Installing on old S905 TV box

    There are hundreds of manufacturers of boxes branded "MXQ" so that's not going to enlighten us on WiFi specs. And lshw only shows the items that we described in device-tree so that doesn't help either. Things that would help are high-res pics of the board inside the box so we can see the chips being used, and the boot log (dmesg) from the original vendor kernel.

    What do you mean "from the original vendor kernel"? For instance, would a dmesg from ce help? Or even a device tree from it, e.g. from dtech's images?

    Taking it apart means I have to "break" its feet to get to its screws, because they are glued very tightly and I don't want to do that. I may ask the neighbor to drill holes on them so as to get to the screws...

    This xda thread has a high res photo and a tip for getting it into recovery mode.

    MXQ Pro 4k Recovery mode S905
    Hi all, just picked up an MXQ Pro 4K android box from bangood…
    forum.xda-developers.com

    Edited once, last by jim_p: Merged a post created by jim_p into this post. (February 7, 2023 at 7:25 AM).

    It doesn't really matter whether it's the original Android kernel, or CE, or another LE release. As long as it clearly shows what make/model of WiFi chip is inside the box. The alternative is a clear picture of the board to see the SDIO module markings. The fact it doesn't probe Broadcom or QCA9377 drivers makes me think it's a Realtek chipset; so I'll warn in advance that if it requires vendor drivers that aren't in the upstream kernel I will have no interest in adding them to LE images.

    I just got the tvbox back, so there you go.

    https://imgur.com/a/O5TdEEc

    The neighbor literally destroyed all 4 feet instead of opening small holes on them. Now the tvbox has no feet at all :(

    Tbh, if I knew that I had to go through all that (finding the right dtb, the box not being able to boot from its emmc anymore, wifi not being detected, taking the box apart etc), I would not try it at all. But my stupid head wanted at least a device at home to run kodi 20! This has more issues than the le 11 images for rpi and the x64 image combined!

    Anyway, if the wifi is one of the forementioned ones and can not work, I will install lakka/batocera on it and play old games :P

    Quote from jim_p

    The neighbor literally destroyed all 4 feet instead of opening small holes on them. Now the tvbox has no feet at all :(

    I think he had to do that to search for hidden screws. Feet are easy to replace (hardware store), compared to a case.

    Let's wait for chewitt now. Thanks for the pic.

    The wireless module is top-left on the PCB (below the cut-out). I can't see the model markings on the chip, but the Realtek "Crab" is visible and that explains the lack of WiFi probing on the device. It's an older Realtek chip not supported in the upstream kernel (because if it was, it would probe) and LE does not add Realtek vendor drivers as they're a pain in the rear to maintain over time. They do exist though, and you could always self-build an image with the driver embedded. The BT side of the module is serial (not SDIO) and in some cases there is support for the BT part but not WiFi (as they are different drivers) but for that we need to know the specific chip model as the "compatible" string in device-tree determines which driver and how it loads. The photo isn't high-enough resolution to see the model details, and they're often a bit fuzzy to start with.

    NB: Logs from a vendor kernel boot (Android or CE) will probably show more clues about WiFi/BT chip details, although the multi-vendor DHD driver that's used in Amlogic kernels does obscure the info a bit.

    Trick question: Would another dtb help in identifying that wifi chip?

    I know how bad realtek's support is on linux, I have seen it all those 15+ years that I use it as my main os, so yea, no need to apologize for not including drivers for it in the image.

    Regarding dtb files, I searched the ones from ce and the one I used back then is indeed gxb_p200_1g. Its github page has them too, and they seem like plain text files.

    If there is a way to reinstall either android or ce, I would like to know how. I would prefer ce, because android on it is just unusable garbage.

    I am now looking through dtech's thread in case I ever posted some hw id from it there. For the record, dtech also has an image file for s905 with realtek wifi.

    I'm not aware of any upstream Amlogic dtb's that have Realtek WiFi set; which is because most box device-trees are for older devices and the drivers aren't supported so kernel rules say you don't describe unsupported hardware.

    If you work with vendor kernel images the Realtek problem is less of a problem because the kernel NEVER changes. That means zero security updates and such .. but also means the WiFi driver you hacked to run stays running. In LE where we track upstream kernels the drivers tend to break with every major kernel bump and novelty of fix-hunting wears off fairly quickly.

    You should be able to revert to a legacy kernel image by putting the box in recovery mode, i.e. toothpick method, with the respective installer SD card inserted. The box should search-for and find the bootscripts and set things up again.

    Do you mean the one right next to the hdmi port, labeled as "av"? As you can see on my photo above, there SHOULD be a button over there but it is missing. It just has 3 tiny holes there. And that is the root of all my issues with it.

    Moreover, the fist thing I noticed on xda's photo was that small "bump" that is inside the spdif port, but my hopes were wiped when I saw the board on my tvbox.