mmcblk2p1   57G  5.4G   51G  10% /
tmpfs           2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
tmpfs           2.0G   32K  2.0G   1% /tmp
/dev/sda1       1.9T  1.4T  490G  74% /home/curse/Media
/dev/zram1       49M   22M   24M  49% /var/log
tmpfs           398M     0  398M   0% /run/user/1000
curse@H96MaxPlus:~$ free -h
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           3.9Gi       711Mi       308Mi        43Mi       2.9Gi       3.1Gi
Swap:          1.9Gi       4.0Mi       1.9Gi

 

[byfa]

19 hours ago, fabiobassa said:

Hello Byfa thank you for reporting your experience

I doubt it is real 64 giga rom and 4 giga ram... but you can check with command

df
free

 Also corious to know how much it costed and how long you waited to have it

 

Hi, @fabiobassa .

My df,free results show values like @curse 's.

Exactly, 4G RAM/64G ROM does exist.

There are honest people in that country once in a while.

 

I have since crashed it and recovered to a stock ROM that I had backed up, but it worked.
Also, I am now reinstalling all of armbian.

 

I'll see you then.

[curse]

1 hour ago, byfa said:

I have since crashed it and recovered to a stock ROM that I had backed up, but it worked.
Also, I am now reinstalling all of armbian.

Have fun experimenting. I myself is "hooked" on playing with the TV-boxes. First I had an old Mini M8S II Amlogic S905x 2/8 box that had been in a drawer for years, and I thought it should be possible to use it as a mini server and found Armbian. Then I felt that 8GB was a bit tiny, and started to look around for something slightly bigger though still cheap. I was choosing between Rockship RK3328 and Allwinner H6 since it looked like they both had fairly good support already, and not an Amlogic S905x(2,3,4) since I read here on the forum about some bad practice from Amlogic. After finding out that the H6 only can handle 3GB RAM, I went for the RK3328. In my subjective experience, the Amlogic felt easier to work with and also felt faster... No idea if it is for real. Thinking about getting a box with an Allwinner chip as well, just so I have one each of the three bigger brands, but it will have to wait for some savings to pile up. The RK3566 boxes with 8GB RAM looks fun as well, but I don't think I use anywhere near 4GB at the moment...