Mine are not assumptions but facts:
Out of being polemic, those are opinions or mostly "good practices", depending from the point of view. Anyone is free to follow or not to follow them, take or leave it. And also debating on this does not move your issue forward nor backward.
I also know only author or close supporters can answer this.
Good luck with the "close supporters" then 
goolpone You are making some assumptions about "codebase" that are just wrong. First of all, the fork is not "official" but rather a personal work from knaerzche , who may have thousands of reasons not to keep the master branch up with releases. I don't see a "freezed" status anywhere on this github fork, so your expectations have no basis.
The serial output unfortunately is a very fundamental debugging tool with this kind of boards, without the UART dump it is close to impossible to say what is wrong with your image. There may be possible configuration faults, but we will never know. The boot process is quite complex and there any dozens of variables involved in.
Your next advice was to flash a Libreelec image (V88II mars) to NAND but have some questions:
1) wouldn't it be wise to try to boot from sdcard first ?
2) what's my way back to restore stock android ?
3) according to "Quick installation instructions on NAND" on Armbian forum, shouldn't i choose "Burn Armbian image via steP-nand" ?
1) Indeed, it is much safer to try booting from sdcard first, but you should be able to do so just putting the LibreELEC image on and sdcard and plugging the cord; it should boot without any further procedure from sdcard. (Armbian instead requires some different setup because it uses a different bootloader arrangement)
2) If you kept the NAND data as it was, Multitool backup and restore feature will let you backup almost entirely the content and restore will bring back Android in the very same state you left it.
To add some further details, the NAND driver in 4.4 kernel will not let you backup the idbloader part of the NAND, which is the very first 0x2000 sectors, but it also does not allow to write those sectors, so tinkering with the Multitool is generally safe.
As further info, not directly related to the answer, the idbloader is very important on NAND devices because it contains code specific for the NAND vendor, thus if you lose the idbloader, you NAND data probably becomes garbage. But once you do a backup from Multitool, the Android part of the firmware is safe.
There is also a procedure that uses the AndroidTool for Windows that allows you to burn the original firmware from the image file, I don't remember quite well the procedure, but fabiobassa probably may help you there. Note that this procedure will do a factory reset, so you lose your existing data too.
3) No, because the steP-nand procedure is just for Armbian. Armbian needs to be "relocated" some sectors farther on the flash memory because of the different bootloader I talked about in answer #1. LibreELEC does not need such relocation, thus can be burned as is: just remember to say "Yes" when the Multitool will ask you to skip the idbloader (ie: the reason I explained in answer #2: NAND kernel driver can't write those sectors).
gianni253 it looks to me that for some unknown reason, u-boot does not detect the sdcard. This is the first time I see such issue and the log is not detailed enough to say what is going wrong.
Anyway I can suggest an untested workaround that maybe works: put the multitool (with the libreelec image in images folder) onto an USB stick too and boot with both sdcard and USB plugged in USB OTG port. Maybe u-boot will be able to detect the multitool in USB stick and finally boot from there.
BTW, I'm not sure libreelec 9.2 images works when booted from NAND, I have a far memory that once I had it working, but have had to do some little adjustment Just tested, the V88II mars image works fine with NAND and should work fine with your box too (use the standard "Burn image to flash" Multitool menu option, select "Yes" when asked to skip idbloader burning)
Thanks for the log, but the one booting Multiboot is incomplete. After booting the Trust OS, Multiboot changes the serial speed to 115200 for broader compatibility.
Indeed the Multiboot is booting, the red led solid light is a very bad indication of something gone wrong during the kernel initialization.
Maybe there are useful kernel panic messages, but you should grab a log setting the serial to 115200.
@jock2 I tried multiboot (latest version) many times and with repeated power cyclings but no success.
When I have time I will solder the 3 pins for jtag and make the serial debugging.
BTW, should I set 5V or 3,3V as TTL level ?
3,3v should be fine, but it's not a jtag but a simple serial port.
Be sure to burn the image on a perfectly working sd card with a proper sd burner like balena etcher, which is able decompress and verify written sectors automatically.
If a led is blinking it means that the kernel is alive and you should see something on the HDMI.
If the leds are turned off or dimmed it means something is wrong during boot.
If the original firmware starts, either the box has a very old firmware or the sdcard is somehow faulty
gianni253 multiboot not booting is quite a news to me. It should indeed boot and let you do maintenance, it is one of its design goals. Also it uses the legacy rockchip kernel, so there is something weird happening with your board.
