- USB-C power Input Only
Support for generic RK3228A, RK3228B and RK3229 TV boxes, with various commercial names and manufacturers (MXQ 4k, MXQ Pro 4k, V88 Mars, A8, Model X, etc…)
Due to the really large hardware variety, there is the rare chance that the images proposed here may not boot. If a bad image is burned in eMMC, the box may not boot anymore forcing you to follow the unbrick section at the bottom of this post.
Forum thread with guides, suggestions, support, hardware acceleration multimedia support: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/12656-wip-armbian-for-rk322x-devices/
Quick installation instructions on eMMC:
- Build or download your preferred Armbian image and a copy of the Multitool;
- Burn the Multitool on an SD card; once done, place the Armbian image in images folder of the SD card FAT partition;
- Plug the SD card in the TV box and plug in the power cord. After some seconds the blue led starts blinking and the Multitool appears;
- OPTIONAL: you can do a backup of the existing firmware with “Backup flash” menu option;
- Choose “Burn image to flash” from the menu, then select the destination device (usually mmcblk2) and the image to burn;
- Wait for the process to complete, then choose “Shutdown” from main menu;
- Unplug the power cord and the SD card, then replug the power cord;
- Wait for 10 seconds, then the led should start blinking and HDMI will turn on. The first time the boot process will take a couple of minutes or more because the filesystem is going to be resized, so be patient and wait for the login prompt.
- On first boot you will be asked for entering a password for root user of your choice and the name and password for a regular user
- Run sudo rk322x-config and select your board characteristics to enable leds, wifi chips, high-speed eMMC, etc…
- Run armbian-config to configure timezone, locales and other personal options
- Congratulations, Armbian is now installed!
Quick installation instructions on NAND:
- Build or download your preferred Armbian image and a copy of the Multitool;
- Burn the Multitool on an SD card; once done, place the Armbian legacy kernel image in images folder of the SD card FAT partition;
- Plug the SD card in the TV box and plug in the power cord. After some seconds the blue led starts blinking and the Multitool appears;
- OPTIONAL: you can do a backup of the existing firmware with “Backup flash” menu option;
- Choose “Burn Armbian image via steP-nand” from the menu, then select the destination device (usually rknand0) and the image to burn;
- Wait for the process to complete, then choose “Shutdown” from main menu;
- Unplug the power cord and the SD card, then replug the power cord;
- Wait for 10 seconds, then the led should start blinking and HDMI will turn on. The first time the boot process will take a couple of minutes or more because the filesystem is going to be resized, so be patient and wait for the login prompt.
- On first boot you will be asked for entering a password for root user of your choice and the name and password for a regular user
- Run sudo rk322x-config and select your board characteristics to enable leds, wifi chips, etc…
- Run armbian-config to configure timezone, locales and other personal options
- Congratulations, Armbian is now installed!
Quick installation instructions to boot from SD Card:
- If you are already running Armbian from eMMC, skip to the next step. Instead if you are running the original firmware you need to first erase the internal eMMC; to do so download the Multitool, burn it on an SD Card, plug the SD Card and power the TV Box. Use “Backup flash” if you want to do a backup of the existing firmware, then choose “Erase flash” menu option.
- Build or download your preferred Armbian image;
- Uncompress and burn the Armbian image on the SD Card;
- Plug the SD Card in the TV Box and power it on;
- Wait for 10 seconds, then the led should start blinking and HDMI will turn on. The first time the boot process will take a couple of minutes or more because the filesystem is going to be resized, so be patient and wait for the login prompt;
- On first boot you will be asked for entering a password for root user of your choice and the name and password for a regular user
- Run sudo rk322x-config and select your board characteristics to enable leds, wifi chips, high-speed eMMC or NAND, etc…
- Run armbian-config to configure timezone, locales and other personal options, or also to transfer the SD Card installation to internal eMMC;
- Congratulations, Armbian is running from SD Card!
Boot device order:
With Armbian also comes mainline U-boot. If you install Armbian or just the bootloader in the eMMC or the Jump Start on internal NAND, the bootloader will look for valid bootable images in this order:
- External SD Card
- External USB Stick in OTG Port
- Internal eMMC
Unbrick:
Rockchip devices cannot be bricked. If the internal flash does not contain a bootable system, they will always boot from the sdcard. If, for a reason, the bootable system on the internal flash is corrupted or is unable to boot correctly, you can always force the maskrom mode shorting the eMMC clock pin on the PCB. Here there is the procedure, but you can also google around if you get stuck on a faulty bootloader, the technique is pretty simple and requires a simple screwdriver.
- Login console is enabled also on mUSB connector
- Known problem: reboot sometimes doesn’t bring the device back.
- Network devices are not managed by Network manager. Configure via /etc/network/interfaces
- UART has unusual speed: 1500000
- Make sure to add large heatsink
- Powering related troubles are possible since USB Type-C is not PD-compliant
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- Some eMMC modules might not work well.
- Recent batch (since mid-2022) seem to have shipped with a different bootloader configuration, some times preventing booting from SD card and/or eMMC. Until a proper fix can be implemented, the recommended workaround is to install a bootloader to SPI. Further details and instructions can be found in this forum thread.
- UART is accessible on a standard connector but with unusual speed: 1500000
- If you don’t have USB Type-C PSU, you can power the board via pins 4 (5V) and 6 (GND) of the 40-pin GPIO1 header
- Powering related troubles are possible since USB Type-C is not PD-compliant. In fact you have to use dumb 5V PSU or device won’t boot up.
- If your RockPi-S is equipped with >=2GB SDNAND, you may flash an OS image directly to this internal flash as follows:
- Build Linux x86 binary rkdeveloptool (sources) on host
- Remove any SDcard
- Hold down MASKROM button while you…
- Power on or press the RESET button to enter flash mode
- Release the MASKROM button after 2 seconds
Next, run these host commands to flash the internal SDnand:-
- sudo rkdeveloptool db rk3308_loader_uart0_m0_emmc_port_support_sd_20190717.bin
- #await output: Downloading bootloader succeeded.
- sudo rkdeveloptool wl 0 /path/to/uncompressed_armbian_image
- #await output: Write LBA from file (100%)
- sudo rkdeveloptool rd
- #outputs: Reset Device OK.
(check official step by step instructions)
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- Holding the MASKROM button during reset prevents booting from internal the SDNAND.
- But, the board will always boot from the SD Card, if it finds a valid image there.
- Kernel serial console is on UART0. [some older images have their console on UART2]
- The serial console operates at 1.5Mbaud with 8 data, 1 stop, and no parity bits.
- Black(left)=GND, White(center)=TxD, Green(right)=RxD
If you have a recent board (revision >=1.3), you should add the following line to your /boot/armbianEnv.txt file to tune for the newer “BS” silicon:
overlays=bs bs@1.3ghz
Refer to /boot/dtb/rockchip/overlay/README.rockchip-overlays for more information.
- UART has unusual speed: 1500000
- boot from SD card is possible by shorting TP50265 to the ground and powering the board. After Armbian boots up, you can overwrite eMMC. You need to do this procedure only once or in case you totally brick your system.
- once you have Armbian booting from eMMC, you can boot SD card in more simple manner: stop booting from UART console and execute those commands:
setenv devnum 1followed byrun mmc_boot - you need to use
EXPERT="yes"to build kernel or images.