"arm" is 64-bit kernel and 32-bit userspace for compatibilty with add-ons that need software widevine (DRM) support, and aarch64 is 64-bit kernel
If the add-on compatibility is not needed, is there any actual advantage/hindrance in using arm or aarch64 images? I recall reading balbes150 mentioning temperature, but maybe I'm having a Mandela effect... Does one perform better than the other?
Regarding memory this board is very strange: I'd think that boards with fake RAM would have less RAM (as in actual memory IC), and I've actually seen one of these: just 4 x 256MB installed became 2GB advertised.
But this one has the real deal (2x1GB + 2x512MB=3GB), however at boot only 2GB are recognized and then they are faked to 3GB.
DR4 chl: Rank0+1 @ 1008MHz - PASS
Rank0: 1024MB(auto)-2T-18
Rank1: 1024MB(auto)-2T-18
[...]
U-Boot 2015.01-ga4d8f5c-dirty (Dec 07 2017 - 19:23:54)
DRAM: 3 GiB
You cannot "replace emmc with nand" on boxes
This board has provision for EMMC (BGA) or NAND (TSOP) memory, and I've seen similar (cheaper) boxes where they use NAND TSOP.
you can replace the bootloader - if - you have the fip sources for the box
The problem is that the EMMC has a region that is write protected, so the bootloader CAN'T be overwritten. That's why I was looking to replace the chip with a NAND.
Have you got any info on how to disable the write protection on the EMMC? Maybe there's some u-boot command that can do that?