Efforts to develop firmware for H96 MAX V56 RK3566 8G/64G

[Hqnicolas]

On 12/28/2024 at 12:42 PM, Andre B said:

ethernet alias is ethernet1 while on armbian dtb armbian_eth.txt, ethernet alias is ethernet0, could it be the cause ? i'm about to test it

 

Sorry for not having time to help, my internet provider changed the internet modem device that I used to do DHCP, and the IPs that I had fixed locally were left without reference, now I can't access the DHCP generator of my local network, the servers are not connecting I'm going to spend the new year solving this here

 

I think it can be fixed with a .dtsi file for change ethernet LAN JL2101 1000M

you will need to apply this patch:

https://lkml.org/lkml/2022/12/25/41

Add the missing pmu_io_domains setting, the gmac can't work well without this. @Andyshrk 

test the DTB file if it works.
 

 

 you will need to fix the DTS, and rebuild, I think the drivers was aleady in the armbian, you just need to se the correct ethernet and pin controls.
Since I don't have this board, you will need to try it on your device. please share de DTS here if you fix it.

 

https://github.com/CoreELEC/linux-amlogic/pull/13
https://forum.armbian.com/topic/25808-hk1-box-lan-100-s905x3-latest-releases-with-kernel-61-does-not-start-from-sd-card/

 

 @Energokom have fixes for this chip https://forum.armbian.com/topic/25808-hk1-box-lan-100-s905x3-latest-releases-with-kernel-61-does-not-start-from-sd-card/#findComment-158359

 

@tmm1 has fixes for this ethernet chip to. https://github.com/CoreELEC/linux-amlogic/pull/13#issuecomment-1370202774

 

 

Edited December 29, 2024 by Hqnicolas

[Hqnicolas]

On 11/27/2024 at 2:49 AM, DreamDreams said:

Do you mean this dts patch file?

 

@DreamDreams @dfahren
 

On 12/23/2024 at 10:01 PM, Hqnicolas said:

I will try to update this Joshua Riek Patch File

Joshua Riek Kernel Files
Kernel 6.1
Kernel 5.1
KernelConfig
Old Test Report

this is already the second patch update for joshua riek that I made so now I will send an board add request.
https://github.com/Joshua-Riek/ubuntu-rockchip/pull/1173
https://github.com/Joshua-Riek/linux-rockchip/pull/40

https://github.com/Joshua-Riek/linux-rockchip/pull/39

 

Edited January 17 by Hqnicolas

[Hqnicolas]

@watou

@DreamDreams

images for Joshua Riek h96maxV56
https://github.com/hqnicolas/ubuntu-rockchip

Edited January 16 by Hqnicolas

[watou]

@Hqnicolas many thanks! Can't find any files at the noble-server links at the moment; will look again later. My 4GB/32GB is going to be a headless home automation server, so stability, solid USB and Ethernet and security updates are my top items.  Thanks for your contributions!

[Hqnicolas]

On 1/3/2025 at 1:40 PM, watou said:

Can't find any files at the noble-server links at the moment; will look again later.

the Github actions still working, it will be released in 5 hours.
 

 

On 1/3/2025 at 1:40 PM, watou said:

home automation server, so stability, solid USB and Ethernet and security updates are my top items. 

Stay on Armbian Mainline 6.6.  I'ts stable and updated,

the Joshua Riek h96 v56 max 6.1 Project is for iA that uses the RKnpu. and it's old and unstable.

Edited January 20 by Hqnicolas

[dfahren]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm a rather new and proud owner of one of these nice H96 tv boxes and I also got the 8GB version that's why I'm in this thread. Now I want to reflash it with Armbian and I want to thank and congratulate all who made this happen with their knowledge and sweat! 

 

First of all, let's talk about the hardware. I cracked open the case and had a look at the PCB. Build quality is good, but nothing to write home about. There is, however, one interesting phenomenon you get to know if you look closer. You can see a rather smallish heat sink atop of the CPU which also covers the RAM chip. Now, if you tilt the board and look from one side to the other, you can see that the RAM chip is, say, 1mm higher than the CPU, which directly translates to the heat sink not fitting snugly to the CPU ... Oh man, who on earth did such a design?
Do you know or have encountered any  heat problems with your box? Can you tell me about your temperature range you see during operation?

