HELP- DQ08 RK3528 4Go RAM 64go SSD can't boot with multitool (with photos)

[Werner]

Like putting it in the bin?

[Drawn]

Testpoint

 

[Hqnicolas]

Like putting it in the bin?

Stop saying the truth.

Sent from my 22021211RC using Tapatalk

[Energokom]

In fact, this is a good TV box for porting linux. Almost all the work has already been done. Video acceleration is working, cvbs is working. USB 3.0 and 2.0 are working. While there are problems with HDMI, you need to turn on the TV or monitor only after U-boot has started. And there is a problem with porting the OS to emmc.

 

TV boxes are in high demand than SBC: they are cheaper, already with a case and a power supply, an HDMI cable, and a remote control.

 

I always advise buying a TV box instead of an SBC. In addition, more and more SBC remain without armbian support.

Edited December 23, 2023 by Energokom

[Hqnicolas]

 

10 hours ago, Energokom said:

In fact, they are cheaper.

 

You can throw it on trash easyer than a umbrel device or raspiblitz.

 

 

 

Edited December 23, 2023 by hotnikq

[jpegqs]

24 minutes ago, Energokom said:

Video acceleration is working

 

But the GPU (Mali-450) is 10-years old. It's not only slow, but doesn't support many OpenGL extensions, so Doom 3 refuse to run, and Quake 3 has glitches (these games are older than the GPU).

[Energokom]

17 minutes ago, hotnikq said:

You can throw it on trash easyer than a umbrel device or raspiblitz.

Only if your hands are crooked and you don't have enough patience, experience and knowledge.

 

I have about 20 pcs of different TV boxes on different SOC and I managed to launch armbian on all of them and all work for my tasks.

 

None of them ended up in the trash.

Edited December 23, 2023 by Energokom

[jock]

8 hours ago, Energokom said:

TV boxes are in high demand than SBC: they are cheaper, already with a case and a power supply, an HDMI cable, and a remote control.

You should not advise to buy shit, they are cheaper because:

* they are made of scrap parts, that often break after very short usage (see the emmc in the rk3318 thread)

* they have no kind of warranty

* the power supply is a joke, made of cheap components and very lousy - switching power supplies are one of the thing the more they weight the better; confront with a quality 5V/2A power supply and see the difference

* the HDMI cable is crap quality, often not capable to transfer CEC or collects any kind of interference at 1080p/4K

* the case is a bit of plastic, with little to no design for heat dissipation - right now I have a rk322x board here withing its case that reaches 97°C while simply installing a package with apt...

* many sorts of limitations to keep them as cheap as possible: no sd card UHS mode, no real shutdown/suspend, USB ports have limited power: be prepared to have headaches if you try to attach something that requires just a tiny bit more power like an external hard drive.

* wifi is a lottery and clearly tells you the general quality: you can find freshly made boards with wifi chips discontinued years ago!

 

Most of all: they have absolutely no software support; if you are able to run armbian on your tv boxes it is because some people within armbian and other projects spent their time for the fun of making it.

Tv box makers don't care at all, they just need to sell their cheap shit to make some profit. Some (not all) SBC makers at least in some way provide support, but tv box makers are mostly parasitic and should not be endorsed.

 

Now that you stated that about 20 pcs of different tv boxes run armbian, may I also ask you what you did in change for that for armbian? Because tv box makers obviously did nothing for armbian, still keeping up the servers infrastructure and the general maintenance cost real money to real people, and who pays that?

[Energokom]

1 hour ago, jock said:

Now that you stated that about 20 pcs of different tv boxes run armbian, may I also ask you what you did in change for that for armbian? Because tv box makers obviously did nothing for armbian, still keeping up the servers infrastructure and the general maintenance cost real money to real people, and who pays that?

Armbian, like debian, is an open source project.

The fact that my devices work, as you said, is precisely because of my work. For example, a tablet on A13, or HK1 box LAN 100, where I myself ruled dtb to make the LAN internal, not external. I added drivers for Wifi and BT myself. There is no ready-made assembly for the HK1 box s905x3 c LAN 100Mb. I agree, there are TV boxes with very poor build quality, but there are also good ones - the same HK1 box s905x3, aka vontar x3. Also T95W2 - there is no mention of this board at all on this forum. I also did a lot on my own, extracted and corrected dtb rules, tested and corrected. I tried to install slackware on some boards and the person who builds the OS does not ask for anything in return. The main reason for the discontent is that TV box producers do not pay armbian.

But armbian is a NON-PROFIT organization, it says so.

