T95Z Plus w/ H616

[jwillb00]

Hi everyone,

I'm recently obtained a TV box from a local store (seems like they sell Amazon returns or something, but they just have a bunch of random stuff). After installing AIDA64, I learned that it's running an Allwinner H616 CPU and has 4GB of RAM. It is able to boot warpme's MiniArch build for the Tanix TX6S, and I extracted the DTB from the Android build on the eMMC. My question is, where do I go from here? I'd like to build a custom Armbian image to support my device. When I try booting the Armbian image for the Orange Pi Zero 2, it gives an error over my serial monitor about a bad DRAM configuration which I expected since apparently these boxes have DRAM chips that are often laid out differently than the Orange Pi, and this can apparently be fixed with a U-boot configuration change. I was curious about how I can integrate these changes into my own build of Armbian so I could bring support to my device. Thanks in advance!

[Nick A]

Which image are you using? Axp313? 
https://github.com/NickAlilovic/build/releases/download/20250306/Armbian-unofficial_25.05.0-trunk_Tanix-tx6s-axp313_bookworm_edge_6.12.11.img.xz

[jwillb00]

oh thanks! I didn't realize you already had an axp313 image. I've been compiling armbian with custom u-boot patches and it's been taking forever. I've been trying to adapt a dtb to my box, which one do you use? I tried including the one from miniarch but it seems like it gives warnings and I can't bypass them in the Armbian build system.

[Nick A]

@jwillb00 I’m using miniarch patches with my build. This is kernel 6.12. I also have 6.14. When I have time I’ll update to 6.15.
https://github.com/NickAlilovic/build/tree/v20250306/patch/u-boot/u-boot-h616

https://github.com/NickAlilovic/build/tree/v20250306/patch/kernel/archive/warpme-6.12
 

 

[Nick A]

@jwillb00 try this build.

https://github.com/LYU4662/t95zplus-h618-build

[jwillb00]

@Nick A oh your build for the Tanix TX6S worked perfectly for me already (thanks!) though I did notice some weird behaviour on my other box that's supposed to be identical to this one. stuff like armbian-config freezing when trying to format the eMMC mainly. I noticed a hang in the kernel in the dmesg when that happened so I suspect there might be some minor difference in the hardware that I'll look into later. for right now I've moved to a box with an amlogic s905y4, which is a whole other can of worms. I got debian-on-amlogic to boot so I'm hoping I can copy over the u-boot and dtb in other to get armbian working on it, since it has more features for SBCs. thanks for your help nick!