When it comes to flashing new firmware I'm kinda burnt child (pun intended!) ... a lot of things can go wrong and if one is not prepared for this case, you can easily brick your phone or your new tv box right away, which in fact isn't the nicest thing you want to experience, to put it mildly.

 

I had a look at the flashing guides in this thread and they all comprise of one step of flashing a pre-loader (aka. H96-MAX-xg-MiniLoaderAll.bin). This is IMHO a very risky operation! So I have a couple of questions:

1) Where did these loaders come from? Did anyone suck them from a tv box or did you find it in an Android firmware distribution?

2) The 4gb and 8gb version are actually different! 4gb version is "DDR Version V1.09 20210630" and 8gb version is "DDR Version V1.06 20210326". I did a string grep on those files. You can't run them interchangeably, right? But why?

3) Why is there a need to flash a new pre-loader? Why can't we use the existing pre-loader that comes with the box itself?

4) Is there a way to save the original pre-loader, so that if anything goes really wrong, it can be flashed back to the box? As we all know chinese tv box assemblers quickly change components without giving any notice. It could happen, but need not, that you flash one of the pre-loaders mentioned above and your box refuses to boot your Linux or Android. What then?

 

So if anybody has some answers, they would be highly appreciated!

All the best and keep up the good work!

 

Deetsh

 

 

[Hqnicolas]

7 hours ago, dfahren said:

any  heat problems with your box?

in some SBC's with RK3566 people use it even without heatsink. City Temperature: (8 °C ~ 25 °C)
 

 

7 hours ago, dfahren said:

you can easily brick your phone or your new tv box right away

This is impossible. this device is a SOC and don't have BIOS or UEFI  it uses bootloader.bin + uboot

 

7 hours ago, dfahren said:

Where did these loaders come from?

Rockchip, also you can find it in other devices like orangepi-3b and take it, I like to take it from android recovery images

 

7 hours ago, dfahren said:

You can't run them interchangeably, right? But why?

because miniBootloaderAll.bin tests all DDR latency's and clock's before boot

 

7 hours ago, dfahren said:

Why is there a need to flash a new pre-loader?

because this bootloader came inside the ROM in the first 2mb, when you flash it with rockchip dev it errases all again,
you can extract your bootloader and reuse it after EMMC format. (I don't remember how, but it's possible)
 

 

7 hours ago, dfahren said:

so that if anything goes really wrong,

it will never go wrong, just if you fisically damage the device
 

7 hours ago, dfahren said:

your box refuses to boot

please make sure that your device is "H96 MAX V56" if you buy a new "H96 MAX" the LAN will need to be manually fixed.

 

@GBEM have a great document
 

This other Topic have all development for this device since 2022 it start by using android u-boot + Kernel 4.19
until images v0.7 I still use android u-boot, since 1.0 (2023) it uses mainline u-boot and I stop building Update images

 

@dfahren feel free to find other way to flash armbian and edit the armbian board config files 

everything here is experimental, nothing is absolute and new efforts are always welcome

Edited January 11 by Hqnicolas

[dfahren]

Zitat

This is impossible. this device is a SOC and don't have BIOS or UEFI  it uses bootloader.bin + uboot

Good to know. Safety first, I gonna try and suck the booloader from my current firmware.

 

Zitat

Rockchip, also you can find it in other devices like orangepi-3b and take it, I like to take it from android recovery images

Oh wait! You can take any of the bootloaders that are destined to run on any board with a RK3566? Could be and I can test that, but better safe than sorry, so I need to have my current bootloader, reflash it on my device and if it is booting up normally like before, you can test until the eMMC starts to puff away ... 🙂

 

Zitat

because this bootloader came inside the ROM in the first 2mb, when you flash it with rockchip dev it errases all again,
you can extract your bootloader and reuse it after EMMC format. (I don't remember how, but it's possible)

I think you mean "rkdevtool", correct? I plan to use version 3.19 (latest, I think). Hope that's ok.
If I'm not totally mistaken, I saw a button on the page that shows if you click on the "Advanced ..." tab that has a label meaning extract firmware or the like. But you have to provide an address range. I think it has to be from 0x00 to ???. Do you know the upper bound?