At this point the output of the serial is mandatory to do some decent debugging.
Display MoreHi,
that's the board that I successfully booted from SD card using Legacy LibreELEC-RK322x.arm-9.2-devel-20200427220345-b7186bc-rk3229-hk1mini.img.gz image (first image I tried).
Then I tried with Mainline LibreELEC-RK322x.arm-9.80-devel-20200228171244-cd590c7-rk3229-box.img.gz but it didn't boot (blank screen on HDMI).
Board is definitely RK3229, has 8GB NAND flash and 2GB DDR3.
Any clue where to start investigations ?
many thanks
The best thing you can do to investigate is getting the TTL serial up and running to see what happens during boot process. I see that unfortunately you have RX/TX/GND pads, which are a bit more difficult to solder than regular holes, but it is much better than nothing at all.
These boards often are not what they say they are: we spotted several chips with "rk3229" markings that are in reality rk3228 chips.
Indeed you have a NAND chip on the board, and be aware that it is not yet supported by mainline kernel, so if you installed the image with mainline kernel in the internal flash it will absolutely never boot.
Hi All, Can someone please point me in the right direction, it's my first time attempting to flash one of these TV Box units.
I have a Scishion V88 4K, on the pc board its printed: MX4N-V02 2016-06-27 and there is a sticker on the board that shows: MX4N 8G/1G ZXD 2017-02-09 WW16120089
I went to the downloads page and saw the bootable media creation tool, but i did not see the recommended "V88Mars LibreELEC-RK322x.arm-9.2-devel-20200301143855-b58333a-rk3228b-v88marsII.img.gz" firmware to download suggested by another user earlier in the thread.
Are there any issue that i need to take precaution off (besides the UHC memory cards)
What download page are you referring to?
I see that the latest legacy builds list here: Release RK322x-le92-d20c7bc · knaerzche/LibreELEC.tv · GitHub the image for v88 4k is available
Jock2
Sorry, can not identify such "answers". There is a discussion around RK3229 but nothing precisely about the last firmware, where is it, if works or no.
Please, let me know again about my worries.
Give again such answers.... I have ever the same problems reported here ... I can not boot under RK3229 ... with such RAM and ROM described.
Do you have some success on it?
cc
I don't really what you intend for "TRUST image", this is a thread about Libreelec on rk322x, all the images and instructions are in the first page, just grab the image for your particular board, burn it on an sdcard (maybe using a proper image writer like balenaEtcher, which does verification too), plug the sdcard and turn the thing on.
As ilmich also said, try different images before giving up. But still, everything is already explained in the first page of the thread.
If you're looking for android images for your box, you're in the wrong place.
If you're looking for linux on your box, search for armbian (the exercise to find the forum and the right thread is left to you)
Display MoreHi Everyone
I am new in LibreELEC but it seems a great Linux distro trying to rescue for new live for odies TV BOX or TVBOX wih quality doubted.
The most famous and sold in Brazil is the MXQ PRO RK3229 (ARM V7 - 4 core), 4 G RAM and 64 ROM
Unfortunately, I have one,MXQ PRO RK3229 (ARM V7 - 4 core), made in China, tis box is very SLOW becoming
an impossible action like to run a KODI ...in addition many times it crashed (stricked) without reason.
So, I want to install another OS and/or firmware to become it useful for me, at least as a Linux console.
I read many threads but anyone or none of them brings my requests such:
Someone, could give a TRUST image to flash in a SD card and run it
What is the image that you used? Where is it? the board is a rk30board. RockSHIP(T)
How did you flash it?Normally I use
# dd if=IMAGE_FILE.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=4096 status=progress conv=fdatasync
for a SD-CARD.
is any difference for LibreELEC.USB-SD.Creator.Linux-64bit.bin ?
Someone could you give all the steps in detail?:):):):)
Thanks indeed for all
Claudio
Why do you ask things that have already been described in detail in the first page of the thread?
This project is fantastic.
I recently purchased a MXQ PRO 4K box which was listed to have a S905W, but I was surprised to see in Android that it has a RK3229 board (checked in CPU-Z too). If I boot to recovery it lists the board as a RK322x.
I have tried the RK3228a MXQ PRO 4K image listed on the releases page and it booted fine but without wifi working. Is it possible that my board is actually a RK3228a and android is telling me lies? I've been trying to research the variations of the board/wifi and how to detect them properly but haven't found much information.
