Any hope for Allwinner H618 "Z8 Stick"?

[snow]

I have two of these cheap Chinese sticks and I was wondering if I could load a better OS onto them

 

I think there's only a USB port

 

 

[Nick A]

@snow try the transpeed image
https://github.com/NickAlilovic/build/releases/tag/20250306

[snow]

@Nick A Thank you for the reply!  I am still eager to try and load a different OS onto these two sticks.  Sorry for the delay, somehow I just found the e-mail notifying me of your response now

I'm not familiar with the process of trying to flash an image so I will start there, but before I do, is there a possibility whatever changes are made won't work, can't be undone and then brick the device?  I'd probably rather not risk it if that's a possibility.  But if there's always a way to re-flash them, I'm totally interested in trying anything I possibly can

I'll wait to hear back from you before I attempt anything -- thank you!!

[Nick A]

@snow download balena etcher and flash the image onto a sdcard. This will boot armbian off the sdcard. Unless you use armbian-config and write to emmc you will be fine. 

[snow]

@Nick A Shoot, I don't think it actually has an SD card slot: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006258812291.html

I am holding it in my hand now, unless it's somehow obscured or hidden then it looks like there's only a USB-A port and then a USB-C port for input power

[Nick A]

@snow https://linux-sunxi.org/FEL/USBBoot I haven’t tried this before.

[snow]

I probably better wait on it, that looks above my skill set unfortunately, I consider myself just a novice user.  I can handle burning and image and booting it, if it's fairly straightforward, but I probably shouldn't dig myself any deeper for now LOL

 

I'll be on standby in case anything ever changes or becomes easier in the process!