 

Zitat

please make sure that your device is "H96 MAX V56" if you buy a new "H96 MAX" the LAN will need to be manually fixed.

Absolutely my box is a H96 Max V56, nothing else, rest assured. 🙂 
But what is this "LAN problem", why do I need to fix something? I thought Armbian has everything in place, doesn't it?

 

Zitat

feel free to find other way to flash armbian and edit the armbian board config files 

everything here is experimental, nothing is absolute and new efforts are always welcome

We'll see, we'll see. First things first and after that come experiments.
@Hqnicolas many thanks for your answers! They help me a lot.

@GBEM Great tutorial! I'm loving it, also helps a lot.
 

All the best to everyone! Keep up the good work!
Cheers,
Deetsh

 

[Hqnicolas]

2 hours ago, dfahren said:

But what is this "LAN problem", why do I need to fix something?

 

I think it can be fixed with a .dtso file for change ethernet LAN JL2101 1000M
it goes inside this folder on armbian build and will overlay the lan config like this other file here

but to test the effectiveness the individual needs to have the board in person as it is not possible to test on the original v56 board

you will need to find this guy that have this board

 

 

Edited January 11 by Hqnicolas

[dfahren]

Zitat

but to test the effectiveness the individual needs to have the board in person as it is not possible to test on the original v56 board

Oh, that's sad for that guy. I'm sorry, but I can't help him because my board has a RTL8211F ethernet transceiver not a JL2101. 🤷‍♂️

 

[dfahren]

Could anyone read the label of the LPDDR-RAM chip beneath the heatsink. I have the nagging feeling that it's not a 64 GBits (my tv box claims to have 8GB RAM) LPDDR4 chip ... How did I get to this impression? Easy, since there aren't any LPDDR3 chips (at the moment afaik) with 64 Gbits and 1056Mhz the first ones are of type LPDDR4. Second, LPDDR4 with 64 Gbits allows clock rates of at least 1.8Ghz, so why would the dram training routing in the very first loader stop at 1056 Mhz? Third, those chips are around $30 in quantities of 30+. You can't manufacture a tv box that costs $55 with such an expensive component.  That doesn't make any sense!

So what does the mean? Well, either we can clock this chip higher and we have to test if it's really a 64 Gbit RAM Chip or not.

 

[Hqnicolas]

3 hours ago, dfahren said:

Could anyone read the label of the LPDDR-RAM chip beneath the heatsink.

 

4266mbps lpddr4 8gb bga200

I believe you can fine tune your memory using this information @dfahren
https://www.lcsc.com/datasheet/lcsc_datasheet_2207151030_SK-HYNIX-H9HCNNN8KUMLHR-NME_C2912103.pdf

 

 

Quote

 

 

Also the @Andre B board that is the newer version with different lan chip: 200b SDRAM 9KE77 DWLV Micron

 

Quote

 

Edited January 13 by Hqnicolas

[Deoptim]

7 часов назад, dfahren сказал:

Third, those chips are around $30 in quantities of 30+. You can't manufacture a tv box that costs $55 with such an expensive component.  That doesn't make any sense!

I bought a similar chip for ~15$ on Taobao:

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=828400739165

 

But it is profitable to buy on Taobao if let's say order something else say in the amount of 1kg - that the delivery (about 20$, of course, shipping is only through an intermediary) paid for itself.

Edited January 13 by Deoptim

[Hqnicolas]

14 hours ago, dfahren said:

Third, those chips are around $30 in quantities of 30+. You can't manufacture a tv box that costs $55 with such an expensive component.  That doesn't make any sense!