RED HAT is a commercial organization and their product costs money. Microsoft is also a commercial organization.

 

Armbian can also become a commercial organization and sell its product.

But, while the organization calls itself NON-commercial and provides an open source product, the question of what you have done to use this product is inappropriate.

As inappropriate as it is, the requirement of users is to support a free product.

 

Do you think it's unfair that people get a free product that says free, and condemn such people?

I condemn people who say it's free, and when you get what's free, they tell you - what will you give me in return?

There is a law of conservation of energy, when you take something for free, you should give something in return. And this one comes from a person of his own free will! And when they ask for something in return for a free product, it ceases to be called free. So answer me the question: does armbian sell its product or distribute it under a free license?

 

 

[jock]

@Energokom

I absolutely don't condemn people - that would be a quite dumb position as long as I maintain a couple of tv box ports of discrete appeal - but indeed I condemn the endorsment.

The point I wanted to make clear was not what YOU, as a person, did for armbian: as you say, armbian is an opensource project and free for everyone.

The point is that tv box manufacturers do nothing for armbian. If users don't want or can't contribute it's ok, because donations are volountary. But if manufacturers don't contribute as well, who will? At the end there will just be nothing because non-profit is one thing but charity is another one. Charity is not sustainable in the long run, and not anyone is willing to.

 

For the same law of conservation of energy you stated, tv box manufacturers takes energy from the system and gives little to nothing back; users perhaps partially mitigate, donating something back to the project, but why actively endorsing entities whose behaviour is neutral at best and parasitic at worst?

 

 

[Hqnicolas]

 

10 hours ago, Energokom said:

I have about 20 pcs of different TV boxes on different

 

I bought 4, and have 4, never have any trouble with this Chinese crap, it's very powerful, but I recognize trash when I see trash, don't let your files on emmc without backup, and don't trust a full time service on that RAM, also don't trust external SSD devices on that power supply 

Sent from my 22021211RC using Tapatalk
 

 

Edited December 23, 2023 by hotnikq

[Energokom]

1 hour ago, jock said:

tv box manufacturers do nothing for armbian.

But TV box manufacturers don't use armbian, they use android. How do they parasitize?

I suppose by buying a TV box instead of an SBC?

Then why don't SBC manufacturers make the boards cheaper. For example, raspberry pi 2w costs only $ 15. (700 Thai baht). And raspberry pi has the best support at a low cost.

 

Many users do not need GPIO and camera interface. SBC manufacturers could reduce the cost of their products by adapting to the needs of users. Many people buy SBC for the server. What prevents the SBC manufacturer from making the same cheap board as the TV box, only excluding cvbs, SPDIF, camera bus and LCD display? Leaving the SD card slot, emmc, a pair of USB and LAN. 

 

And optional: a version with Wi-fi, if someone has it on the server (wi-fi) I don't need it 99% of the time.

 

It will turn out to be a cheap fee, and instead of android, spend money on linux OS.

Edited December 23, 2023 by Energokom

[Hqnicolas]

3 minutes ago, Energokom said:

How do they parasitize?

 

https://youtu.be/1vpepaQ-VQQ?si=zDM2XXD7xPOaP-JK

[Energokom]

1 hour ago, hotnikq said:

emmc without backup, and don't trust a full time service on that RAM, also don't trust external SSD devices on that power supply 

My friend had an SBC orange pi 3, on which the emmc failed after 2.5 years. I have a s905w TV box (the first one I bought instead of SBC), it has been working for a year with armbian on emmc. (This is me to the reliability of emmc on SBC).

 

In any case, having a stencil and a soldering station, you can always solder the emmc

 

All my other TV boxes are still working on the SD card.I want to install two more on emmc - that's just setting up a weekly backup of the system on Google disk.

Edited December 23, 2023 by Energokom

[jpegqs]

13 hours ago, jock said:

The point is that tv box manufacturers do nothing for armbian.

Are there legal reasons to request TV box manufacturers to publish the patches they used for Android? Although Chinese companies will likely ignore this, there is no real leverage over them.

[jock]

16 hours ago, Energokom said:

But TV box manufacturers don't use armbian, they use android. How do they parasitize?

Perhaps because they benefit of huge software support without giving anything in return?

You can object that that tv box manufacturers never asked for that software support, which is true, but let's imagine tv box community support ceases immediately, how many people would buy tv box crap and how many people would instead buy an SBC to do their experiments, tests and projects?

 

I puzzled myself dozen of times with that question, and that's the main reason I stay stick with lower end tv box devices only.

