LE11 on a T95Z MAX (S912) 3 RAM 32ROM - too slow

hexec · March 12, 2023 at 6:30 AM

I was so happy to see LE11 for S912 devices. Couldn't wait to ditch Android and use LE. However, my system boots with a 2MB SD card into LE but is very slow. I was hoping a USB3 stick would be way faster but it doesn't work. Then I tried inserting the SD card into a USB adaptor and used the USB port. That worked so I knew it can boot from a USB port. A direct usb3 stick still doesn't work no matter what I do. It must be a timing thing. The slow SD card works and a fast USB stick does not. I was then hoping to use emmctool to load LE to internal ROM but it doesn't recognize the internal ROM. Sadly , I must go back to using Android. I know there is no support for S912 loading to internal emm. But, I want to learn about how to make this happen. Does anyone know what must happen to recognize internal emmc? Is it about providing the correct info into the dtb file? I want to learn more about this process. I don't mind doing the work. I just need a nudge in the right direction. Tools needed to decompile, edit and recompile the dtb file. etc. Anyone willing to help?

hexec · March 12, 2023 at 7:52 AM

Ok, I found how to decompile the dtb file into a dts file and view it in Visual Studio Code. I see the emmc sections. I now need to understand how they are defined. I can see where the gpio pins and symbols are defined. In order to help understand this better, I'll decompile some of the other emmc supported device tree files and compare the differences. I'm thinking that I may have started this thread in the wrong section. I'm new to this forum so please feel free to move it to the proper section. And also please, if I'm in left field here, please let me know. Thanks

**chewitt** · March 12, 2023 at 8:01 AM

If you use a decent SD card not some prehistoric 2MB one the runtime experience will improve. There is also lots of scope to increase the SD card device speed via device tree if faster speeds prove reliable. That's always a gamble with Android boxes, which is why the card device in the currently experimental device-tree is using slower-but-safe defaults.

NB: I'd rather have dental work done without anaesthetic than engage in supporting emmc installs on Android boxes that we have no boot sources for. Under the legacy kernel it's a major pain in the arse to support but technically do-able. On an upstream kernel where the kernel cannot understand the partition scheme or see any of the partitions on emmc it's an entirely different game.

hexec · March 12, 2023 at 5:06 PM

Thanks Chewitt. I can try a faster SD card than my 2MB one ( i really meant 2GB) but I'm still faced with only being able to use a tiny 512MB portion. I noticed that KODI can grow to 1.5GB alone over time. It will not take long to deplete the 512 format that the SD creator app produces. if I can get a 32GB SD to work then is there a way to expand the partition to include the entire size or use a FAT32 or other file partition method supported by the kernel. Sorry for the stupid questions. Trying to learn what makes this work and how all of the pieces fit.

potfpotf · March 12, 2023 at 9:52 PM

Hello hexec , yep the usb boot depends very much on your hardware.

Sd readers in tv boxes are generally not usb, and most boxes I own will not boot on usb sticks.

With 32 gigs and 64 gb average cards, i have not had any problems with booting speeds, but i have also long used a 4gb card that worked fine on boot.

From what I understand, the .kodi install and config is not in the 512mb partition, but in storage/kodi on the other partition so there is no risk of kodi outgrowing the partition, and no need for changing the partition sizes.

Also, the storage partition is automatically grown on first boot to fill the card, so no need to to manual partition adjustments.

HTH

hexec · March 13, 2023 at 12:15 AM

Quote from potfpotf

Hello hexec , yep the usb boot depends very much on your hardware.
Sd readers in tv boxes are generally not usb, and most boxes I own will not boot on usb sticks.
With 32 gigs and 64 gb average cards, i have not had any problems with booting speeds, but i have also long used a 4gb card that worked fine on boot.
From what I understand, the .kodi install and config is not in the 512mb partition, but in storage/kodi on the other partition so there is no risk of kodi outgrowing the partition, and no need for changing the partition sizes.
Also, the storage partition is automatically grown on first boot to fill the card, so no need to to manual partition adjustments.
HTH