When the android device comes with a Java android pandora malware that is known to be used for DDOS attacks, everything starts to make sense.
It's china brow, all companies are arms of the government. when the product is free, you are the product.

 

14 hours ago, dfahren said:

LPDDR4 with 64 Gbits allows clock rates of at least 1.8Ghz, so why would the dram training routing in the very first loader stop at 1056 Mhz?

 

If you can't fine tune the DDR chip, you will find that this chip are fake, made by chinese X-Ray copy cats

@dfahren I've never try to finetune this memory, I let it with android config.

 

Edited January 13 by Hqnicolas

[dfahren]

Zitat

4266mbps lpddr4 8gb bga200

I believe you can fine tune your memory using this information

oh yeah, that seems to be the chip, an original SK Hynix listed on LCSC website for < $6. Wow! Impressive.
Thanks for the datasheet.

 

Hey @Deoptim, you can save a bit, if you buy at LCSC !

 

Zitat

When the android device comes with a Java android pandora malware that is known to be used for DDOS attacks, everything starts to make sense.
It's china brow, all companies are arms of the government. when the product is free, you are the product.

Ha! That's why we are with Armbian and not with evil Android anymore, right! 😆

 

Zitat

If you can't fine tune the DDR chip, you will find that this chip are fake, made by chinese X-Ray copy cats

@dfahren I've never try to finetune this memory, I let it with android config.

I'm also unsure whether or not we are able to finetune (aka tweak) the timeings and clock frequency of our LPDDR chip. Unfortunately, the ram training blob is proprietary and we don't have any source code for this. So, at the moment, there is not much we can do.

 

Good to know:

Today I thought I had bricked my box ... When in "RkDevTool" in Windows and in MASKROM mode I wasn't able to flash any file. I tried to flash the loader only or the Armbian.img and the program always gave an error. I tried the same on Linux with "rkdeveloptool db MinloaderAll.bin". The tool said download successful, but did not enter LOADER mode. It was very good, I had console output and searched the Internet. The latter, however, wasn't very helpful, unfortunately. What I know now is this:

1. Once the tv box enters MASKROM mode, this doesn't mean it runs any loader! Because there is no loader in the CPU. It means, it jumps to an address in the emmc that should contain a loader. If there isn't any or the wrong one or whatever, it refuses to boot and outputs "please reset".
2. So if you want to flash a new Armbian.img file you first need to "download" (in fact it is an upload to the tv box from your PC) a loader (e.g. MiniLoaderAll.bin).
3. Then this loader runs and only now you can use the RkDevTool or RkDevelopTool to "download" an Armbian.img file to emmc via USB.
4. Once the Armbian.img file contents are written to emmc and the tv box restarts, it restarts most likely with a complete different loader, namely, the one that was packaged in the Armbian.img file. The first one you "downloaded" to the tv box in step 2, is no longer active or anywhere in RAM or emmc because it was downloaded to RAM only!
5. So if you want to renew the loader on your tv box, you have to issue these two commands in exactly this order:
   • ./rkdeveloptool db H96-MAX-8gb-MiniLoaderAll.bin
   • ./rkdeveloptool ul H96-MAX-8gb-MiniLoaderAll.bin
6. BTW, flashing this loader is not a good idea because it is appropriate to Android.img only, but it does its job perfectly when it comes to downloading new Images.

I hope these explanations help other people when they get stuck during flashing.

 

Other Questions:

It is true, that once we flash Armbian on our TV box, we lose the ability to press the reset button and enter LOADER mode. The only way to flash with rkdeveloptool now is to flash via MaskROM mode, correct? This is gruesome in particular because we need to access the CLK and GND pads every time we want to flash and keep the case open if we don't want to solder wires to them.

I'm thinking about cutting through the lead from the reset switch to a tiny resistor and solder a wire from one pin of it over to the CLK pad on the other side of the board, but I'm not quite settled for this right now.

Is there some other way, to re-flash the whole Armbian IMG file (without having to solder an SD card slot and without LOADER mode)?