 

15 hours ago, Energokom said:

My friend had an SBC orange pi 3, on which the emmc failed after 2.5 years. I have a s905w TV box (the first one I bought instead of SBC), it has been working for a year with armbian on emmc. (This is me to the reliability of emmc on SBC).

Which is not scientifical and statistically significant way to deduce the global quality. Yet you just take a look to some tv box boards to see the poor quality of soldering, the recycle of passive components, the general low quality of the traces (sdio wifi complaints mostly) and the scrap emmc/ddr components, that often fail to reach the rated performances.

 

And no, not anyone has a soldering station and is capable of swapping a broken emmc with new one, also because the emmc is not the failing part here (I have tv boxes with half-working ddr parts, half working ethernet due to poor chokes, outdated wifi chips, and so on...)

[jock]

4 hours ago, jpegqs said:

Are there legal reasons to request TV box manufacturers to publish the patches they used for Android? Although Chinese companies will likely ignore this, there is no real leverage over them.

Actually I don't know, but I think that tv box manufacturers do little to nothing adjustment on their android images. I think they deal with the software as little as they can do. Despite there are dozen of tv box brands out there, all of them have the same exact software, the only difference is the device tree to adapt little differences of the boards here and there.

 

Software support costs, and costs a lot, and tv box manufacturers have to keep the price as down as possible.

[Hqnicolas]

tv box boards to see the poor quality of soldering

From my experience with TV boxes,
If you keep USB3.0 on max speed for a time longer the 30 seconds, probably you will experience a data loss somewhere.

[Energokom]

1 hour ago, jock said:

tv box community support ceases immediately, how many people would buy tv box crap and how many people would instead buy an SBC to do their experiments, tests and projects?

First of all: there is practically no support for TV box as it is. Basically, users themselves share their best practices.

Secondly, as I said, SBC manufacturers need to adapt to the needs of users and make cheap SBC (example raspberry).

And then they will buy SBC instead of TV box

[jock]

1 hour ago, Energokom said:

First of all: there is practically no support for TV box as it is. Basically, users themselves share their best practices.

Which is a false statement. You talk that way only because you don't know what is there behind.

I run the rk322x and rk33x8 thing for years and perhaps I'm more informed than you.

Tv boxes have been always a discussion theme in the past with the armbian "management board". People with more experience than me noted, years ago, that they would be way too costly and practically unmaintainable by project members if community would not be involved in their management. That's true: their hardware changes constantly, market names that means nothing, plenty of revisions for the same "board" with different wirings and different hardware parts. You can't set a supporting level when you get a situation like this.

For that reason dedicated forum sections and Community Supported Configuration (CSC) boads were introduced, and support is given by community itself with a "best effort" fashion.

Tv box and alike configurations are always accepted into armbian, but only as CSC boards. Also rk322x family is there only for tvboxes. Wiping out all csc boards and families and forum section and maintainance would be much easier for everyone.

 

1 hour ago, Energokom said:

Secondly, as I said, SBC manufacturers need to adapt to the needs of users and make cheap SBC (example raspberry).

Perhaps it is somehow true, but still is challenging to deal when your opponent "cheats" in every possible way (scrap or defective parts, false advertisement, etc...)

[jock]

2 hours ago, hotnikq said:

If you keep USB3.0 on max speed for a time longer the 30 seconds, probably you will experience a data loss somewhere.

Yeah, USB3 is quite sensitive to interferences, and when the board is not designed nor realized with particular care, that's what you get.

rk322x thread is filled with these minor and major issues and when people asks what they can do, the best answer is always "next time buy a properly supported SBC, whose specifications are clear and has been tested for proper support".

 

I always say that tv boxes are very nice for toying around - I find it very funny to reverse engineer them.

You may even be lucky and get stability for your project, but if you're not a power user with more than average experience and knowledge you will easily have troubles of some sort sooner or later.

[Shinjin]

Hello,
I have one of those TV Boxes (DQ08) and I'd like to try to use Armbian with it.
Since it's not a supported device I can't find info about what to download and what to do; Could someone point me to a tutorial or give me some info?

Thanks.

[jpegqs]

9 hours ago, Shinjin said:

Hello,
I have one of those TV Boxes (DQ08) and I'd like to try to use Armbian with it.
Since it's not a supported device I can't find info about what to download and what to do; Could someone point me to a tutorial or give me some info?

Thanks.

I have patches here, but read this thread first. Do not install it to EMMC.

