Adding support for NanoPC -T6

[JeremyA]

I've just got a shiny new NanoPC-T6 and can get it to sort of work using a Debian image provided by the Vendor.

One issue is the HDMI output which seems to be quite unusual. I can only get one of my monitors to display an image (a 4K philips) .

The usual 1920x1080 screens such as Acer 22" don't work.

It also seems the Debian version can only run an overlay driver rather than native

 

I already run a NanoPi M4V2 and a NanoPi R2S under Armbian and am very happy with them and armbian

 

I'm happy to be a guinea pig for anyone wanting to get an armbian version running on the T6. I have some respectable machines that can do cross-compiles quite fast. 

I want to get the device to run fully native drivers and specifically have full control over the NPU cores for hard-core image applications.

[Efe Çetin]

Already supported on build system https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/main/config/boards/nanopct6.wip

[Michael Kaplan]

Thanks for the hint to the wip board config ... I did some builds in the weekend and can confirm that bookworm legacy is working pretty well - only thing was that I had to enable all the dvb drivers as they were not enabled in the kernel config ... Besides from using it as NAS with a JMB585 PCI-E card, I also want to use the T6 as VDR server with DVB-S adapters

I also tried edge - was compiling, but not bootable as noted here:

 

[Igor]

1 hour ago, Michael Kaplan said:

only thing was that I had to enable all the dvb drivers as they were not enabled in the kernel config

 

You are welcome to sent a PR https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/main/config/kernel/linux-rk35xx-legacy.config

[Michael Kaplan]

6 hours ago, Igor said:

You are welcome to sent a PR https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/main/config/kernel/linux-rk35xx-legacy.config

Good Idea, will do that in the evening today

[desperex]

Using this board with Armbian_23.08.0-trunk_Nanopct6_jammy_collabora_6.5.0-rc1.img built with Armbian build, 

everything's ok when running from SD card, but after copying stuff to eMMC with armbian-installer and running from eMMC I get things broken:

- getting lots of IO errors like this in dmesg:

I/O error, dev mmcblk0, sector 344488960 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 2

 

Also I've noticed that the disks structure is quite different on SD and eMMC, so eMMC has extra devices:

- mmcblk0boot0

- mmcblk0boot1

and there's nothing like this on SD

 

Please bring on some light how to fix this.

dmesg..txt

Edited September 19, 2023 by desperex
adding dmesg output

[desperex]

Lowering emmc max frequency to 150M did the trick.

I've checked eMMC DTS sections on legacy and collabora and they are the same.

Does that mean the chip is bad?

[belveder79]

I actually have reported the similar problem with mine - works fine with SD, but does report lots of errors on EMMC.... seems that there is a problem in the config and is under investigation, but I bet your chip is OK...

[desperex]

And what about USB ports support?

Did anyone try to port collabora's patch for rock5b? 

https://gitlab.collabora.com/hardware-enablement/rockchip-3588/linux/-/commit/2c84ba3b660e93c67a02368b278641571945e9bb

 

 

[TonyMac32]

10 hours ago, desperex said:

Did anyone try to port collabora's patch for rock5b? 

 

Not so far, I stuck the tree for this board in mainline and it will be available with 6.6.  I haven't messed with the USB3 yet, the collabora kernel is my secondary interest for this board, and, since I don't really get anything out of it, the board isn't my first priority either outside of personal interest. 

 

I'll look at lowering the eMMC frequency, but some actual testing for errors will be needed to make sure 150 MHz is truly "good" and not just "tolerably bad" for the driver 

[bright_plastik]

Hello, I just arrived now...

I'm looking for some feedback...I'm trying to run this Proxmox image, launched by my freshly installed EDK2 UEFI on the NOR, but all I see is the beginning of the install, and after nothing more.

Unfortunately I cannot upload pics, but you can see here on IMGUR

 

Can anybody tell me why anything I try to install, apart from the imags provided by Friendlyelec, does not even boot properly? I cannot even install the armbian image provided in the download section!

Edited January 24 by bright_plastik
pics on imgur