Installing Armbian on Vero 4k, does not boot from SD Card

[patientgamer]

Hi, I'm trying to repurpose my Vero 4k (not 4k+) by installing Armbian on it. The device is based on the S905X and it looks like the most recent versions include a dtb for 4k, thanks to the work done by chewitt.

I used the AMLogic s9xx TV Box edition and followed these instructions in the forums to copy the dtb and u-boot.

 

However, I'm having some trouble getting the device to boot into an SD card flashed with the Armbian image. I was wondering whether anyone else has some experience with this.

 

Here's what I tried so far:

1. Downloaded and extracted the image (I used the Minimal/IoT version)
2. Wrote the image to an SD Card (tried two Class 10 ones, 32GB and 64GB). I also tried both dd and USBImager.
3. Mounted the boot partition on my PC
4. Copied u-boot-s905x-s912 to u-boot.ext
5. Edited the extlinux.conf file to use dtb/amlogic/meson-gxl-s905x-vero4k.dtb
6. Inserted the SD card into the Vero 4k slot
7. Used the toothpick method to press the button in the audio jack
8. While keeping the button pressed, attached the PSU cable
9. Waited for the boot process (I tried several durations of pressing the button)

 

I've tried these steps with several variations on u-boot and dtb or other Armbian versions, but in all cases OSMC boots up (installed on emmc)

 

I also successfully ran the OSMC installation from the SD Card a few times, so that suggests the SD Card is fine? I asked on the OSMC forums for help, but got no further than this, so it kinda feels like I ran into a dead end.

 

Any ideas or pointers are much appreciated!

[SteeMan]

The boot process uses the native android uboot on emmc.  I have no idea what uboot OSMC uses and if it is compatible with the mechanism that armbian uses to chain from the native uboot to the u-boot.ext.

To understand what is happening during the boot you will need to hookup a usb-uart connector to the board and capture the uboot output.

[patientgamer]

Thanks for replying! Yes, it seems a bit out of the ordinary (the Vero doesn't come with Android, but with OSMC (Linux) preinstalled). However, I've seen reports of people successfully booting from SD card, so I tried those first, but they didn't seem to have this problem.

 

Would a USB-A to USB-A connector work? Or do I need USB-A to UART? The Vero doesn't have such an external port, so would I need to open it up?

 

It does have a separate USB connector that it can draw power from (without PSU) and connect to a PC.

I failed to mention that I purchased a USB-A to USB-A cable to try this (IIRC this was mentioned somewhere in the OSMC wiki).

Though, when I connect it, it doesn't show up either in lsusb or dmesg. I tried different ports and different PCs. The Vero does boot using this cable, so something is working. Am I missing something maybe?