 

Fun fact:

@Hqnicolas mentioned that those cheap little UART-to-USB converters with CP2102 chips on them are in fact (contrary to popular belief and specification!) capable of operating at 1.5 MBaud and above. Now, that statement holds true for Windows and Windows only! Once you run Linux and tio (name your favorite terminal software), you only get garbage on the screen regardless what you configure or tweak. But how is that? Easy! If you look at the generic Linux source code that is responsible for interfacing with a CP2102-based converter, you see that the software restricts baud rates above 921000! And all you guys thought was you were too stupid to setup a proper configuration under Linux .... No, you aren't, but you can't.

 

Edited January 13 by dfahren

[Deoptim]

15 часов назад, dfahren сказал:

Hey @Deoptim, you can save a bit, if you buy at LCSC !

The chip on LCSC ~6$ is 8gbit (or 1GByte).

 

The chip on Taobao ~15$ is 64gbit (8GByte) but has 2 ranks (2 CS) Dual-Rank must be supported in your hardware, e.g. there must be tracks and pads under LPDDR for both A and B channel: CS0_A, CS0_B and CS1_A,  CS1_B same for data lines DQ_0-15_A and DQ_0-15_B etc....

 

I bought it for my Rock 3A (2GB), If I bought this SBC for 25$ (34$ on Taobao or 49$ on AliExpress), then plus this memory chip +15$(not including shipping) comes out to 40$ for my case. Also I have the skills of soldering and repairing with a soldering air station - this is also important, by the way I bought a stencil for bga200 + solder paste (or balls for bga rebolling) just in case I have to re-solder.

Edited January 14 by Deoptim

[Hqnicolas]

21 hours ago, dfahren said:

that once we flash Armbian on our TV box, we lose the ability to press the reset button and enter LOADER mode.

this can be fixed, until kernel 6.6.34 this buttom works fine, after I update it to u-boot 2024-7 this buttom stop working, "need to fix the reset file.DTS"

 

21 hours ago, dfahren said:

Is there some other way, to re-flash the whole Armbian IMG file

 

if you use my desktop example image you will find that the buttom works fine
 

Edited January 14 by Hqnicolas

[dfahren]

Thanks for your many answers @Hqnicolas!
I feel, many more questions are coming. Right now I'm struggling with Wifi.
I put the files brcmfmac4335-sdio.txt and fw_bcm4335b0_ag.bin which I found in brcm4335_drivers in the root dir in /lib/firmware/brcm and created the following links:
brcmfmac4335-sdio.h96-TVbox,rk3566.bin -> fw_bcm4335b0_ag.bin     and

brcmfmac4335-sdio.h96-TVbox,rk3566.txt -> brcmfmac4335-sdio.txt

Now I'm getting this output in kernel messages:

 

[13467.075537] usbcore: deregistering interface driver brcmfmac
[13476.449214] brcmfmac: F1 signature read @0x18000000=0x16014335
[13476.453795] brcmfmac: brcmf_fw_alloc_request: using brcm/brcmfmac4335-sdio for chip BCM4335/1
[13476.454051] usbcore: registered new interface driver brcmfmac
[13476.457822] brcmfmac mmc2:0001:1: Direct firmware load for brcm/brcmfmac4335-sdio.clm_blob failed with error -2
[13479.399014] brcmfmac: brcmf_sdio_bus_rxctl: resumed on timeout
[13479.403176] ieee80211 phy4: brcmf_c_preinit_dcmds: retrieving revision info failed, -110
[13479.403231] brcmfmac: brcmf_c_process_clm_blob: no clm_blob available (err=-2), device may have limited channels available
[13479.403259] brcmfmac: brcmf_c_process_txcap_blob: no txcap_blob available (err=-2)
[13479.405299] brcmfmac: brcmf_c_preinit_dcmds: Firmware: BCM4335/1 wl0: May 18 2014 16:56:54 version 6.34.171.58.2

Nowhere can I find files that end with clm_blob or txcap_blob. Also Wifi doesn't start (of course). Do I have the right drivers or what is missing or wrong? BTW, I'm running Armbian 6.12.9 with Ubuntu noble.
 

