X96 Mini S905W2: How to install without HDMI

[M0dM]

hi @devmfc and first of all thank you for this awesome repository.

I bought an x96 mini but with s905W2 by mistake and found this repo as my last hope to try to install armbian on this box.
It seems that as soon as the boot from sdcard occurs, the hdmi stops display anything, not even a terminal interface.

I just burned the img on my sdcard and uncommented (as explained in readme.md) the following lines in boot.config :
box=s905w2_generic
root=/dev/mmcblk0p2

Can I connect to the box via ssh or anything else to complete the setup ?
Did I miss something ?

Or maybe I juste need to wait for better support by the community.

[devmfc]

So they are real. I thought they were a scam, but there are really x96 mini's with S905W2's....

It will, with a bit of luck, just boot.
You can SSH tot the box. But the IP address is not fixed but acquired by DHCP. So you have to scan your own network for it or tell your DHPC server to always give the MAC address of the box a fixed IP.

As a headless server they are quite usable. For HDMI... We'll have to wait I'm afraid.

[M0dM]

I bought mine at a discounted price of 27€ on french amazon.

X96 Mini Lecteur Multimédia de Diffusion en continu Android 11.0/Boîte TV 4K avec Amlogic S905W2 Quad-Core chipset, 64 Bits 2GB/16GB,WiFi,4K HD,H.265 by puersit https://amzn.eu/d/bBcE5UO

[devmfc]

Maybe you can try one other thing...
add the following line tot the boot.config:

bootargs0=pd_ignore_unused clk_ignore_unused

Maybe this will activate the simple_framebuffer HDMI workaround in the dtb.

[M0dM]

Thanks @devmfc !

I will give it a try tomorrow maybe.
I am verry new to the armbian community, what would be the user / password combination to log via ssh ?

[M0dM]

I got framebuffer working, but it seems that emmc is not working.

And I found the device ip address using nmap but did not managed to log via ssh, maybe the daemon isn't started...

@devmfc Do you have any idea ?

[devmfc]

Great to hear that HDMI is sort of working.

Considering your remark about Armbian: my images are not Armbian, are not even Armbian based. I don't have any relationship with them. My images are just plain Debian and Ubuntu bootstrapped images with a for meson64 SOC's patched kernel.

I don't think the IP address you found is from the tvbox. Because based on your screenshot it is can not find a rootfs and will probably not even have a network connection yet.

To fix this try to change root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 in boot.config to root=/dev/mmcblk1p2 I'm afraid I forgot some alias in the DTB for the generic S905W2 box.
Some other thing you can try instead is to uncomment 'box=tanixw2' instead of' box=s905w2_generic'

username = root password = tvbox

[M0dM]

Thanks for the new ideas to dig through

[M0dM]

I got it working without having to change to root=/dev/mmcblk1p2 and box=tanixw2 but unfortunately only the sdcard is recognized when i do lsblk or fdisk -l.

I would realy like to make the box booting directly to linux without having to press the hidden button each time...

Do you have any idea ?
By tweaking the dtb file in some ways... maybe ?

[M0dM]

I openned the box and it seems EMMC is : THGBMFG7C2LBAIL
Don't know what to do with this information now 🙄

[devmfc]

You can make the sdcard boot every time without pushing the hidden reset button: run ./aml-multiboot-setup.sh, see readme.md before you do that..

Why you can't see your eMMC I don't know. The brand of eMMC should not make a difference. Dou you have the boot log (run dmesg)

[OM-3kChcBjgFR2COfP]

Good afternoon
I was also lucky to become the owner of the chip s905w2 ( H96Max with 4\32Gb )
When I bought it I didn’t think it would come with it.
Now I don’t know - get rid of it or try this repository?
Did you manage to flash the console properly and use it?

udp:

Nope, won’t start, hangs on the H96Max logo ( with bootargs0=pd_ignore_unused clk_ignore_unused ) or black screen

[devmfc]

H96 Max with S905w2? Are you sure?

