Posts by buzzmarshall

Quote from kostaman

This forum is not a platform for spreading unsubstantiated misinformation on other operating systems.

I am privy to all CE matters being part of the team and say you are BOTH wrong in the quotes you have made.

Please edit to correct your errors.

not looking to cause trouble but before you start saying things you MAY not know about...

IF this is not true then i suggest that people start looking into disension within the team as no less then 3 members have said the royalty statements. and as far as Ray being squeezed out that is up to him to talk about as that is between him and Adam...

All i will say is that for someone that was a Founding member to be pushed out after putting as much of his time into a project only to leave out of frustration says it all for some of us....

So either your out of the loop or just another one trying to cover up the fact that CE is now trying to make money off of work contained within CoreElec's code that comes from a lot more places then just the CE team members...

As for whats the right forum that is not your call as that belongs to the LE guys as its their home not Adams... funny how he felt it was ok to slander me on a none CE forum because he did not like what i said on CE and then suspended my account before i could reply...

Look i was being nice when i said he was "frustrating" when i could have used terms like... "a bit bully, confrontational, argumentative and being a big diva" which were all terms used by various Team Members i had conversations with after the open letter i wrote in response to Adams lies about me being mad after being turned down for membership... anyone that actually knows me knows how much bull that is as i would never ask or want to be involved in any group as its not my thing...

anyways what i said came from Team Members and for me between that and seeing HK selling special CE edition of the N2 is enough proof for me and goes to prove how much of a hypocrite Adam is when all the righteous talk about never taking any device maker over another...

hm... since Ray got squeezed out of the CE Team and CE is now charging royalties to manufacturers like HK i no longer support CE, and know how frustrating adamg with his confrontational approach to things can be...

But to be fair to the CE Team guys, I am not sure its because of any real censorship or supression of information on their part...

The S905 used the older much more mature Mali-450 core, which is better known compared to the newer Mali-G31's used in the S905x2's... At best most of the hardware gpu code is still in development and learning stage when it comes to hardware acceleration on the newer SoC's..

Hopefully as things get better developed most of these types of issues will disappear, its just theres no way of knowing exactly if and when that will happen... things are progressing but still a ways off in some areas...

Sounds like beelinks original bootloader is still not fully restored...

you'd need to check and see via the shell/serial console if its still giving you bl31 grief with the CE as well... my quess is that it is...

Try going to the maintance level of the box on boot up and tell it to clear all the flash area's and then retry reflashing Beelinks proper firmware and see if it can get you back into at least Android...

Without more info its hard to say for sure but my quess is when the original bootloader got patched to do the dualboot thing its knocked the ATF stuff out and theres still remnants of what was altered via the "boot scripts" that are interferring with trying fully restore Beelinks actual firmware when flashing... It may require manually via ssh trying to fix up the bootloader pieces...

I can see from your 1st post and log that its loading a kzaq kernel and a gxm-q201 dtb so after trying the CE thing i would check again asn see if kzaq's kernel is still the active loader and if so then the beelink's not restoring properly.(not unless beelink's actually using kzaq's kernel in the their uboot) as well i was under the impression the S912's used a gxm_q200 derivative dtb...

heres the thing tho... any uboot thats right for the box should work with NON-Android but trying to restore and run the Android meant for that box means the boot loader has to contain Beelink's signed ATF portions of the bin files to work...

Sorry i can't be more of a help but hopefully some of what i said will help point you in the right direction...

Quote from CvH

Afaik because C2 has its own bootloader (uboot) that can't be replaced with the much more recent version that is used at other images. Basically there are "crapfixes" at these bootloader that are not open source. Could be related to workaround the hw bugs of the C2 board.

afaik these drivers are not at the mainline kernel ?

Yes that would be correct... the C2 if you want to build uboot for it requires you to either include hk;s provided bl1 blob in the uboot build or you need to disassemble their blob and take its parameters and info and include it in your own custom bootloader...

At least that is the way it was when i last looked a long time ago...

without more info what i would suggest would be to find the original beelink firmware for that box and start by restoring it and start over...

