T95Z Plus S912 Running Great

[Tomas Catone]

TV Box Name: Sunvell T95Z plus Octagon shaped box (Beware – apparently a lot of variants)

CPU Amlogics S912

Armbian build file name: Armbian_community_25.5.0-trunk.370_Aml-s9xx-box_noble_current_6.12.23

DTB file used: meson-gxm-vega-s96.dtb (but several seem to work… none with wifi out of the box)

Kernel Version: 6.12.24

Distribution Installed (focal, buster, etc): Noble

Working Ethernet (Yes/No): Yes

Max Ethernet Speed that works (100/1000): Not sure how to determine...

Does wifi work (Yes/No): YES *** See Below

Does bluetooth work (Yes/No): Not tested

Does HDMI audio work (Yes/No): Yes
Additional Comments (provide any additional information you feel is important):

Tested many files. Ubuntu (noble) seemed much more usable than Debian (bookworm)

 

Also tested

Armbian_community_25.5.0-trunk.334_Aml-s9xx-box_bookworm_current_6.12.21 _gnome_desktop.img.xz

Armbian_community_25.5.0-trunk.334_Aml-s9xx-box_noble_current_6.12.21 _gnome_desktop.img.xz

Armbian_community_25.5.0-trunk.334_Aml-s9xx-box_oracular_edge_6.14.0 _gnome_desktop.img.xz

Armbian_community_25.5.0-trunk.334_Aml-s9xx-box_oracular_edge_6.14.0.img.xz

Since I am trying to learn server/media center/adguard or pihole stuff – chose the server headless install eventually. Learning has started.

**** Thank you thank you to @ZuiMelanieForno and their post here:

But basically looks like the easy way is to create a soft link of the ap6330 driver file as the brcm4330 file that must be loaded by default.

sudo mv /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac4330-sdio.txt /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac4330-sdio.txt.old 
sudo ln -s /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac-ap6330-sdio.txt /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac4330-sdio.txt

Not sure of this solution will survive update.   (UPDATE: Confirmed - it does not survive update - but doing the commands again and a reboot seemed to work.)

 

I have installed pihole and had it running. I had jellyfin running. Rebuilt from 0 again and am trying to do inside of docker containers. Dockers seems running but still some learning to go.

 

If I write my sd to my eMMC – can reset to 0 again by booting from an sd card … and when ready burn that to eMMC? Or should I keep the writes to the eMMC as few as possible?

 

I own two of these boxes – Identical on the outside but the newer one (bought probably 1 year later) does NOT have an eMMC. It has the dreaded NAND chip(BiWIN 16GB)… Also a different wifi module I think…. (LTM8830)

 

Oh and – can I just say I love pulling this thing out of retirement and having a tiny low cost media server in the house. Thanks @balbes150 and @SteeMan and Everyone for their hard work!  This is amazing... until I blow it up again...

Edited April 24 by Tomas Catone
Confirmed the wifi procedure and question.

[datatech451]

Thanks for sharing your experience! I also own a T95Z Plus (S912) and agree that it runs great for most tasks. The S912 chip handles 4K streaming and light gaming really well, especially with optimized firmware. Have you tried any custom ROMs like ATVxperience or LibreELEC to improve performance further?

A few tips that helped me:

Cooling: Adding small heatsinks or a fan prevents throttling.

Debloating: Removing unused apps with ADB or Debloater Tool speeds it up.

Launcher: Switching to Wolf Launcher or ATV Launcher reduces lag.

Would love to hear if you’ve found other tweaks!