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Well then that's the best of both worlds. Configured up a 32GB SD card and noticed that it built the partitions on first boot. Then I checked Kodi>system>storage and can see that full capacity is used in 2 partitions. I configured my favorite kodi setup and allowed it to cache the thumbnails and whatnot. I'm so happy to report that the performance is 1001 times better.... . I noticed a couple small issues. No IR remote....no problem, I use an air mouse remote which is much better than the stock remote. Bluetooth is not working. I'm sure I can find a way to enable that in the dtb file. And system is running at 1.5GHz instead of 2.0Ghz. Lastly, Chewitt had to mention that its possible to tweak the SD speed. Now, I will not be able to leave well enough alone.... . I'll be messing with that too. Big thanks to both of you for your help.

**chewitt** · March 13, 2023 at 2:45 AM

If you want all 4x (S905, S905X/D) or 8x (S912) CPU cores to work then 1.5GHz is the maximum achievable stable CPU speed. If you reduce the number of active CPU cores you can (over)clock the remaining CPUs higher. Amlogic's 2.0GHz marketing can only be achieved with a single CPU core active, but this gives worse performance than all cores active at a stable 1.5GHz. Most vendor boot firmware lies and shows 2.0GHz at all times. Feel free to complain to your box vendor.

There are silicon bugs in the mmc controller on all Amlogic boards that impact on stability. There are workarounds implemented in the kernel, but the upstream kernel has rules on code quality so we aren't able to hack around problems as eggregiously as the vendor kernel sources do. SD card speed is currently set to 50MHz but can probably be raised to 100MHz reliably, maybe 150MHz. There are also additional SD card modes that can be experimented with. The vendor codebase uses 200MHz but that will not (100% guaranteed) be reliable.

The process for creating custom-remote configs documented in the wiki is still valid but the file format changed from .conf to .toml in a semi-recent v4l-utils update and the wiki needs to be updated to reflect that. Have a look at e.g. /usr/lib/udev/rc_keymaps/tanix_tx3mini.toml to see an example of the very lightly changed format.

**chewitt** · March 13, 2023 at 2:48 AM

Also, it is very easy to loose track of what works or not when people start posting about multiple devices in these threads. Please keep threads focussed on a single box.

hexec · March 13, 2023 at 6:26 AM

Quote from chewitt

If you want all 4x (S905, S905X/D) or 8x (S912) CPU cores to work then 1.5GHz is the maximum achievable stable CPU speed. If you reduce the number of active CPU cores you can (over)clock the remaining CPUs higher. Amlogic's 2.0GHz marketing can only be achieved with a single CPU core active, but this gives worse performance than all cores active at a stable 1.5GHz. Most vendor boot firmware lies and shows 2.0GHz at all times. Feel free to complain to your box vendor.
There are silicon bugs in the mmc controller on all Amlogic boards that impact on stability. There are workarounds implemented in the kernel, but the upstream kernel has rules on code quality so we aren't able to hack around problems as eggregiously as the vendor kernel sources do. SD card speed is currently set to 50MHz but can probably be raised to 100MHz reliably, maybe 150MHz. There are also additional SD card modes that can be experimented with. The vendor codebase uses 200MHz but that will not (100% guaranteed) be reliable.
The process for creating custom-remote configs documented in the wiki is still valid but the file format changed from .conf to .toml in a semi-recent v4l-utils update and the wiki needs to be updated to reflect that. Have a look at e.g. /usr/lib/udev/rc_keymaps/tanix_tx3mini.toml to see an example of the very lightly changed format.

Thank you so much Chewitt, awesome information. I'm not going to bother spending any time getting the oem IR remote to work. Great info for others though. My hardware is listed in the heading. It has an S912 octocore and LE reports them all as active. So far everything is working. Admittingly, I need to test much more.....not enough time to play around. However, I do want to mess with the SDCARD clock. I figured out how to use the dtc tool on my ubuntu PC. I'll tweak/optimize a dtb for my device and share it for others with the same device.