[Hqnicolas]

1 hour ago, dfahren said:

Nowhere can I find files that end with clm_blob or txcap_blob

###############################
if you already flash the armbian firmware 
###############################

cd /lib/firmware/brcm/
wget https://github.com/CoreELEC/brcmfmac_sdio-firmware-aml/raw/master/firmware/brcm/fw_bcm4335b0_ag.bin
sudo ln -s fw_bcm4335b0_ag.bin brcmfmac4335-sdio.h96-TVbox,rk3566.bin
reboot now

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B1LmAylalETcnBEWiPiJHL0MjK5xlIV4/view

It could be something related to file permissions. You need to do an LS inside the folder and check if all the files have the same permission level.

I think this txt file could be different for your kernel version

Edited January 14 by Hqnicolas

[dfahren]

Zitat

It could be something related to file permissions. You need to do an LS inside the folder and check if all the files have the same permission level.

I think this txt file could be different for your kernel version

Nope, it was me that didn't copy the files from your GitHub repository correctly to the Armbian build tree correctly. Rebuilt the whole image yesterday and lo and behold, it works like never before! Even Wifi and Bluetooth. Cool! 😁

 

Now I only need to find out how I can accelerate mit xfce desktop which is really sluggish ...

[paradigman]

@dfahren : "it works like never before! Even Wifi and Bluetooth.". Please share with us this image.
"how I can accelerate xfce desktop". I suggest to you try install cinnamon. With cinnamon you get wayland too... and probaly that will good.

[dfahren]

Zitat

Things changed in August 24.8.0 Trunk554

now the Mainline Uboot dont reconize the maskroom buttom,
feel free to fix this erro on Uboot dtb/dts files.

@Hqnicolas That means before May 2024 (the time the source code has been tagged) pressing the reset button on our board makes Uboot go into LOADER mode, correct? After that commit, it won't show this behavior anymore.

If it were a fault in the dtb/dts files, it would be easy to spot the changes in your source code, but I think your DTS file hasn't changed since then at least not with respect to the reset button. So it must be a source code change, presumably in the Uboot source. Can you give me a pointer to the source code where I can take a look and check if there is something I can revert so that we get this reset-and-boot-in-LOADER functionality back. My small pads CLK and GND start to get worn out ... Ouch!

 

@paradigman I spotted errors in my build (e.g. used a 6.6 config for 6.12. and other mishaps), so I'd rather build again and upload later. Thanks for the hint at Cinnamon, will give it a spin!

[Hqnicolas]

6 hours ago, dfahren said:

My small pads CLK and GND start to get worn out

I have soldered 2 terminals on this pads to avoid cooper damage on board.

 

16 hours ago, dfahren said:

xfce desktop

 

You will need wayland, like PopOs 

the best desktop I think is the armbian "fake ubuntu" wayland interface called cinnamon
I have a mod for armbian 22.04 also the same mod that was applyed on desktop example image

 

6 hours ago, dfahren said:

it would be easy to spot the changes in your source code,

 

 

@dfahren If you have the armbian build on your machine, please test this:
on the file config/boards/h96-tvbox-3566.tvb
add this line:

BOOT_SCENARIO="spl-blobs"

 

like the old board config file.
I think this is the solution to this problem
I don't remember if the introduction of this spl-blobs implies anything related to the security of the platform,
as there may be some fallback for improper boot.

 

Quote

From: Dragan Simic @ 2024-02-06
" falling back to BROM may actually introduce some security issues in some setups, by allowing rather low-level access to the system that may not be desired."

 

 

11 hours ago, paradigman said:

Please share with us this image.

@paradigman  you are already a bearded man Please DIY an armbian edge image with Armbian Build 
I created this topic so you can create your own "don't trust, verify" images

 

 

Edited January 16 by Hqnicolas

[Hqnicolas]

@DreamDreams
I think the joshua Riek board add is ready here
the DTB file need to be changed inside the image before boot use this method, I will fix it later

Edited January 16 by Hqnicolas

[Andre B]

Thanks for your assistance @Hqnicolas, but i'm too dumb to understand that, my knowledge on this thing is very limited, i only know little shell commands.

