CSC Armbian for RK3288 TV Box boards (Q8)

[pro777]

@jock

Thank you for your utility. I noticed one drawback.  I work in Windows 10, which does not mount the FAT partition of your image. I guess this is due to the block size of the FAT partition in 4096 bytes. In Windows 10 a block size of the FAT partition is supported at 8192 bytes and above.

[jock]

23 hours ago, pro777 said:

@jock

Thank you for your utility. I noticed one drawback.  I work in Windows 10, which does not mount the FAT partition of your image. I guess this is due to the block size of the FAT partition in 4096 bytes. In Windows 10 a block size of the FAT partition is supported at 8192 bytes and above.

Really thanks for reporting! I will fix that ASAP

[RMG]

Is there any chance to make Armbian work on H96 H1/H2  4gb/32gb color full addition?

This box does not seem to boot either by USB or by SD card.

[hexdump]

@RMG -  i think this is the wrong thread for this question as those boxes have a rk3328 and no rk3288 ... technically it is possible but it is very far from easy as you have to build a custom u-boot and write it in a complicated way (as you only write part of it) using the rockchip tool via usb to emmc and even then it is not guaranteed to work - at least i have a h96 max h2 which is now booting following the extlinux.conf file from either usb and sd card but it was a long journey to get there ... i have it on my todo list to document this procedure, but i'm not sure when i'll find the time for this ...

[RMG]

@hexdump

 

After writing custom u-boot to box flash, does it allow to boot Android? or is Android is wiped out?

 

It would be grate if we can use Android also and able to boot Armbian from sd card or usb.

[jock]

New Armbian 20.08 Ubuntu Focal Desktop image with kernel 5.8.1, on my box it works pretty fine, but feel free to test it on yours:

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14iUGANr_-Cr3LvAP6wm3K0kLJAveHPhF/view?usp=sharing

[DRAGO4k]

On 8/19/2020 at 2:05 PM, jock said:

New Armbian 20.08 Ubuntu Focal Desktop image with kernel 5.8.1, on my box it works pretty fine, but feel free to test it on yours:

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14iUGANr_-Cr3LvAP6wm3K0kLJAveHPhF/view?usp=sharing

not working for me... I did not have time to debug it since I need the machine up an running.

stuck on blue led after power on, no read/write activity

[jock]

10 hours ago, DRAGO4k said:

not working for me... I did not have time to debug it since I need the machine up an running.

stuck on blue led after power on, no read/write activity

I understand. Maybe you have the older u-boot version installed in the eMMC, because the latest images have u-boot 2020.04 with HDMI enabled and you should have had some hints about the issue on the screen.

[DRAGO4k]

@jock Thanks man, will update the uboot emmc as soon as possible, any hints on how to do this? thanks a lot !

[jock]

45 minutes ago, DRAGO4k said:

@jock Thanks man, will update the uboot emmc as soon as possible, any hints on how to do this? thanks a lot !

Be aware that changing the bootloader on the emmc is always a bit risky. If you're using your box in a production environment or you don't have the necessary tools to recover from a possible brick, just stay with the one you have, we'll find another way to debug the possible kernel problem (ie: use the onboard uart)

 

However, dding the bootloader from the sdcard should be enough:

# Make a backup of the old u-boot in emmc:
dd if=/dev/mmcblk2 of=u-boot.old.img bs=32k skip=1 count=40

# Transfer new u-boot from sdcard to emmc:
dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/mmcblk2 bs=32k seek=1 skip=1 count=40

sync

 

Another way is armbian-config script, there is the option to transfer the bootloader from the sdcard to the emmc.

 

Another option could be regular apt-get install, but I'm not sure about the right package name

 

I always use the first method (the dd one), so others are not really tested and can't guarantee they work the right way.

[stanis_cza]

hello

I am new to armbian

I am able to boot latest armbian from sd card but I cannot boot multitool anymore. I did update the loader from sd card. The emmc is not visible under latest armbian so I cannot clear it.

I tried to boot the legacy (kernel 4.x) armbian- no success - the legacy armbian is not booting.

I am unable to connect to the device with rockchip android tools anymore - it looks like the new loader disabled the connection.