Is it likely that the wifi on my MXQ PRO 4K isn't supported, and should I just go grab a USB wifi dongle? Are most dongles supported?
A lot of questions - if anyone can answer any of them I'll be greatly appreciative.
Discriminating between rk3229 and rk3228a/b at the moment is not certain, and AFAIK there are no easy-to-handle android tools which are able to tell if you got the former or the latter in a certain way.
There are some technicalities which can give us hints, but they are not at the reach of regular users (ie: tinkering with trust OS, reading the efuse, etc...)
From another point of view, rk3229 and rk3228a/b are quite similar, you can read the differences in the first page.
Wifi depends upon the chip installed on the tvbox, so you should open it and look for the chip, but if it does not work out of the box it is likely not yet supported, nonetheless it could be useful to know if you got a new/uncommon wifi chip or a common one. You would probably like to use an USB dongle for the time being.
There's more versions of this box. One with Amlogic s905 and second with Rockchip RK3229.
I'm just in the middle of helping my friend to install Libreelec on the same box – MXQ PRO RK3229 – but the remote control stopped working. Is there any fix for that? He's using BT mouse for now but it's not ideal.
Remotes should be configured first since it is very common that they use different codes. There are tutorials here and there on the forum. The procedure is the same for all the vendors, so the tutorials in the amlogic section will apply to these boxes too.
Indeed it is possible, I already asked knaerzche about that, but he's quite busy lately so we all need to wait for a images refresh. Unfortunately the module currently works only on legacy 4.4 kernel which will be abandoned in the next libreelec major version.
try that device tree is what I will do tomorrow ..but is it easy to flash to my rk3229 box?
You don't need to flash it to your board, you just need to substitute the existing .dtb file on your sdcard with the other device tree provided
I've tried another microSD: it doesn't become empty, but it doesn't boot.
I've seen what you've posted about the boot issue. What you have on your eMMC? I would like to try something on eMMC that makes no boot issue/bugs to boot legacy libreelec u boot.
I don't think it is possible at the moment. Armbian u-boot is compiled to do what you want, but due to the bug libreelec kernel does not boot. But if you try and use the device tree I posted in the armbian forum it will probably work for the time being.
Thanks for the reply and for the infos!
Unfortunately I am not able to boot any of the legacy image! Red led and nothing happens! A couple of minutes ago I tried with A95XR1 legacy image. It was succesfully burnt on microSD with Libreelec tool (I've also tried with Rufus) and I've checked files and partitions on my pc and everything was ok, but when I putted the microSD into the box, it bypassed the SD boot and went to armbian o.s. I've extracted the card from the box and checked it in the pc: the card was empty! I've used the same card for armbian and for Libreelec mainline and it worked fine!
I have csc armbian installed on eMMC and I'm trying to boot Libreelec via microSD.I'll try again, I took a look at the characteristic of the images in the first post and no one has DDR2 and eMMC together...I hope that any of the DDR3 and eMMC will work!
The boot issue is an issue with armbian u-boot/trust (I use mainline u-boot and OPTEE) installed in eMMC and libreelec u-boot (which uses legacy): CSC Armbian for RK322X TV Boxes - Page 14 - TV boxes - Armbian forum
No idea why the sdcard has been emptied though.
ochentay4 Thanks for the image, I checked the device tree fabiobassa extracted and the dram timings are the very same as those for the v88 4k board. You may try that one to get much better performance.
I also checked out the configuration of the wifi and it appears to be the same as the other device with the esp8089 chip, so this is a step forward to add support to libreelec.
I hope knaerzche comes here around soon to merge the necessary patches, which should be quite easy.
Thanks. Sadly I cant/wont do it myself as I dont know anything about linux and dont have another pc to try it. Will wait till someone builds it.
About my device, what do I have to do so I can have wifi and correct device settings like ram timings so you can put it on the project? Right now, thanks to your project, device has a purpose, but I find it incomplete without the remote, wifi, and probably wrong ram speeds.
You may also share the original firmware image if you have one. Sharing just the first 20 megabytes of the firmware would be much better. Don't forget to make a zip/rar/gzip of it.
Remote should already work, you probably need to configure the key bindings: there are some useful posts about configuring rk3228 remotes in the rockchip forum section, but you can also use the procedure for amlogic or any other device.
About the esp8089 wifi, I added support for that in armbian and it works, but I had no chance to test it personally and it is based upon one user experience, so the device tree could be terribly useful for this also.