Usually the bl31 message pertains to ATF issues which could be a couple of different things but 1st i'd restore the box to the proper firmware to get the proper file pieces back into their bootloader and once that works be a lot more careful about what you try to flash to the box...

Ive got both units and they are both good units but would say at this point in time i think the HK support pool of coders is a bit deeper then the Pine guys are... one's amlogic and the other is rockchips flagship product in the sbc market so theres a few dif's based on the development differences with the week point being a hardware accelerated gpu stack at this point in time... Open drivers are currently being worked on with some progress but still there is hurdles that need to be crossed..

for the cost differences i would buy the 4 gig ram versions as more ram is always a good thing... Ive had both units since they came out and spend most of my time developing on them more as a development board then just a media player so my expectations are probably somewhat different from your's but honestly i think both are easily capable of what your looking for and would suggest you look around and see which one's got the most active development guys in the area your looking to use the unit in... kwiboo would be one to ask about the rockpro as he's pretty active in that area and any of the N2 guys could better advise you on it...

Clones generally are troubled and you can usually spot them because they are coming from Non Mainstream Dealers. Truly theres only a finite amount of actual manufacturers out but then the cloners come along and take what they see as the most popular devices and take that design and start swapping out parts to drive their cost down. While doing so most of them have little to no access to coders so theres nothing but crappy firmware floating around to make their stripped version of the box work.

The altered box that came with barely working firmware may originally be working but then as people start playing around they loose that original firmware and now are faced with the blur of firmware packages floating around the net and end up usually making things worse for themselves.

As a tech i have been at this for along time and can honestly say that its very very rare that i come across a box that can't be fixed or resurrected but it takes a bit of a different approach as the first thing that needs to be done is get the box booting off a bootable sd or usb stick with a working version of U-boot and then move forward from there. Most end users get stuck spending endless amounts of trying out as much firmware as they can find when really its not the greatest way to approach the problem. Theres only so many actual different SoC's and all one really needs to do is find a virgin uboot for that basic SoC and get the serial port and that boot stick up and running and from their the serial port screen will show you the way.

Specs being off is pretty common as theres always a bunch of board houses that will make(clone) boards, but they're usually based on someone else's software which can be good or bad depending on whether the cloner has made the box cheaper by swapping out certain chips or chipsets.

I would seriously be surprised tho if the box is totally dead. its possible but i have always found in most cases its just a bugger'd boot loader which is usually pretty easy to fix if you can get a terminal working. Depending on whats gotten wiped out or stepped on you may have to to create a sdcard with a bootable u-boot on it tho to get uboot working and go forward from there.

You only need Gnd Rx and Tx connected in most cases from the Usb-Serial adapter to the device. 115200,8. with no parity and no hardware control in putty or hyperterminal should be suffice. Usually that will show terminal activity and if not you can try plugging in the device power plug.

I think overall at this point in time that CE is basically trying to maintain and add new projects based on the Current Level of core software, meaning they are concentrating on making the best of the situation by using the working kernel versions where LE is basically taking the time to work towards seeing things like the Kernel and U-boot migrated into the mainline's of both those projects, As well there is work being done on the Graphics stacks that hinges on the kernel migration to mainline as well going on. As well those graphic stack changes will impact any of the SoC's using the Mali cores as the changes effectively are attempts at seeing Hardware Acceleration enabled as well as a few other various things.

CE for Amlogic based boxes probably is the best solution for the time being and even with CE when it comes to the Newest Amlogic chips the N2 is probably the best running one right now. that can change at any point tho as CE will open up more boxes and choices in the future as they move fotward.

That would be my take overall at this point in time but do realize that things can change moving forward.

So if your actually looking to choose a device right now then i would stick to what you see others actually say are currently working otherwise you will have to pull up a chair and wait while things pan out as they move forward.

Hope that helps and if i am off base in my answer i am sure someone else will come along and correct me.

Quote from Shoog

When samples are received of the King box (as they will be) then full support will be in CE in a matter of weeks - as it was with the N2. That is where you are spreading more misinformation beyond your knowledge of reality.

No one here has questioned your efforts to further development of the mainline S922 kernel, but simply stop spreading bullshit about a cooling system which performs better than any other of the available boards. Your comments regarding the heatsink are simply laughable.

