CSC Armbian for RK3318/RK3328 TV box boards

[Alex ThreeD]

@Matt H. have you tried to boot X88 from this sd-card? NTFS partition probably will be resized on the first boot.

Burning tools just write image file as-is, it is not intelligent enough to resize partitions for different SD sizes

[callegar]

A quick msg to kindly ask what should be the current kernels with an RK3318/28 TV Box. My system is currently on -edge and having 6.8.11 installed, but reading here that doing an upgrade on edge, people are receiving 6.10. At the same time `armbian-config` -> System -> Other does not even show me my own kernel among the options, edge being at proposed at 6.7 (associated at armian 24.2.1) and current at 6.6. Is there anything wrong with my config? Is it normal not to see edge kernels associated to the most recent armbian releases (e.g. 24.8.2)?

[targa]

Hi, I'm trying to install a box with above mentioned board. I can boot into multitool, I'm ending up in a root shell then, from which I can start "multitool.sh". It shows me the GNU license, but whatever I do, I usually end up in either ending the tool or starting a backup. So I'm actually blind. I tried screen and minicom on Linux, export TERM=linux on the root shell, and I get some improvements, but mainly in how colorful the output is, I can't see what is supposed to come after the license. Any hint what I need to change in order to see things ? Thanks a lot.

[EDIT: nevermind, I was able to perform the steps "blindly" using the screen shots that were part of the linked tutorial at the beginning of this thread. ]

Edited September 27 by targa

[MattWestB]

Looks like the kernel problems have being fixed and working as expected updating jammy stable:

 

   /_\  _ _ _ __ | |__(_)__ _ _ _
  / _ \| '_| '  \| '_ \ / _` | ' \
 /_/ \_\_| |_|_|_|_.__/_\__,_|_||_|

 v24.8.3 for RK3318 Box running Armbian Linux 6.6.47-current-rockchip64

 Packages:     Ubuntu stable (jammy)
 Support:      DIY (community maintained)
 IP addresses: (LAN) 192.168.2.X (WAN) X.X.X.X

 

Also possible updating to Noble after getting all updates installed with command do-release-upgrade  but is little work getting the external apt-sources working after being done (hint: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ ). 

Edited September 28 by MattWestB

[Fr id]

13.11.2021 в 21:09, jock сказал:

The backup made by multitool (and rkdeveloptool) is per nature a full backup of all the physical eMMC sectors. It has no knowledge of the abstract structures like filesystem and files.

The compression gives back a more manageable file which is not the entire size of the eMMC, but up to a few gigabytes, depending on how much data is stored on the eMMC and how much compressible it is.

 

Indeed if you decompress it, you get the whole size of the eMMC, it is expected and it is advisable too. If it is not so, it means the backup process didn't went right.

Hey!

 

I'm very new to this topic, do you mind helping? I installed your Multitool on an SD card, got the TV box backup, but now I have a 5 GB backup.gz file, and when I open it, theres a file without extention there. What programs would you advise to use (i'm on Windows 10) to extract the firmware from it and then put it back to this format later? If I understand it correctly, I need to decompress it with some program, edit, then compress it back with something and then flash to the TB box? Maybe there's some noob friendly guide out there that I didn't find, or you can explain the details yourself?

 

My goal is to get the firmware, then edit it - translate to another language, add some games, etc, then flash it back to the TV box.

 

Thank you!

[jock]

21 hours ago, Fr id said:

My goal is to get the firmware, then edit it - translate to another language, add some games, etc, then flash it back to the TV box.

Sorry but this is the wrong place to ask about that; no Android or custom setups here, just armbian.

[Fr id]

1 час назад, jock сказал:

Sorry but this is the wrong place to ask about that; no Android or custom setups here, just armbian.

OK so what program to use to decompress the backup file made by Multitool, then edit the armbian firmware and compress it again? 

[jock]

Hello, I am working on an alternative fd6551 and clones led driver for our tv boxes front displays.

It is getting up in very good shape, but requires some tuning up; I would like to ask anyone who owns a box with a front led panel and is interested to report the board name, the display chip (common chips are fd6551, fd650, tm1650, etc...) and the original stock dts if possibile.

 

It would make things easier to support already existing boards.

 

Thank you!

 

edit: for source code and reference: https://github.com/paolosabatino/leds-fd6551

 

[Netraam31]

23 hours ago, jock said:

and the original stock dts if possibile.

Happy to assist - any instructions on getting the file needed? So far my attempts to mount an android partition in multitool didn't really seem to work well, and I've been using "strings" on the bare partition to get a few text files that I wanted..

 

[jock]

@Netraam31 well, first of all it would be useful to share the board name you got and the led driver chip you have. perhaps I already got the dts and so you don't need to extract it.

To extract it, the procedure is totally manual, I use a hex editor for that, so if you have no clue on how to do it never mind.

[Netraam31]

I have an X88 PRO-B-RK3318-D4-V1.6 (2021-09-25) here with led display. (Commercial name X88 Pro 10)

Led display chip marking was barely readable but with the lighting in a specific angle I was able to read: AiP1628.

Which does not appear to be pin compatible with the fd6551, but looks like it could be fd628 compatible. Not sure how far off those two are - didn't look into datasheets yet. So could very well be out of scope for your driver. Happy to upload original "chinese" firmware/find relevant files/... if that would help.

 

Also have an RK3318_V1.4 202303.200629 that appears to have a compatible PCB for fd6551 chip but this doesn't have the chip populated (and no leds other than blue and red smd leds on the pcb).

 

[hexdump]

@jock - are you aware of https://github.com/jefflessard/tm16xx-display/ via

?

[jock]

@hexdump Ah, no I wasn't! It looks like I reinvented the wheel 😅 And that kernel driver is written very well with broader support too.

 

[jock]

@Netraam31 thanks for checking ,but actually no, your chip is not compatibile. Anyway my driver is just born and dead too, tm16xx is a much better alternative (and supports your chip too) I will integrate it into armbian sooner or later.

[MattWestB]

I have 2 H69Max branded boxes with 4G RAM and 64G eMMC. PCB is only labeled RK3318_V1.4 with fd6551 LED-driver chip.
Using LED conf 7 and working great WiFi and BT AP6330 looks working OK but using Eth  for network access.

Only USB is worse then other RK3X boxes if using little bandwidth on them.

I have one backup of original Android but its very large and must look if i can extracting the original DTS files  from it.

[jock]

@MattWestB led-conf7 does not exist on rk3318 build, it is just up to led-conf5 I introduced very recently; your board should fit into the base device tree.

 

Anyway, if you'd like to test the new tm16xx driver (which include support for fd6551 and several other led driver chips) you'd need to switch to the armbian beta repository, but beware of the dragons ahead! So take a full backup first!

You can switch to beta repository in armbian-config or by changing apt.armbian.com to beta.armbian.com in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/armbian.list

 

Then run apt update and upgrade at least the kernel, dtb and armbian-bsp-cli-rk3318 packages, then reboot, run rk3318-config and (for your specific case) you should be able to test the fd6551 driver with led-conf5 (YX_RK3318 board)

Now that you are confirming me that RK3318_V1.4 also have a display panel and the fd6551, I can update your board device tree too. Notice that it should be handy to know if leds and segmentes are displaying correctly. You can make reference to the original driver https://github.com/jefflessard/tm16xx-display on how to configure and tweak the driver for your specific board. Everything which is there applies as-is.

 

The same applies for other people with X88 and YX_RK3318 boards: there the led-conf that applies to their board should be already working out-of-the box!