 

is there a way to enable mutlitool booting again?

how can i make armbian to see emmc memory?

how can i clear emmc?

 

thank you for help

 

Stan

 

 

 

[jock]

2 hours ago, stanis_cza said:

hello

I am new to armbian

I am able to boot latest armbian from sd card but I cannot boot multitool anymore. I did update the loader from sd card. The emmc is not visible under latest armbian so I cannot clear it.

I tried to boot the legacy (kernel 4.x) armbian- no success - the legacy armbian is not booting.

I am unable to connect to the device with rockchip android tools anymore - it looks like the new loader disabled the connection.

 

is there a way to enable mutlitool booting again?

how can i make armbian to see emmc memory?

how can i clear emmc?

 

thank you for help

 

Stan

 

 

 

Hello,

 

first of all, the image with the legacy kernel is a bit of "abandoned", because the mainline kernel already is quite advanced in features for almost any use, and in fact the legacy image is not available at all from the armbian download page.

 

Getting back on your situation, how did you update the loader from sdcard? Did you use armbian-config or did it manually?

Normally once the loader is updated, you should get all the boot options (external SD, USB, internal eMMC, in this specific order) and multitool should be boot flawlessy too.

The unavailable eMMC from the linux system also is not expected. Please post the link with the debug info produced by the command sudo armbianmonitor -u

 

Also, could you make and post a photo of both the sides of the board? Is it an xt-q8l-v10 or some other model?

[stanis_cza]

On 1/3/2021 at 3:37 PM, jock said:

Hello,

 

first of all, the image with the legacy kernel is a bit of "abandoned", because the mainline kernel already is quite advanced in features for almost any use, and in fact the legacy image is not available at all from the armbian download page.

 

Getting back on your situation, how did you update the loader from sdcard? Did you use armbian-config or did it manually?

Normally once the loader is updated, you should get all the boot options (external SD, USB, internal eMMC, in this specific order) and multitool should be boot flawlessy too.

The unavailable eMMC from the linux system also is not expected. Please post the link with the debug info produced by the command sudo armbianmonitor -u

 

Also, could you make and post a photo of both the sides of the board? Is it an xt-q8l-v10 or some other model?

thank you very much for your prompt answer

 

here are my answers to your questions
1. i used armbian-config to update the loader - i cannot do it manually i.e. using dd since emmc is not visible under armbian
2. multitool is not booting after loader update nor additional options are visible at armbian-config loader update tool
3. here is a link to results of armbianmonitor -u: http://ix.io/2KJj
4. my box is Q8L 8G/2G XT201410154 ST see the link below

q8 photo

 

regards

stan

[Attilatilla]

 Hi Jock,

 

Thanks for your effort to bring a "new" life into this cool box!

I'd need a bit of advice here... I loaded the latest build and it works fine apart from one thing: hw acceleration. MPV is lagging a lot, just like Kodi.

in the first post, there is a link to another topic about getting hw acceleration (RK3288 Media Script) which is re-directed to "RK3288/RK3328 Legacy Multimedia Framework". The requirement there is to use an Armbian Buster Legacy Desktop image. There are only 2x such image exist for this box (Armbian_19.11.8_Xt-q8l-v10_buster_legacy_4.4.199 and version 19.11.3), but none of them would boot due to kernel panic.

Any hints please how i could get hw acceleration working?

 

Thanks!

 

 

[jock]

On 1/4/2021 at 10:11 PM, stanis_cza said:

thank you very much for your prompt answer

 

here are my answers to your questions
1. i used armbian-config to update the loader - i cannot do it manually i.e. using dd since emmc is not visible under armbian
2. multitool is not booting after loader update nor additional options are visible at armbian-config loader update tool
3. here is a link to results of armbianmonitor -u: http://ix.io/2KJj
4. my box is Q8L 8G/2G XT201410154 ST see the link below

q8 photo

 

regards

stan

Uhm, that's strange: armbian-config can't update the bootloader on the eMMC if the kernel cannot access the eMMC itself, so maybe you didn't really updated the bootloader and possibly the reason because the multitool is not booting anymore is elsewhere.