 

i just noticed that bluetooth is also not working yet in armbian, so i flash android back.

 

and i noticed that in original android os, ethernet and wireless can't work simultaneously

if i connected an ethernet cable at boot,  wifi can't be turned on

if i connected to a wifi, ethernet is not detected.

also in aida64, hwinfo, cpu-z, armbian, the RAM shows 8gb, only in kodi, the ram detected is only 4gb, i started to think that the spec is fake, or my device is totally fake.

 

does the same behaviour happen in your device guys ?

i mean the moment where ethernet and wifi can't work simultaneously and kodi shows 4gb ram.

Edited January 16 by Andre B

[Hqnicolas]

24 minutes ago, Andre B said:

does the same behaviour happen in your device guys ?

i mean the moment where ethernet and wifi can't work simultaneously and kodi shows 4gb ram.

 

You're the first reporting, so, if when you have Armbian in your device, and it shows 8gb, it's 8gb.
about the wifi/ethernet problem:
it's a BUG made by the chinese developer that misconfig pinout's in dtb, that we can fix here...

 

24 minutes ago, Andre B said:

but i'm too dumb to understand that

 

50% of the problem is recognizing the problem, 45% is fighting it and 5% is talent you are at 50% already.

start your journey against the other 45% and find the 5% along the way.

Edited January 16 by Hqnicolas

[Hqnicolas]

@DreamDreams @maka @paradigman @dfahren

I built some images Joshua-Riek ubuntu-rockchip
Also request inclusion for h96 max v56 to github project
 

 

########

 

 

22.04-preinstalled-desktop-arm64-h96max-v56

22.04-preinstalled-server-arm64-h96max-v56

deal with wifi drivers for kernel 5.1

 

 

 

########

 

24.04-preinstalled-desktop-arm64-h96max-v56

24.04-preinstalled-server-arm64-h96max-v56

deal with wifi drivers and stutterings for Kernel 6.1

 

 

########

 

With this, now you can run Frigate or other iA Software that uses RKnpu

https://docs.frigate.video/configuration/object_detectors/#rockchip-platform

https://docs.frigate.video/configuration/hardware_acceleration/#rockchip-platform

example usage: mqtt + frigate docker casaos

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 20 by Hqnicolas

[dfahren]

Zitat

I think this is the solution to this problem
I don't remember if the introduction of this spl-blobs implies anything related to the security of the platform,
as there may be some fallback for improper boot.

@Hqnicolas: Very good finding, this is the location where one should investigate further ... which I did.

 

This litte posting is to let you all know that I was able to tweak u-boot so that when pressing the recovery button our tv box enters (at least for now) MASKROM mode. Stay tuned for an advanced u-boot.bin for you to test!

So in the future we no longer need soldered wires to short the test points, which, at least in my opinion, is a good step forward.
I'm still in the test phase of my amendments to u-boot and I'm still unable to enter LOADER mode, but I hope I'm able to solve this (hopefully little) issue, too.

Until then, cheers and I'll keep you posted.

 

[dfahren]

Hi folks,

my pondering about whether or not it is sensible to boot into LOADER mode once you press the recovery button has reached a conclusion. I decided that entering LOADER mode is a silly idea because flashing an Armbian.img file always starts at sector 0x00 of the emmc chip. In LOADER mode flashing is allowed at address 0x2000 only so we can't flash Armbian or other IMGs. So if you press the recovery button, the board resets and enters BROM mode. After that you can use either "rkdeveloptool" (Linux) or "rkdevtool.exe" (Windows, version should be greater that 2.85, mine is 3.19).

 

As an attachment you can find my freshly created u-boot.bin file for you to test. But hold on for a second, I have to tell you a couple of things so that you don't feel miserable after you did things whose implications you couldn't fully grasp.

