CSC Armbian for RK322x TV box boards

[Arthur Ferraz]

# hexdump -C /sys/bus/nvmem/devices/rockchip-efuse0/nvmem

00000000 52 4b 23 82 81 f0  70 55 52 4b 57 34 33 30 31 32 |RK#...pURKW43012|

00000010 00 00 00 00 17 29 1A 07 00 06 01 00 00 88 00 00 |.....)..........| 

00000020

 

Which chipset is it?

 

After, install Armbian_21.02.0-trunk_Rk322x-box_bionic_legacy_4.4.194_desktop version, i can see new IP adress on my router, does it mean the LINUX is working and maybe the problem is driver or something like this? 

Edited November 25, 2023 by Arthur Ferraz

[Bert Kortenbach]

Hi @Arthur Ferraz

 

Can you check if the photo of my board a few posts back is the same as yours? Photo on https://ibb.co/GFxQL47 

If identical you are one of the unlucky people that have a so called R29 box. Follow the discussion about it starting at page 70 or something.

 

If you can ping the box then you may be able to SSH into it using user:root, pass:1234

If your on windows the use something like putty to make the SSH link.

Once connected you can tag along with me and try to get HDMI working (if your box is indeed an R29!)

 

About the hex dump:

52 4b 23 82 = RK3228

52 4b 23 92 = RK3229.

Source: https://forum.libreelec.tv/thread/21117-unoffical-le-9-2-9-80-images-for-rk3229-rk3228/?pageNo=23

 

quote: "I have a MALE-TO-MALE usb, maybe i could try to install without SDcard, but there is no microbutton(while pressing the reset microbutton with a toothpick) on my device."

The reset switch on these boxes is hidden inside one of the jack-plug holes if I remember correctly. Just poke your toothpick in and check for the typical micro switch click. 

 

Good luck and don't forget to tell leave your comments on what you did to get it working (or not 😉 )

 

Best regards,

Bert

 

Edited November 25, 2023 by Bert Kortenbach

[Bert Kortenbach]

Hi @jock

 

Both links are as dead as a doornail (on my PC anyway)

That's why I posted the size and CRC32 of my file.

For completeness, my file is:

CRC32: 59CE6571
CRC64: 723531CCD486CA2E
SHA256: 4AC98AE7D99F9F66F89D03D29FF777F577AD97B7CB77575D18CB40CCA594AC86
SHA1: 77ED245943CBACD0861913B7BF3D32057289D0A3
BLAKE2sp: BD8D82E7BF739ED295AB46162B56DBFA301889A66EA9FE56DDD33DB285C11200
 

Are your file and mine the same?

 

Best regards,

Bert

Edited November 25, 2023 by Bert Kortenbach

[Arthur Ferraz]

@Bert Kortenbach Looks the same to me. 

https://ibb.co/CK6GpBh
https://ibb.co/rZ870Zv

 

 

And, i can't ping for it... I tried ssh but didn't work

Edited November 25, 2023 by Arthur Ferraz

[jock]

@Bert Kortenbach

paolo@predatorg:~$ sha1sum rk322x-led-conf7.dtbo 
f599404e8ccb9d9002da9864a1fe32424400be10  rk322x-led-conf7.dtbo

 

seems like different; by the way I downloaded twice form the post and it worked for me.

[Benedito Portela]

Hi @Bert Kortenbach and @Arthur Ferraz, I did have the same problem with mine MXQ_R2B_LP3 board, (this box is like R29 with other wiifi chip), I want to share my experiences with you, it worked after the great help I received here, it could help you too! I followed @jock 's instructions but for the hdmi to work, it had to be the Armbian_23.08.0-trunk_Rk322x-box_bookworm_edge_6.5.5_minimal.img.xz image, I installed it on an SD card, as soon as I boot, the hdmi image doesn't appear, I went used SSH and configured rk322x-config led-conf-7, then reboot, and it worked! But even so, I had problems recording on the emmc, in my case it was an emcp, when I recorded the image using multiboot, the box got a black screen! The only way I managed to install it on emmc was by booting from the SD and then using the armbian-install command, then the box worked normally, then I made the modifications, installed the graphical environment, booted with multiboot and made a backup, Then this image restores normally in the box! So in short, you have to have Armbian updated, kernel 6.5, and install using the armbian-install command! I hope this information is useful! About Leds, the blinking yellow led means that the system has booted and is working! 

Good luck, I hope everything goes well! 

[Bert Kortenbach]

Hi @Benedito Portela

 

Thanks for pointing out this alternative route using multiboot / armbian-install!

For now I won't try that route though because I'm currently using my box without HDMI running node-red and it's finally working.

To get HDMI I'll try to get my hands on the correct  rk322x-led-conf7.dtbo first.

