Can't boot from sd card

[IMakeTheQuestions]

I've been trying to get armbian to work on a rk3228a tv box but after flashing multitools on a sd card with balena etcher I insert it into the slot and it just refuses to boot, the status led just stays red and nothing happens. What is going wrong?

[jock]

Too vague, please provide logs via serial adapter and photos of the board.

[IMakeTheQuestions]

 

This is the board, I'm not sure about where to connect the serial adapter as I don't see any obvious UART pins.

[umiddelb]

You may check these pins.

 

[jock]

This is a totally new board design that has never appeared on the forums, could have different wiring.

 

Very useful are:

• detailed image of the other side of the board (the uart pins may be there too)
• name of the wifi chip on the board
• original firmware and/or original dtb to inspect
• the output of the uart logs

Also try this other "experimental" multitool image to see if it works for you

[IMakeTheQuestions]

I've soldered pins to those pads and I don't think they're transmitting anything, the middle pin is GND and the other two are at 3.3V when on. The serial adapter doesn't return anything on putty either.

 

I'm going to try the "experimental" multitool, I'm still a noob and have yet to figure out how to get the dtb or original firmware, I'll look into it.

The wifi chip is a Rockchip RK915A.

 

I've seen some videos where people connect a usb male-male cable and use it to communicate with the board, maybe I need to do the same?

[jock]

8 hours ago, IMakeTheQuestions said:

I've soldered pins to those pads and I don't think they're transmitting anything, the middle pin is GND and the other two are at 3.3V when on. The serial adapter doesn't return anything on putty either.

Perhaps those pads are just board placeholders for leds. The board is a total newcomer, so you have to post a high resolution photo of the other side too.

 

8 hours ago, IMakeTheQuestions said:

I'm going to try the "experimental" multitool, I'm still a noob and have yet to figure out how to get the dtb or original firmware, I'll look into it.

The wifi chip is a Rockchip RK915A.

multitool can let you make a backup of the original firmware, you can share it and then I can extract the DTB from there.

The rockchip RK915A wifi chip is also a total newcomer in the scene, this is the first time I hear about

 

8 hours ago, IMakeTheQuestions said:

I've seen some videos where people connect a usb male-male cable and use it to communicate with the board, maybe I need to do the same?

It depends about what you want to achieve.

the male to male cable let you do the same things multitool is able to (backup, flash image, erase flash, ...) but you have to do them manually using rkdeveloptool command line tool.

 

Much of the information is shared here: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/12656-csc-armbian-for-rk322x-tv-boxes/ in the section "Alternative backup, restore and erase flash for EXPERTS". You can indeed do a backup of the existing firmware and then erase the flash, then your board will boot from sdcard on which you could directly put armbian to see if it boot and works for you.

 

[jock]

@IMakeTheQuestions a question about your board: are you sure it has a rk3228a and not a rk3128 ?

 

[IMakeTheQuestions]

I had a quick go at it with the other version of multitool and it had the same outcome.

 

I have no reason to doubt it is indeed a rk3228a because it can reproduce 4k h265 files without much of a hiccup.

I actually have another board that has an rk3128, but judging from entries on this forum, I'll have a hard time flashing anything to it.

 

 

[ilmich]

Hi @IMakeTheQuestions,

 

with @jock we have noticed some special cases in which the boot from sd does not happen. They are hard to fix without any logs (which in your case are hard to recover without uart).
Can you please try to see if booting from sd works with my build of libreelec?(https://ilmich.libreelec.tv/libreelec-10/).

Thank you

[2hry]

Sorry for hijacking this thread.

 

I have the same h20 tv box.

Today i wanted to try some things, but it doesn´t boot. The led stays red when inserting an sd card.

 The h20 bootlog is 1500000 baud booting android, and bootlog libreelec from ilmichs libreelec linked above.

Is there anything i can try?

h20 bootlog.txt bootlog libreelec.txt

[SteeMan]

@2hry  it looks like you are booting libreelec,  these forums are for Armbian.  Please ask in a forum site for Libreelec, we can't help you here

[2hry]

I want to try armbian.

libreelec because ilmich said to try this.

here is the bootlog from Armbian_23.8.0-trunk.55_Rk322x-box_lunar_edge_6.3.8

(red led no output on hdmi)

Is there a problem with the combined emmc?

bootlog armbian.txt

[SteeMan]

@2hry  You should post your question in this thread:

 

[EmilB]

@2hry

 

If you can boot LibreELEC you can create a custom "libreelec boot and armbian rootfs combined" what should boot. This is the only way I can boot armbian on my box.

See page 63 for my posts and hexdump post in first page: 

 

 

[jock]

@EmilB sure you can mix things. On the first kernel upgrade the whole thing will break and the system won't boot anymore. I won't suggest to others doing the same.

[jock]

I resume this thread because there have been some advancements in the HDMI problem on the R29 boards and, discussing with @ilmich and @fabiobassa, we noticed that there are some similarities with the H20 boards.

 

@occams razor here also posted his experience with a H20 board and the photos are very informative because his board has the marking H20_221_V1.71, while the board in this thread is H20_221_V1.5. The difference is important, because @occams razor's V1.71 boots but has no HDMI, while V1.5 board does not boot at all.

 

Despite the different form factor of the two boards, the V1.71 looks like having three high power switching regulators, while the V1.5 has just two of them.

Looking at the DTB, probably both of them require to switch a GPIO to enable HDMI exactly as like as R29/R2B boards, but the H20_221_V1.5 probably is not capable to run the CPU above 1Ghz, while the V1.71 can.

 

Multitool has been fixed for R29/R2B boards, but now it should run and show HDMI also on all H20 boards.

I posted here an experimental image that H20 users can test too, enabling led-conf7 overlay as well.

 

I may also provide a special overlay for @occams razor for his H20 V1.71, which should perhaps be able to run cpu up to 1.4 ghz

 

 

[occams razor]

 

2 hours ago, jock said:

Multitool has been fixed for R29/R2B boards, but now it should run and show HDMI also on all H20 boards.

I posted here an experimental image that H20 users can test too, enabling led-conf7 overlay as well.

 

I may also provide a special overlay for @occams razor for his H20 V1.71, which should perhaps be able to run cpu up to 1.4 ghz

 

 

@jock  I can confirm that indeed the HDMI output is now working on the H20 v1.71 board with your modified multitool.  I have not done any additional testing.  But thank you so much for figuring this out. I was just about to put this thing into "long term storage".  Please post an update if you are able to enable the full speed CPU clock.  Thanks again.

Edited September 30, 2023 by occams razor

[jock]

@occams razor I produced a bunch of deb packages with update dtbs, you can find them here, in particular you can test this deb package for edge kernel 6.5.

You should get a new led-conf8 overlay, so you can remove led-conf7 and add led-conf8 in /boot/armbianEnv.txt, reboot and see if the board boots and works.

[John Wick]

26.03.2023 в 12:47, jock сказал:

a question about your board: are you sure it has a rk3228a and not a rk3128 ?

 

Hello. Do you have multitool for RK3128 ? I can't boot my mxqPRO 4K5G from SD card. Monitor start blinking and tv box firmware die (need restore from backup). TV box work fine.

I have boot.img and other files from this chip

 

.

 

Edited December 9, 2023 by John Wick

[jock]

5 hours ago, John Wick said:

Do you have multitool for RK3128

 

Source code is open, I have no rk3128 board but support can easily added (not by me though!)

[John Wick]

45 минут назад, jock сказал:

support can easily added (not by me though!)

Maybe you know who can help me or where i can find manuals?