S912 support, what is needed ?

    Quote from endian

    Hmm.. What level of support is missing?

    Are you saying that ARM haven't published MALI-T820 interfaces, or that Amlogic haven't released any devkit for the S912?

    Last time I checked the userspace libraries are missing from the amlogic site. It could be that the binaries ARM ltd publishes will "Just Work(TM)", but afaik no one has tried that yet.

    Quote from Bambonik


    Originally, everyone loved Amlogic S912, only the received device noticed mistakes.....

    No Everyone did not love the AML S912. Only the gullible Newbies, that looked primarily at fancy tech Specs and Bullshit marketing and then jumped in boots and all and bought a lemon. Just chalk it down as a media player purchase educational lesson and move on.

    I've actually given out 4 seperate warnings over on the Kodi forums NOT to buy any S912's, the Firmware and support is so bad:
    START HERE - Pick the Right Kodi Box (updated May 2017)

    Quote from chocho

    This is a little harsh !

    I guess if you put a fair amount of effort into giving advice, keeping hardware threads maintained etc and it's ignored that's the result.
    'Don't buy an S912.'
    'Don't buy an S912.'
    'Don't buy an S912.'
    'Don't buy an S912.'
    'Don't buy an S912.'
    'Don't buy an S912.'
    'Hey guys, I bought an S912, can someone make it work?'

    Yes, but you can't put everyone in the same line.

    Quote from chocho


    Yes, but you can't put everyone in the same line.


    I can't think of a sensible reason to buy an S912 for libreelec (or for kodi on android for that matter) unless you're intending to build / develop it yourself. So 'harsh but fair.' IMO, obviously.

    i can understand why some think to many get swayed into the makers trap and just blindly buy products with poor support but to say the 912 SoC is useless is just plain un-informed... just because theres not a plethora of software floating around is not a valid reason to condemn the chip... Ive had my own linux-kodi software running on T95u-pros since they came out... its not all the difficult for anyone wanting to do their own thing... ive been using original M8S's on my own firmware since they came out and it wasn't all that much work to port it up to the S912's im using...

    Unfortunately the current coders are putting what little time they have into supporting the projects they already have and people need to respect that... im sure in time you'll see 912 builds in all the OpenElec and Libreelec projects... you can bet the box makers are hoping as well because they now how crappy their own firmware generally is and have been using coders on sites like this or FT for years to fix their problems or just plain outright scab some code and call it theirs...

    but lets not be lame and trash the whole chipset just because of a lack of support at this point in time... hardware specs dont mean shit without decent firmware and just about every chip used in these cheap boxes for years now have been plagued with either buggy or badly performing firmware...

    my 2 cents...

    I bought a S912 tv box mainly for IPTV and 3D movies but it comes with Kodi 16.1 under Android 6.0. I would rather use it only for Kodi.

    It is NOT fair to say that S905 and S912 are almost the same. To some respects it is true but for instance at 3D movies the S912 kicks ass to S905. Nevertheless, there are a lot of S912 boxes out there and I can not figure why someone like "chocho" and others will "professionally" advise you so strongly "do not buy S912"! Based on what really??

    Now if kszaq will not have the time to look into it (I hope he will still find a little for it), I hope there will be someone else to do it. Take a look at this thread, there are only 27 replies and almost 3000 views (at the time of my reply). Doesn't mean it is popular and it is worth to look into it?

    Edited once, last by DigitALL (October 30, 2016 at 11:58 PM).

    Quote from chocho

    I have a S912 device and I like it a lot.


    Same here! I bought it MAINLY for the design, yes, for the looks!!!
    The one i got is a totally different class in design, i think it is BEAUTIFUL, nothing like the dull black-mat plastic finish that all more or less have
    Looks lovely on top of my Yamaha AVR, i dont want to hide it behind a TV or something :)

    Does it work? Yes, fine, for what i need. I only use it for Kodi, play my movies, and it does it fine via wireless.
    How about extremities? I dont know, never tested with crazy bitrate movies

    Would i like to throw away Android and all apps, and enjoy a lightning-fast LE linux? Sure as hell :D

    Quote from DigitALL


    It is NOT fair to say that S905 and S912 are almost the same. To some respects it is true but for instance at 3D movies the S912 kicks ass to S905. Nevertheless, there are a lot of S912 boxes out there and I can not figure why someone like "chocho" and others will "professionally" advise you so strongly "do not buy S912"! Based on what really??

    Based on what?. Well based on the different GPU. As you said S905 and S912 not are the same, one is Mali-450MP and the other is Mali-T820MP3.

    For me made sense that an active developer of one software product recommend not buy a SOC that not is (at least not yet) supported.

    The only thing that is needed to make my builds work for S912 is to have libMali.so (and headers) with fbdev support. The only libMali available from Amlogic now is ion which won't work.

    Fun fact: my S905 builds boot on S912 except for GPU-related things... that means no Kodi. :(