 

Best regards,

 

Bert

[Bert Kortenbach]

@Arthur Ferraz

If you can't ping the box then how does the box get into the list you showed earlier??

Does the orange led blink?

Do you have experience using SSH?

[Bert Kortenbach]

@jock

YES! Got it this time around. No idea why it didn't work earlier.

SHA1 matches.

I'll be back in a sec!

 

[Edit]

Nope. Didn't work for me.

Checked the sha1 on the box too. Identical to your last post.

 

If you need my help testing more options I'll be glad to assist, otherwise I will be using the box as is...

 

Best regards,

 

Bert

Edited November 25, 2023 by Bert Kortenbach

[Arthur Ferraz]

I got it, however now i don't know if my chipset is RK3228A or B @Bert Kortenbach based on previous image that i have sent, do you know it?

[Bert Kortenbach]

Hi @Arthur Ferraz

 

I went for A. It's the safest option

 

If that doesn't work you may want to try  @Benedito Portela's path.

 

Good luck!

 

Bert

Edited November 25, 2023 by Bert Kortenbach

[Bert Kortenbach]

This is a bit off topic, sorry for that, but I want to buy another tv box. I tried to find something like a best buy guide with links to AliExpress or something similar, but I can't find any. Tips?

[fabiobassa]

@Bert Kortenbach not at all

 

On this same forum we had people that bought for sure amlogic 905 and got rockchip and vice versa.

Is Total roulette with china vendors

 

Where you located if you dont mind I ask

[Bert Kortenbach]

@fabiobassaI'm from the Netherlands. 

I like the fact that they are so cheap (got my last box for 15 eur.) Many people give the advice to buy an SBC with a much more expensive SOC but what's the point if they cost 10x that...

If I buy two boxes from the same link, that should give some assurance that I'll get the same box right?

 

Bert

Edited November 25, 2023 by Bert Kortenbach
Added name

[jock]

1 hour ago, Bert Kortenbach said:

I like the fact that they are so cheap (got my last box for 15 eur.) Many people give the advice to buy an SBC with a much more expensive SOC but what's the point if they cost 10x that...

And it is my advice too. tv box are cheap shit, as @fabiobassa said it is a nice roulette and mostly they are made of scrap parts. If you're very lucky, you get something that works and has some kind of support, if you're unlucky you get crap that breaks after a bunch of weeks because soldering is weak and parts are refurbished scrap.

 

The advice I always give is, if you need something that is required to be minimally reliable and much less painful to setup, go with an SBC supported by armbian; tvboxes are for toying around

[jock]

4 hours ago, Bert Kortenbach said:

If you need my help testing more options I'll be glad to assist, otherwise I will be using the box as is...

A good thing would be the original android device tree, although looks strange to me because the board is a regular R29 and should not behave differently than others.

[Bert Kortenbach]

What about the "walnut pi 1b" (allwinner h616 SOC) ? Does Armbian run on that? (Didn't see any post on that SBC)

[Benedito Portela]

Hi @Bert Kortenbach, I don't know this "walnut pi 1b" but sound good, I bought an orange pi zero 3 and I'm waiting for to arrive, it's very cheap and uses the H618 chip! About buying on Aliexpress, I already bought a rk3228a box, but an S805 arrived! I discovered that, although the ad says rk3228A, they send what is in the "SPECIFICATIONS" item, when I bought another one, I looked at this and it came right! When I looked at what was wrong (s085), in the "specifications" it was s805, so I couldn't complain! Even so, I believe they are not trustworthy in sending the right item! I wanted to buy just the board, but they only sell it complete tvbox ! I have an old TX3 mini and it works well, but it doesn't install in the internal memory(NAND), it uses the S905 chip, the biggest advantage is that it is 64 bits and comes with 2GB of RAM!

 

[fabiobassa]

Please Just remain focuses on rk322x and their problems.

Dont go off topic

Thank you all very much for understanding , highly appreciated

[Arthur Ferraz]

 

Hi guys, I just want to thank you for all the help. I've got almost everything working; unfortunately, the HDMI port didn't cooperate. However, it's not a big concern for me as I'm using SSH to control it remotely, and I've also installed Pi-hole to manage my internet. Thank you all! Extremely happy and sending greetings from Brazil. 🇧🇷 @jock @Bert Kortenbach @Benedito Portela

 

 

 

[k405]

Hello, sorry for the grammar, I'm a complete layman and I'm trying to install Armbian on an rk3228a with an eMMC chip. I can access through rkdeveloptool with

rkdeveloptool db rk322x_loader_v1.10.238_256.bin   

and with the multitool, however when installing the Armbian image it simply does not turn on, it has a constant red LED and no video. I've already tried with legacy and current, both don't start, here's a photo of the board.

