A95X F3 Amlogic S905W2

  • It's the first time someone shows up with an S905W2 board and it's hard cum impossible to diagnose these things without seeing the UART (serial console) output from the box. That requires a UART cable and cracking the box open to connect it, which often involves soldering pins to the board. I'm always game for that - but most users aren't?

    Hello! I have in hand Vontar X2 box with s905w2 and I manage connect serial wires and dump a boot log when i try to boot it from sdcard (armbian), I can provide this dumps and play more on this if you want to try.

  • Hello! I have in hand Vontar X2 box with s905w2 and I manage connect serial wires and dump a boot log when i try to boot it from sdcard (armbian), I can provide this dumps and play more on this if you want to try.

    I'd prefer to see output from the LE "box" image (not Armbian) since we normally use a newer kernel and I know what patches are being used with it - I don't track Armbian kernels. Please experiment with different SM1 device-trees and share logs.

  • I'd prefer to see output from the LE "box" image (not Armbian) since we normally use a newer kernel and I know what patches are being used with it - I don't track Armbian kernels. Please experiment with different SM1 device-trees and share logs.

    Log attached (image used: LibreELEC-AMLGX.arm-11.0-nightly-20221121-5132be1-box.img.gz)

  • Code
    Matched DTB for "s4_ap201_4g"

    I was expecting S905W2 to be similar to S905X2 (G12A) but actually this is an S4 device so there is no usable support in the upstream kernel at this time. Some patches have started to dribble in but LE will not be supporting them anytime soon. I believe CE have been working on S4 with their vendor-kernel based fork - best to look there.

  • Code
    Matched DTB for "s4_ap201_4g"

    I was expecting S905W2 to be similar to S905X2 (G12A) but actually this is an S4 device so there is no usable support in the upstream kernel at this time. Some patches have started to dribble in but LE will not be supporting them anytime soon. I believe CE have been working on S4 with their vendor-kernel based fork - best to look there.

    yep, is S4, thanks for your time to check the logs.

  • Create a USB or SD card from https://chewitt.libreelec.tv/testing/LibreE…85.0-box.img.gz the same way as you made any other LE or CE image (Etcher, Win32Diskimager, the LE app, dd on Linux, etc.). Then set the correct dtb name in uEnv.ini.

    Hello ! I'm running a Radxa Zero (S905X2 SOC) with the latest LE11 nightly (AMLGX box image).

    It works pretty good, H264 hardware decoding is working nicely, although there's always some noise in the first 2 seconds of playback.

    I'd like to run the latest LibreELEC image that used the vendor GPU drivers. Reading your post, I found LibreELEC-AMLGX.arm-10.88.0-box.img.gz in your testing space. I booted it with an access to the serial console, and found out that the kernel panics with an external synchronous error (I could post the traceback if needed). I also tried the 10.88.0-radxa-zero version, same error. chewitt would you have a clue ?

    Does it make sense to try to do this anyway ?

    Or is anyone aware of LE9.x images usable for the Radxa Zero ? They seem to have all disappeared in the end.

  • found out that the kernel panics with an external synchronous error (I could post the traceback if needed)

    There is a known issue with U-Boot 2022.07 and later that causes a synchronous abort on Amlogic devices. The current workaround is to disable EFI in U-Boot, or use 2022.04 until it is fixed.

    Here is a recent chat about it:

    #linux-amlogic on 2022-12-28 — irc logs at libera.irclog.whitequark.org

    It may be the same issue, since it looks like LE11 is using 2022.10.

  • I'd like to run the latest LibreELEC image that used the vendor GPU drivers. Or is anyone aware of LE9.x images usable for the Radxa Zero ? They seem to have all disappeared in the end.

    LE (or me) has never created an image using vendor GPU drivers for Radxa Zero. We switched to mesa/panfrost before support for the Zero was added upstream.

    frakkin64 I'm not sure that bug would be found in LE images since we aren't using EFI boot code paths in u-boot? - I can see how it would show up with dekstop distros though.

  • frakkin64 I'm not sure that bug would be found in LE images since we aren't using EFI boot code paths in u-boot? - I can see how it would show up with dekstop distros though.

    I don't think it matters if your using EFI or not, at least that was my experience. I ran into it on S905 with Armbian, which isn't EFI either. Setting CONFIG_EFI_LOADER=n in u-boot fixed it up.

  • LE (or me) has never created an image using vendor GPU drivers for Radxa Zero. We switched to mesa/panfrost before support for the Zero was added upstream.

    frakkin64 I'm not sure that bug would be found in LE images since we aren't using EFI boot code paths in u-boot? - I can see how it would show up with dekstop distros though.

    Too bad. Meanwhile, vpeter mentioned CoreELEC with vendor graphic acceleration on Amlogic SOCs ; perfect H264 rendering experience. I just happen to have this focus on the video details for a current project involving video live projection ; for anything else I'd try LibreELEC with the panfrost driver first, I promise /shrug