[OM-3kChcBjgFR2COfP]

H96 Max with S905w2? Are you sure?

[devmfc]

Yeah, you're pretty sure ;-)

Just try with burning the image on usb drive and try box=tanixw2 or box=s905w2_generic. If that doesn't work you can try to connect an UART and see what's going on.

But s905w2 is really really experimental and quite slow (especially eMMC)

[OM-3kChcBjgFR2COfP]

Then I'll get rid of this console and buy another one. which one is better to take and on which chip? to install armbian\ubuntu?

[devmfc]

That depends on what you want?

Do you want some home server for pi-hole, a mailserver, small webserver or nextcloud like solution? Or just want to have some fun with Linux? Then some S905X3 box with gigabit ethernet will do. I use X96 Max Plus with gigabit ethernet for that. Works great, are cheap and S905X3 has decent mainline support.. But for all of these boxes the Wifi/BT module is a lottery, so don't count on it to work. And even the gigabit phy IC's are a lottery nowadays, but most have mainline support.

Do you expect a good desktop experience with mainline Linux? Buy some Intel/Amd box, it is imho not possible with these Android boxes. But if you really must, buy something with a S922X SoC, like Beelink GT King. But don't expect to have hw accelerated video.

Do you want Armbian? Don't buy a tvbox, they hate those. And I can't blame them.
Don't like adventures? Or don't want a challenge? Don't buy a tvbox ;-)

[kerta1n]

Hey devmfc, I have a Vontair W2 (S905W2 as per the name), and your 6.1.57 build works flawlessly, EXCEPT for eMMC. Like others, it's just not found, but attached is the dmesg output. Something about EPROBE_DEFER and error -110.

dmesg.txt

[kerta1n]

A change in code may be needed:

... as a follow up, [mmc_hs400_to_hs200()](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/tree/drivers/mmc/core/mmc.c?h=v5.5.13#n1231) is called exclusively by the retuning functionality. Each of the [__mmc_switch()](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/tree/drivers/mmc/core/mmc.c?h=v5.5.13#n1244) calls will likely timeout after ~500ms, so you might be able to infer which step is having the problem quite easily by counting (i.e: HS400 to HS DDR, HS DDR to HS, or HS to HS200). This might be a support request to your supplier. – [Attie](https://superuser.com/users/707676/attie) [Mar 25, 2020 at 16:11](https://superuser.com/questions/1535420/linux-emmc-mmc-hs400-to-hs200-failed-error-110#comment2330087_1535420)

(via superuser.com )

[kerta1n]

I selected the Tanix W2 box and set the boot partition to /dev/mmcblk1p2, and this is the output. I'm going to revert back to /dev/mmcblk0p2 and see what happens

[kerta1n]

/dev/mmcblk0p2 but also using the Tanix W2 config results in the the system booting, but no eMMC to be found. Same -110 error.
dmesg.txt

[devmfc]

Can you try attached zipped dtb? (just copy it to /boot/dtb-something/amlogic and set box=box=s905w2_generic in /boot/boot.config )

meson-s4-s905w2-ap201.zip

[kerta1n]

Ok. I was late by 5 hours, I know, here's dmesg though.
dmesg.txt

[kerta1n]

I got it:
/devicetree and the fdt file are in here
files.zip

[kerta1n]

fdtdump.txt

[kerta1n]

I'm going to leave this here to see if this works later
s905w2-alt.dtb.txt

DTB files as text:
meson-s4-s905w2.dts.txt
weird-android-w2.dts.txt

[devmfc]

I didn't find anything in these files that gives any new information. I'm sorry.

[OM-3kChcBjgFR2COfP]

thnx for updates, still wait full support s905w2 =)

[petesimon]

me too. i got a H96 Max S905W2 for $10 USD after discounts from Aliexpress. Android firmware is now v11, with a date 2023-08-08. I successfully installed Emuelec 4.7beta from Diegrosan/EmuELEC4.8teste from github onto a sd memory card, but I want to try pure Linux. @devmfc