You only seem interested in spreading misinformation and puffing your own work up.

The only reality that should matter in making a choice of developer board here is that the N2 is ready to run as a stable, reliable, high performance media player straight out of the box.

Shoog

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100% Dead On.

Normally I don't like saying things that may have a impact in what others purchase as i personally believe people should be left to choose for themselves based on what Their needs are.

But i will say as someone that gets paid to evaluate hardware for others looking to develop devices and as the owner of a full fab rework lab that the quality of the HK stuff is superior to Khadas at this Point in time in my opinion. Now thats not to say that Khadas over time can't achieve the same level of quality as their engineering gets more mature.

Balbes. as much as myself and others respect your contributions to the scene I do realize you've been comp'd by Khadas and are one of their resident guru's, but it seems a bit irresponsible on your part to use it as a platform to push one product over the other over something as debatable as the method of thermally cooling a device.

Its like trying to argue over who's better LibreELEC or CoreELEC which are really just forks of the original OpenELEC. to me neither is better as it depends on what you want to do and the type of device your using because they both are currently on different adgenda's which is fine. to me CoreELEC seems to have settled in on getting the best working solutions at this point in time while LibreElec is concentrating on trying to unify things with mainline. To me that implies CE is more about people and working devices in the now whereas LE is willing to hold back and wait while unification to mainline is being worked on. Personally i think people are perfectly satisfied with boxes that run the newest kodi versions and are pretty much oblivious to the fact that its Not running on mainstream linux as that whole idea is really about making it easier to support more devices down the road and change the development cycle. but i do Get what LE is trying to do and understand why.

If the boxes are working fine and not burning up i fail to see the reason to keep confusing people with a debate that is really based on nothing more then Opinions. and we all know that opinions are like assholes and we all have one..

There are many ways to thermally cool something and who's to say which way is right, as long as the method chosen is capable of keeping things within the hardware's operating conditions it really makes no difference.

The car analogy I must have lost something in the translation because I fail to see the point other then i quess your saying things can go wrong i quess.

The manufactures make these boxes for pennies on the dollar in quantity and its not going to kill them to write-off a bunch of samples to developers as its typically done with other products. Or if they want to cheap out then maybe they should actually hire a bunch REAL coders and stop trying to suck off the public tit hoping to get the popular software ported to their products.

As much as i believe in Open Source this is the part that makes people close up and keep stuff private as this whole particular industry is driven by basically Hardware Manufactures that really only provide rudimentary basic software and leave most everything else up to the Open Source Community while they create their next great device.

Anyways the thermal debate is going nowhere as its become more of a who's got the biggest dick argument and its confusing people with speculation really based on a Opinion

Quote from appwizcpl

Thank you all for replying!

On additional note on the Khadas website, under the specifications as starred (*) additional information it says:

[2] LPDDR4 or LPDDR4X RAM will be selected randomly during manufacturing.

I know stuff are randomized in production all the time, but I find it a bit weird they go upon the RAM on which the LPDDR4X one is much more efficient if you want some kind of portability with a battery and also because I think LPDDR4X is not backwards compatible meaning that the boarding having this one will be different then the one that can have LPDDR4, am I missing something?

Ya i would agree that seems a bit weird to make a disclaimer like.

without comparing the actual specs between the 2 to see the differences its hard to say but typically whenever i have seen disclaimers like that it usually equates to parts-supply chain stuff where depending on the availability of the part at that point in the production cycle maybe what they are talking about. that would be my quess.

if you really want to play i would start by getting the serial port up and working and procede from there as you should be able to see what it is and is not doing and hanging from the terminal window.

HK has been around longer and the likelyhood of diminishing software support is more of a worry with Khadas's products then a company like HK thats already established itself.

I think Khadas is concentrating to much on the extraneous extra's market when really the bulk of their time should be spend on building and attracting better Software support at this point in the game. Ya i know HK sells extra's as well but they have been around longer and are much more settled in at the production level and development...

Don't get me wrong as i am not saying Khada's products are not good its just they seem more focused on leveraging the various revenue streams leaving Core Software development to a very small group of coders. and based on the costs there is no way i would spend more on a Khadas board over a N2 at this point in time.

