Gxbaby "P200" tv box (MXQ PRO) does not boot

[Abdellah B]

Hi,

I have an old Android 6 TV box that is slow (1GB ram), i think it's an S905 because it's the only kernel that can boot and its mainboard is a "gxbb p200"

as I see on Aida64 :

 

 

I just tried to boot the Armbian_community_24.8.0-trunk.139_Aml-s9xx-box_bookworm_current_6.6.33_minimal.img

I flashed it on a 16GB microSD card on an SD card adapter.
Then I added the line :

FDT /dtb/amlogic/meson-gxbb-p200.dtb

just after the lines

label Armbian_community
  kernel /Image
  initrd /uInitrd
  fdtdir /dtb/

into extlinux.conf file.

 

and then I renamed the u-boot-s905 file to u-boot.ext

 

But the system still hangs at startup because it can't find the ROOT partition :

 

I think it's because the kernel can't find the SD card reader, as an error appears:

mmc0: error -110 whilst initialising SD card

 

I checked the partitions on gnome-disk utility and there are fine :

 

Here is the box :

 

 

The only distro that worked was Libreelec but the Wi-Fi does not accept the password. (it always says "invalid credentials)

 

is it a box that's too old to be saved?

 

 

[SteeMan]

If you have other SD cards give them a try.  These boxes can be very particular in which SD cards they will be able to read from.   Especially if the SD card is newer formats that are not supported by these old boxes.  I find about half of the SD cards I buy can't be used on these boxes.

But also, note if you've read the TV Box FAQ, don't expect to get wifi working.  It rarely works on these Amlogic boxes.

[Abdellah B]

 

 

Update :

When i use the latest armbian version ("Noble Numbat") + the meson-gxbb-beelink-mini-mx.dtb and u-boot-s905 as u-boot.ext, all the peripherals worked fine (including Wifi and ethernet).

 

But now I'm trying to launch the installer from armbian-install command but I got an error :

The [ :meson-gxbb: ] series in the [ /etc/model_database.conf ] file is empty and does not support write to eMMC !

 

 

So is there any chance of finding a linux version that can be installed on this box? (even if it's an old version of libreelec, openwrt, debian or whatever) because with Android 5 the box is unusable and Playstore no longer works.

[SteeMan]

First off you aren't following the TV box install instructions.  You don't use armbian-install with the aml-s9xx-box builds as it will brick your box.  But regardless, even if you were following the correct instructions there is a note there:  Note: It is not possible to install into emmc on boxes with the s905 cpu

The way that the emmc is laid out on the s905 makes it impossible to intall Armbian to the emmc on that cpu.  The later varients (s905x, etc) don't have that issue.  So you are stuck running off of SD storage.

[Abdellah B]

Thank you for your answer