I see from the logs you posted that the eMMC just can't be detected. I already have seen such situation, but it was for another kind of board, similar to xt-q8l-v10 but yet different. My opinion is that there is a "power sequence" that is preventing the eMMC from being detected. You can try the device tree from this post (the directory you have to put itinto is /boot/dtb)

 

[jock]

On 1/4/2021 at 11:27 PM, Attilatilla said:

 Hi Jock,

 

Thanks for your effort to bring a "new" life into this cool box!

I'd need a bit of advice here... I loaded the latest build and it works fine apart from one thing: hw acceleration. MPV is lagging a lot, just like Kodi.

in the first post, there is a link to another topic about getting hw acceleration (RK3288 Media Script) which is re-directed to "RK3288/RK3328 Legacy Multimedia Framework". The requirement there is to use an Armbian Buster Legacy Desktop image. There are only 2x such image exist for this box (Armbian_19.11.8_Xt-q8l-v10_buster_legacy_4.4.199 and version 19.11.3), but none of them would boot due to kernel panic.

Any hints please how i could get hw acceleration working?

 

Thanks!

 

 

Hello!

 

Yes, you're perfectly right: there is no hardware acceleration at the moment in rockchip vanilla armbian. The support is getting squared out in kernel and userland just right now, in fact specific distros like LibreElec already provide some hardware acceleration and the upcoming Kodi 19.0 Matrix will have all the necessary bits in place to get hardware acceleration using mainline kernel.

However, just to give you some infos about, some months ago I compiled the kernel, ffmpeg and Kodi using several work-in-progress patches from the gurus behind LibreELEC and indeed hardware acceleration worked, but it was not yet very stable and it required also some hand-made compilation effort, which is not all users usually are happy to do.

I'm eager to try again with latest bits already in-place, but in the recent days I moved and had a lot of things to deal with I really could take any look to anything. I'm confident the process will be much less cumbersome than it was months ago due to patches being mainlined. The kernel is ready because the driver that is handling hardware acceleration is already there (it is called hantro, as the hardware block doing encoding and decoding on rockchip), ffmpeg and Kodi may still require some tuning.

 

This thread may be useful for you, expecially the last posts:

it is for rk3399, but many things applies to rk3288 too, and may give you some hints to find resources in case you want to try it yourself.

[stanis_cza]

On 1/6/2021 at 8:59 PM, jock said:

Uhm, that's strange: armbian-config can't update the bootloader on the eMMC if the kernel cannot access the eMMC itself, so maybe you didn't really updated the bootloader and possibly the reason because the multitool is not booting anymore is elsewhere.

I see from the logs you posted that the eMMC just can't be detected. I already have seen such situation, but it was for another kind of board, similar to xt-q8l-v10 but yet different. My opinion is that there is a "power sequence" that is preventing the eMMC from being detected. You can try the device tree from this post (the directory you have to put itinto is /boot/dtb)

 

thank you for your answer again

 

this is what i did:

1. i had an android firmware with dualboot loader RK3288Loader_uboot_V2.17.02.bin and latest stock firmware on emmc
2. i created multitool sd card and booted from it
3. using multitool i cleared emmc and than updated loader on emmc
4. after updating the loader the multitool became unbootable; i could not boot android either but
5. i could boot the latest armbian distros after creation of respective sd cards

what i want achieve is to get access to emmc for updating the loader / firmware

from my perspective it looks like multitool clear emmc or update loader changed emmc setup making it inaccessable and yet enabling armbian boot 

 

after booting the latest armbian i cannot see emmc from linux

i updated the dtb file following your advise on both: armbian and multitool sd cards without any effect i.e. armbian is still booting with the updated dtb and multitool is not booting

 

i tried to use reset pin of foresee emmc chip to get into masked mode - without success = when on android i was able to get into this mode without any problems using rockchip android tools

 

are there any tools available for linux you would recommend i could use to diagnose / get access to emmc? emmc has a set of instructions allowing to control its state as well as firmware update process

do you know if i could create bootable sd with android from linux and connect the box to rockchip tools?