I think currently Khada's position in the market really is just being pushed by a couple of individual's that for whatever reason seem to think they are superior to others when the reality is more based in who's getting the samples and whats expect of them. maybe down the road when Khada's support grows to include more then just a small group of dudes trying to support it that things will be better.

To be honest if i was really looking for a S922 based box with anything to do with Dvb Streaming then i would be looking at the Dreambox One as its got the horsepower and resources to hardware handle a dvb transport stream properly and do all the processing that needs to be done.

I am at this point tho unaware of anyone thats released LibreElec for it. tho i do know its been hacked to run Kodi.

You may want to check and make sure your naming conventions for the stuff in the libraries/databases are in a consistent style compatible with the kodi version.

Ive got over 4000 items in my move/tv database and always had intermittent problems with kodi even on the older versions with random lockups. usuallly nothing really shows in the debug logs either.

finially i found making sure that everything in the library was named in the same manner fixed all the issues and now i have 11 boxes in the house all pulling from the same db on my network storage arrays.

If i am understand you properly it sounds like your saying that if Android on the box is run then that dvb chipset driver is being found while under LibreElec its not seeing that chipset at all.

If thats right then my quess is that your kernel probably isn't loading everything it needs to make that dvb chipset work. The dtb part your talking about is only part of the hardware setup. I am not sure what all chipsets are already available to LibreElec thru the various packages so you may need to look in that area.

Looks to me like the AVAILINK AVL6211LAX is just another chipset kinda like the old B2C2 chipset used by companies like TechniSat and others, meaning basically a bunch of manufactures making real products will leverage against the chipset maker keeping costs down.

Depending on your coding skills you may be able to glean enough info out of running under Android to create the Linux drivers but from a time investment point its not worth the effort unless your going to support a bunch of boxes and need to support them, better investment would be in a box with a chipset thats acually supported under Linux.

You may be able to look around tho for other boxes incorporating that chipset and see if any of those makes/brands are included in LibreElec's dvb addon packages. Or if you can find someone using a dvb card in their Linux box that has the same chipset as then you may be able to use that driver and just create a package for it and add it to LibreElec. I use to do that quite a bit with the B2C2 Flexcop chipset as theres a bunch of Manufactures that used that chip.

Here in North America i found most of these Android boxes with Dvb built in are pretty much useless unless your just trying to pull a feed off what little is left open for fta in this hemisphere. Trying to do any of the North American Sat Providers is pretty much beyond those types of combo boxes as they just don't have the horsepower to keep up with the CA setup ontop of dealing with processing the Dvb downstream.

wow... i can't believe that git's still kicking around.

Thats a pretty old project and probably more work then what its worth trying to glean whats needed to try and rewrite a newer driver for the newer kernels

A lot of the cheap dvb hardware manufacturers tend to swipe firmware from other bigger companies so the available drivers and software tends to be small when it comes to proprietary code. The dvb industry used to be really competitive tho things have gotten better over the years the old thinking still tends to get in the way when it comes to open sources tho.

not to sound negative but as far as Khadas goes i think they need to worry more about actually producing the sbc's and a little less on all the extra add-ons that seem to be all thats actually available with the newest stuff.

I have long since gave up trying to source a edge from them as it seems to be one delay after another so i sourced a couple of different RK3399 based sbc's instead.

i did purchase a couple of vim2's tho to checkout the board to see if it would integrate into a project i am working on and to be honest must say i was not all that impressed with the actual board level quality for the price range of that board. Just to qualify i have a full rework lab here and work with Bga mounts and decap chips all the time and after lifting a 912 off one of the Vim 2 boards would say i have seen better mounting and solder profiles on some cheaper android boxes, maybe it was just this board but i am not sure i want to pull the soc on the other board just to look.

I will look at the N2 when and if i decide to look at another Amlogic SoC and HK;s been around building boards a lot longer and seems to produce quality boards at a reasonable price. Or i will wait and see what and if Pine decides to offer up in the future as i have already bought a couple Rockpro 64s and found the manufacturing level of those boards pretty pretty decent.