 

Multitool did not identify whether the chip is NAND so I was not able to install NAND through Multitool to test and I was not even able to get the u-boot-main.bin file to test via rkdeveloptool.

[Bert Kortenbach]

Hi @k405

 

The board on the photo is a so called R29 board.

I have the same one and so do more people in this thread.

Getting HDMI is practically impossible on my board except when using multitool.

 

I've had jock's Linux image working for a few days using "Multitool SD card" and burning the Linux image to eMMC but now it stopped working.

For some reason Multitool has stopped recognizing the eMMC memory.

I've had this problem before (like you can read from the thread here) and I thought I solved it but now I'm back to square one.

 

@jockAny ideas? Same "Multitool SD card" as before. I can't think of anything different from before, it just stopped recognizing the eMMC.

Starting without "Multitool SD card" seems to work (the yellow LED is blinking) but the board is not coming on-line.

Bummer... I had a nice time running node-red on it...

 

@Arthur FerrazHow did you fix your problems with Multitool not recognizing your eMMC card?

 

Best regards,

Bert

 

Edited November 28, 2023 by Bert Kortenbach
Added @ to Arthur Ferraz

[RaptorSDS]

@k405@Bert Kortenbach

also looking on picture   its maybe not a emmc,  more like a eMCP (emmc and DDr Ram in one chip)

when looking at wifi part looks like a part of iphone chipset and not as a realtek of broadcom module

 

more more of cheap things patch together , most times you dont know when ist maybe recyle part or obsolete or over aged part of the shelf

[k405]

@Bert Kortenbach I understand, the board actually says R29_5G_LP3-v1.2, I'm going to try to connect with the modem to test the SSH connection and see if Armbian is booting. If everything goes well, I'll test the way found in the previous comments.

 

@RaptorSDS I thought the same when I did the first tests 1 week ago.

 

I've had this box for a few months, if I'm not mistaken, almost a year, and as it was sitting in the closet I decided to play around a bit and maybe set up a local server for testing. If it's not too much trouble, I wanted to learn about how to do these low-level tests with the boxes (related to u-boot and the like) and possibly create images as well. Is there a path I should follow or a starting point? And where do I find the images with the latest kernel?

[Bert Kortenbach]

@RaptorSDSWhatever it is, it worked flawlessly for a few days but now it does not anymore. Weird, right? Sounds like a timing / temperature issue or something...

[Bert Kortenbach]

@jock

The eMMC is stuck in programming mode. Common Linux problem.

I believe this thread talks about a fix: https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-mmc/msg28260.html 

 

Best regards,

Bert

[Benedito Portela]

 @Bert Kortenbach, In many attempts that I had on my box, I even thought that the memory chip had burned out! It's memory lock , I had to clean it using rkdeveloptool, the only way that worked was to first make the system run properly on the SDCARD and then use the armbian-install command, after that, the system is running on the box without problems, I make the backup with multitools, and the restoration works fine too, this image generated by this process also works normally on my older box! After a lot of work, trial and error, a lot of help from people here, everything is working fine in my boxes!

[Bert Kortenbach]

@Benedito Portela

Thank you for your reply!

I was thinking along those lines to, bit what interests me is -How did the box get into that state?- 

I shut down the box a few times by unplugging it. That may have had something to do with it, but normally a thing like that shouldn't happen

How can I prevent it from locking again in the future?

 

This is the second time he eMMC locks (stuck in programming state). The first time I thought it was the Multitool SD-card that failed somehow,

but apparently that was not the cause because now it happened while the box was running Armbian from eMMC.

The first time the chip *magically* got unlocked somehow but now it had been locked for almost a week...

The weird thing is that the yellow light blinks after starting!?
 

Best regards,

ert

[Benedito Portela]

@Bert Kortenbach " shut down the box a few times by unplugging it", it's can corrupt file system structure, but I think you may have a hardware problem, cold soldering in BGA or even the memory has damaged sectors! These boxes do not have good manufacturing quality, you cannot trust them, so try using the system via the SDcard, if the problem still persists, it could be the chipset, then it is better to replace this box!

[MattWestB]

Was just running apt-get update and rebooting and its getting updated kernel:

 

      _    _________  ____            _
 _ __| | _|___ /___ \|___ \__  __    | |__   _____  __
| '__| |/ / |_ \ __) | __) \ \/ /____| '_ \ / _ \ \/ /
| |  |   < ___) / __/ / __/ >  <_____| |_) | (_) >  <
|_|  |_|\_\____/_____|_____/_/\_\    |_.__/ \___/_/\_\

Welcome to Armbian 23.11.1 Jammy with Linux 6.1.63-current-rk322x
 

And i have one Ubuntu CLI on the HDMI monitor and the LED have being fixed so not the fix is online !!!

 

Great thanks for great work done !!!!