 

any advise and help from you is very appreciate

 

regards stan

 

[pro777]

  

31 минуту назад, stanis_cza сказал:

do you know if i could create bootable sd with android from linux and connect the box to rockchip tools?

 

Try the firmware with Android Pie for XT-Q8L-V10, which can be loaded from the SD card from the Russian forum 4PDA. True, here you need to write the Miniloader to the EMMC.

 

P.S. You can also try installing Android Pie for XT-Q8L-V10 to EMMC.

[jock]

1 hour ago, stanis_cza said:

this is what i did:

1. i had an android firmware with dualboot loader RK3288Loader_uboot_V2.17.02.bin and latest stock firmware on emmc
2. i created multitool sd card and booted from it
3. using multitool i cleared emmc and than updated loader on emmc
4. after updating the loader the multitool became unbootable; i could not boot android either but
5. i could boot the latest armbian distros after creation of respective sd cards

what i want achieve is to get access to emmc for updating the loader / firmware

from my perspective it looks like multitool clear emmc or update loader changed emmc setup making it inaccessable and yet enabling armbian boot 

That's all in the loader you uploaded on the eMMC. I don't know how you did that or where you got it so can't really guess what is happening, but once you put a loader on the eMMC everything is passing through that. Also "the loader" is made of several steps: ddrbin -> miniloader -> uboot + trustos. Which step is misbehaving is unknown to me because I can't know what software you placed on your eMMC.

 

If the multiboot is not booting anymore, blame the loader.

 

1 hour ago, stanis_cza said:

after booting the latest armbian i cannot see emmc from linux

i updated the dtb file following your advise on both: armbian and multitool sd cards without any effect i.e. armbian is still booting with the updated dtb and multitool is not booting

 

The dtb I provided has to be placed in the armbian /boot/dtb directory, in place of the existing dtb; it is not intended to be used with multitool and changing the multitool dtb won't definitely help it boot.

Give a chance to this other one rk3288-xt-q8l-v10.dtb on armbian

 

1 hour ago, stanis_cza said:

i tried to use reset pin of foresee emmc chip to get into masked mode - without success = when on android i was able to get into this mode without any problems using rockchip android tools

 

You didn't gate the eMMC clock pin correctly to get into maskrom mode.

rockchip android tools instead put the board into loader mode, which is similar but different because you cannot access the whole eMMC. Loader mode depends upon the (guess what?) loader, so if you can't access it anymore blame the loader again.

 

 

[Attilatilla]

On 1/9/2021 at 6:14 AM, pro777 said:

  

 

Try the firmware with Android Pie for XT-Q8L-V10, which can be loaded from the SD card from the Russian forum 4PDA. True, here you need to write the Miniloader to the EMMC.

 

P.S. You can also try installing Android Pie for XT-Q8L-V10 to EMMC.

I tried these... The box didn't boot.

 

[jock]

@Attilatilla For you information, I did some testing using the latest ffmpeg/kernel patched for rockchip hardware decoding, but had no success yet. Since @JMCC found his way to integrate the media installer for rk3288 too in the armbian repositories, I guess I may reconsider to pour some love into bringing up back the rockchip 4.4 legacy kernel for people who wants video/3d hardware acceleration made easy, so stay tuned!

[pro777]

6 часов назад, Attilatilla сказал:

I tried these... The box didn't boot.

Did you manage to record the Miniloader on EMMC?

[Attilatilla]

16 hours ago, jock said:

@Attilatilla For you information, I did some testing using the latest ffmpeg/kernel patched for rockchip hardware decoding, but had no success yet. Since @JMCC found his way to integrate the media installer for rk3288 too in the armbian repositories, I guess I may reconsider to pour some love into bringing up back the rockchip 4.4 legacy kernel for people who wants video/3d hardware acceleration made easy, so stay tuned!

 

If the support is going to be missing from current kernel for long, it would be nice to have the legacy kernel revived. Given it's not too much work! I'm no coder, but if you need help, i volunteer for it within my limited capabilities. Testing for sure could be one area i can help with.

Thanks!

 

[Attilatilla]

14 hours ago, pro777 said:

Did you manage to record the Miniloader on EMMC?