[Lizzo69]

Hey so I've been trying to install the patches by @jpegqs but I keep getting stuck at the " cp orig/*.dtsi . " Aspect of it as I get "no such file or directory" (I'm really new to this and I'm clearly doing something wrong with the asterisk part lol but I'm a fast-ish learner)

Edited January 1 by Lizzo69
Typo

[Shinjin]

@jpegqs

Thanks! I've been able to successfuly compile and test it.
I'm a bit disappointed since I expected a bit more performance from the CPU on this thing.

One last question: What does the multitool.img do?

Edited January 1 by Shinjin

[Lizzo69]

@Shinjin can you please share the files you compiled so I can try them? (You can dm a link to me, I would be grateful) And also how did you flash? I wanna use it for klipper so I think the cpu would be plenty fast. 

[Shinjin]

Ok,  get the files from here: https://mega.nz/folder/oSESxDTJ#9U3_TGFAGGW_8ep9z_aCKw

 

I wrote the .img to an SDcard and then followed the instructions for the .dtb file.

The SDcard has two partitions, inside the first there are the boot files and a folder named "dtb",

I copied the "rk3528-vontar-dq08.dtb" file into the "rockchip" folder that is inside the "dtb" folder.

 

I then edited the "armbianEnv.txt" file, changing this line:

fdtfile=rockchip/rk3528-evb1-ddr4-v10.dtb

into this:

fdtfile=rockchip/rk3528-vontar-dq08.dtb

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 2 by Shinjin

[Lizzo69]

thank you soooooo much @Shinjin 

i followed your directions and it worked somewhat perfectly. unfortunately, after the armbian screen with the spinning circle, the screen is just grey. i waited for 20 mins, and nothing.

 

 

update edit: i got to the "rk3528-tvbox" login screen by trying other .dtb files in the rockchip folder. the "mangopi-m28k" got me there.  

 

another update: i have absolutely no internet lol i'm connected through lan. double checked the cable to ensure it's working. i cant use my usb wifi card either lol sighh

Edited January 2 by Lizzo69

[jpegqs]

7 hours ago, Lizzo69 said:

another update: i have absolutely no internet lol i'm connected through lan. double checked the cable to ensure it's working. i cant use my usb wifi card either lol sighh

 

I tried to use the firmware from Android, it ends with this:

[dhd] ======== PULL WL_REG_ON(-1) LOW! ========
[WLAN_RFKILL]: rockchip_wifi_power: 0
[WLAN_RFKILL]: rockchip_wifi_power: toggle = false
wifi power off
[WLAN_RFKILL]: rockchip_wifi_power: toggle = false
[WLAN_RFKILL]: wifi shut off power [GPIO106-0]
[dhd] ANDROID-ERROR) failed to power up wifi chip, max retry reached **

 

But I don't care about WiFi because: 1) I don't like anything wireless, 2) WiFi in cheap TV boxes is of crap quality.

 

How to try the same:

Spoiler

Here's the patch to use the driver:

--- a/drivers/net/wireless/rockchip_wlan/rkwifi/bcmdhd/dhd_config.c
+++ b/drivers/net/wireless/rockchip_wlan/rkwifi/bcmdhd/dhd_config.c
@@ -111,6 +111,7 @@ const chip_name_map_t chip_name_map[] = {
     {BCM43340_CHIP_ID,    2,    DONT_CARE,    "bcm43341b0_ag",    ""},
     {BCM43341_CHIP_ID,    2,    DONT_CARE,    "bcm43341b0_ag",    ""},
     {BCM4324_CHIP_ID,    5,    DONT_CARE,    "bcm43241b4_ag",    "ap62x2"},
+    {BCM4335_CHIP_ID,    1,    DONT_CARE,    "bcm4335b0_ag",        "bcm4335"},
     {BCM4335_CHIP_ID,    2,    DONT_CARE,    "bcm4339a0_ag",        "AP6335"},
     {BCM4339_CHIP_ID,    1,    DONT_CARE,    "bcm4339a0_ag",        "AP6335"},
     {BCM4345_CHIP_ID,    6,    DONT_CARE,    "bcm43455c0_ag",    "ap6255"},

 

 And this is to the kernel config:

CONFIG_BCMDHD_FW_PATH="/lib/firmware/rkwifi/fw_bcmdhd.bin"
CONFIG_BCMDHD_NVRAM_PATH="/lib/firmware/rkwifi/nvram.txt"

 

Copy these files from Android to /lib/firmware/rkwifi:

/vendor/etc/firmware/fw_bcm4335b0_ag.bin
/vendor/etc/firmware/nvram_bcm4335.txt

 

[Lizzo69]

aoooooo @jpegqs i'm a complete noob to this and i have no idea how to apply the patch or driver lol but i'll try something