Posts by Thefinaldoom

Quote from francospaleta

Hi, i have the same hardware! could you boot other rom on it? i also want to do a retro game console but i can not find any roms that works!! Emuelec have not support for this cpu! the link of batocera does not work anymore! And Lakka its very old has you said!!

thanks in advance!

Hi, I used the image Lakka-S8X2.MXIII-1G.arm-2.3.1.img.

You can download from here. (It's an external link, take by your own risk).

The only way I could get it to boot, is write the image to an SD card with this program. (thanks to dtech)

I need to find a method to do it from Linux, I don't know what makes this program different from doing it with the DD command, surely something different in the first sector.

By the way, the bran of my TV box it's NOBLEX.

Synerworks

Thanks for the suggestion.

Considering that the CPU is a 32bit CPU, using it as a desktop computer is a bit ambitious.
I am satisfied with KODI and some applications, if you could have Netflix or Youtube, the better..
Otherwise, a good use is retro game console.
I checked on the Lakka and similar websites, but the Lakka version is very old. 2.3, it boots, but the remote controller is not fully functional. Maybe i can take some resources from this one to configure the lakka rom.
My intention is to rescue this device since the CPU has good support for video decoding, I noticed it very fluid.
For ARMBIAN I already have a NANOPC-T4.
Other 2 devices that I have to review, are:
- REMIX MINI RM1G (Allwinner H64)
- USB STICK (ugoos qc802), I think the CPU is RockChip RK3188

But I'll leave that for later and another topic.

dtech
Thank you very much. It started on the first try.

I leave the output of the session in case any data is useful.

I confirm that it worked with the MXIII-1G image.

Synerworks
Thank you for the clarifications. Not fully understanding the charging process myself, I thought it was necessary to match the model name or some other particularity.

At the moment everything is working, the remote control works as it comes with a separate usb wireless reader
I am surprised how well everything works, I didn't think it would be so simple.

Congratulations for this great job.

Thanks to everyone for your replies dtech   Synerworks   chewitt

dtech, from what I read in the link.

Quote

External DTB cannot be used with Meson8* (S805/S8X2), because there it only takes into consideration those that are integrated into the kernel!

This means that I must use the original kernel, or I can try to boot with the upstream images?

I will try with an upstream image, and edit the script as you suggest and if I succeed I will keep you posted.

-------------------------------

From what I understand my TV BOX is quite strange.
CPU is S802-B, wifi doesn't match what I saw (ap6210), 1GB RAM, anyway, it's pretty fluid and that's why I want to rescue it with any other OS (KitkKat 4.4.2 is already obsolete). My intentions are to find an OS as stable as possible, and eventually install it on the system memory.

I have access to it by UART, now I'm trying to copy the original boot loader to a USB.
At the moment I am following these steps.
https://www.synacktiv.com/publications/i-hack-u-boot
I don't have a clear procedure for amlogic, I understand that if I can extract the original content, I could check the original files and from there see what corrections to make to the precompiled images, if anyone can contribute, I would appreciate it.

Quote from Synerworks

Pressing the button on the board instead of pushing the toothpick through the audio port is the same thing. The SD card with the image that you want to boot should already be inserted in the slot, with the power cord disconnected, press and hold the button, plug the power in, the boot logo should flicker once and then you should immediately release the button and let the boot proceed. Holding it too long will force the Android recovery mode to come up instead of launching the image from the SD card. The u-boot date code is not antiquated to the point where image loads from the SD card are not available, as far as I am concerned.

Thank you very much, with your explanation and checking the TTY monitor (UART) I could see the moment when it waits for enter to be pressed to stop the boot. Now by UART I have ROOT console with M8BOX:
It remains the logo of the brand stuck but by UART I have console.

I attach the putty session.
Hit Enter key to stop autoboot -- : 1 tstc enter
usbboot - boot from USB device

I understand that from here I could load the kernel I want or try to boot from USB?

I tried the 2 images and there is no way to get it to boot. I have no button behind the audio connector. I do have an update button under the board. When I press and hold it and connect the power cable it leaves me in Android Recovery, but it doesn't go beyond that. I think I have to change the boot.img to allow me to load any other image from the MicroSD.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Quote from Synerworks

Since you do not overwrite the contents of the EMMC when booting from the SD card, you will not need to do a backup of the existing dated firmware, as illustrated in your log posting. To launch LibreELEC or Armbian from the SD card, you will need to follow the toothpick method discussed in these forums, once you have any image put on a SD card. You can obtain Christian Hewitt's LibreELEC images using his AMLMX builds, Gabor Dee's excellent legacy LibreELEC build, found in these forums, or grab SLAzurin's build of S8xx Armbian from GitHub, which also has a sample image for download that can be used. Once you have something coming up, I can go at length into getting things up to the latest 2024 releases.

Thank you very much for your reply.
From what I understand, the toothpick method is to boot the TV BOX in "Android Recovery" mode, is that correct?
I can do that, but I can't find a way to create a MICRO SD which will boot.
Which model is more compatible with that CPU.
The backup is in case I need to copy some firmware from the device to add it to an image.

Hi, I am trying to boot any ROM or linux image on this TV BOX. I can't get it to take the MicroSD. The CPU is an Amlogic S802-B.
I understand it is 32bits.

RME0924V116800001G(S802-B EMMC)
GENIATECH RM0924 VER1.16
2015-07-01

UBUT: 20150701
SYSTEM: 20151103
161110-03721

I have access to the UART and this is what I got from the output of the ttyUSB0.

Any hints?
How do I bakup this system?