Hi,

Well, that's a bit of a "problem"...  I may have some issues with the eMMC, pls see log of AndroidTool:

09:27:53 136	RKDevTool v2.7.1.0 start run
09:28:27 212	Layer<1-5-2>:Download Boot Start
09:28:30 039	Layer<1-5-2>:Download Boot Success
09:28:30 041	Layer<1-5-2>:Wait For Maskrom Start
09:28:30 450	Layer<1-5-2>:Wait For Maskrom Success
09:28:30 452	Layer<1-5-2>:Test Device Start
09:28:30 454	Layer<1-5-2>:Test Device Success
09:28:30 457	Layer<1-5-2>:Check Chip Start
09:28:30 460	Layer<1-5-2>: Check Chip Success
09:28:30 462	Layer<1-5-2>:Get FlashInfo Start
09:28:30 463	<LAYER 1-5-2> INFO:FlashInfo: 00 00 00 00 00 04 04 00 28 00 00
09:28:30 464	<LAYER 1-5-2> INFO:GetFlashInfo-->Emmc storage.
09:28:30 466	Layer<1-5-2>:Get FlashInfo Success
09:28:30 469	Layer<1-5-2>:Prepare IDB Start
09:28:30 470	<LAYER 1-5-2> ERROR:PrepareIDB-->No Found 1st Flash CS
09:28:30 473	Error:Layer<1-5-2>:Prepare IDB Fail
09:28:30 478	Layer<1-5-2>: RunProc is ending, ret=0

 

[jock]

@Attilatilla Ok, fixed the device tree and updated the legacy kernel images in the first post.

They are still for testing, but seems to work fine so far with the media installer for tinkerboard in the apt repositories (don't remember the actual package, just search for tinkerboard and you'll probably find with ease).

I tried only the debian minimal image and Kodi was starting fine. Did not try any video though.

 

Feel free to report here!

[pro777]

13.01.2021 в 03:13, Attilatilla сказал:

Well, that's a bit of a "problem"...

It looks like the burn failed. Apparently, this is why the firmware from the SD card does not start.

[Attilatilla]

On 1/17/2021 at 7:29 AM, jock said:

@Attilatilla Ok, fixed the device tree and updated the legacy kernel images in the first post.

They are still for testing, but seems to work fine so far with the media installer for tinkerboard in the apt repositories (don't remember the actual package, just search for tinkerboard and you'll probably find with ease).

I tried only the debian minimal image and Kodi was starting fine. Did not try any video though.

 

Feel free to report here!

 

Thanks, Jock!

It seems to work pretty well, though i just did a quick test so far.

 

[Attilatilla]

On 1/20/2021 at 9:31 AM, Attilatilla said:

 

Thanks, Jock!

It seems to work pretty well, though i just did a quick test so far.

 

 

Hi Jock,

The box is working fine, X264/X265 videos are playing smoothly up to 1080p (haven't tried 4K yet).

There's though one minor issue, which i believe should be possible to fix, is that when i connect the box my TV, the edges of the desktop are off the screen.

Any hints please?

Thanks!

 

[jock]

2 hours ago, Attilatilla said:

 

Hi Jock,

The box is working fine, X264/X265 videos are playing smoothly up to 1080p (haven't tried 4K yet).

There's though one minor issue, which i believe should be possible to fix, is that when i connect the box my TV, the edges of the desktop are off the screen.

Any hints please?

Thanks!

 

Hello @Attilatilla,

probably you need to set the overscan on your TV. If you connect the box on a regular HDMI monitor edges are all withing the display, but TVs have the overscan setting which is pretty annoying (and IMHO obsolete nowadays). Sometimes they call it "format", where you can select 16:9, 4:3, "just scan", zoom, and other options. Find the one that best suits for you.

[tommy]

Hello Jock.

 

I will buy an rk3328 dev board, IoT3288A, https://usermanual.wiki/Smart-Device-Technology/IOT-3288A/html. It could run Android 5.1.1 I. plan to run Armbian on this board. Could this board run your Armbian build? Could it be a bad idea to buy this board?

Edited June 18, 2022 by tommy