 

This new image is a conglomerate of u-boot, spl, and atf, no optee. It is based on u-boot tag 2025.01 and is applicable to kernel 6.12.10 (maybe it works for others, too -> please tell me.) It uses the rockchip blob for DDR chip training and configuration that was created for RK3568 chips by Rockchip themselves, the last frequence selected is 1536MHz, which seems to be ok for our SK hynix LPDDR4 chips that operate with 3733Mbps.

 

--- DISCLAIMER ---

In what follows, everything you are doing on your on risk! I will not be held accountable for any damage, lost time, broken plates, dead tv boxes whatsoever and other misery that may or might result from you doing the next steps mentioned below.

Keep that in mind! Now you are on your own.

I strongly encourage you to attach a serial converter UART-to-USB to the board so that you can see all the statements u-boot is going to output. This is especially important if something goes wrong.

Most likely your tv box won't run your Armbian installation after completing the flashing procedure! Be aware of that. You may, however, press the recovery button on your board and restart it with a USB-A cable plugged in on both ends and enter MASKROM mode.

 

Flashing procedure

1. Unpack the archive that is attached to this post (e.g. "xz -d <archive name>") and store it for later use.
2. Insert a USB-A-to-USB-A cable in your tv box. Short the pins CLK and GND on your board and insert the other side of the cable into a free slot of your pc. If you don't know where to find the pins on the board, please don't flash this u-boot and read this thread thoroughly. These operations here are not for novices!
3. Open a shell (I prefer Linux, but you can do the same in Windows) and type "rkdeveloptool ld" (or doubleclick on "rkdevtool.exe" in Windows)
4. You should see something like this "DevNo=1    Vid=0x2207,Pid=0x350a,LocationID=101    Maskrom". If not, repeat step 2 again until you can see the output. In Windows you would see something like "MASKROM device found".
5. Find yourself a loader bin, this thread has one for 4gb and one for 8gb. We select the one for 8gb whose name is "H96-MAX-8gb-MiniLoaderAll.bin" but you equally well take the other one, it really doesn't matter.
6. Issue the command "rkdeveloptool db H96-MAX-8gb-MiniLoaderAll.bin". After a short while you should get a success message
7. Next issue the command "rkdeveloptool wl 64 <path-to-your-bin-file>/u-boot-2025-01-rockchip-6.12.10.bin", where <path-to...> is a placeholder you substitute with what it states, right? You should also get a success message.
8. Unplug the USB cable and attach the UART-to-USB converter to your pc for reading serial console output. Notice, if you have a CP2102-based converter, you can't use it with standard drivers in Linux! Well, of course you can, but you would see garbled output only.)
9. Power on your tv box and read the output on the serial console. If everything goes well, your Armbian should boot.
10. Shutdown Armbian, power off your device.
11. Press and keep pressed the recovery button, start your tv box by plugging the USB-A cable in both tv box and PC, read the output of the serial console.
12. Once you see "resetting..." you can issue the command in step 4 to check that in fact you tv box is in MASKROM mode now.

 

That's it, I hope this is useful for you and again: Please don't do this procedure, although it seems easy to follow, if you need a working tv box. Most likely you are going to brick it!

 

Cheers!

 

P.S.: Please post here and tell me your results, especially in case you are unable to enter MASKROM mode. Thanks!

u-boot-2025-01-rockchip-6.12.10.bin.xz

Edited January 21 by dfahren

[Hqnicolas]

1 hour ago, dfahren said:

This new image is a conglomerate of u-boot, spl, and atf, no optee. It is based on u-boot tag 2025.01 and is applicable to kernel 6.12.10 (maybe it works for others, too -> please tell me.) It uses the rockchip blob for DDR chip training and configuration that was created for RK3568 chips by Rockchip themselves, the last frequence selected is 1536MHz, which seems to be ok for our SK hynix LPDDR4 chips that operate with 3733Mbps.

 

Great job man, it works, it's fast, can you show us the secret sauce?

Did you find a way to include it on armbian?

Edited January 21 by Hqnicolas