lanefu changed the topic of #armbian-rockchip to: Armbian - Linux for ARM development boards | Rockchip SoC | www.armbian.com | This channel is relayed to the equivalent Discord channel | this channel is logged
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[Discord] <heanihilator> hey everyone, i'm trying to see if i can get armbian working on the XREAL Beam (first-gen, not the newer "Pro" model), it's rk3568 CPU on the rk30sdk board, ~4GB ram
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[Discord] <menu> additionally to that being a TV box, and having all the caveats that come with:
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[Discord] <menu> * is the bootloader even unlocked?
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[Discord] <menu> * how are you planning IO?
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[Discord] <menu> * why not just use a real (supported) SBC?
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[Discord] <johnthecoolingfan> Feels so good to finally haev some progress and being able to clean up a lot of stuff. BigTreeTech CB2 working with mainline u-boot and kernel, device tree based on orangepi-3b and probably will be ready to properly submit to linux-rockchip mailing list if I remove the references to non-existing schematic.
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[Discord] <johnthecoolingfan> 6.12 (edge) doesn't seem to work for some reason but that may be just my uart adapter or `screen`
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[Discord] <johnthecoolingfan> 6.12 (edge) doesn't seem to work for some reason but that may be just my uart adapter or `screen`, had a problem like this before
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[Discord] <heanihilator> Because it's what I have available that's closest to my target hardware. Bootloader is unlocked. It has a wifi chip, and USB ports.
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[Discord] <menu> if it's *not* your target hardware, why bother? it's an expensive niche device
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[Discord] <menu> also i'm not convinced those USB ports are in any way actually USB compliant
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[Discord] <menu> USB is *fun*
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[Discord] <heanihilator> it meets the needs i have, which is supporting video in and dp-alt out
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[Discord] <heanihilator> why wouldn't it be USB compliant? i'm not sure why a small startup would make things harder on themselves
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[Discord] <menu> because USB compliance is incredibly difficult, the easy option is non-compliance using USB connectors
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[Discord] <heanihilator> difficult in what sense? wouldn't it be easy with off-the-shelf components?
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[Discord] <heanihilator> they're running on android on it, would that require compliance?
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[Discord] <menu> no, because they're a Chinese vendor and can simply claim it's USB with no consequences
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[Discord] <heanihilator> to what benefit?
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[Discord] <heanihilator> i'm not arguing, genuinely curious
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[Discord] <menu> implementation is incredibly complex, if you can find a schematic of the device that'll help, but from what i've seen, they're running HDMI passively into a USB-C port
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[Discord] <heanihilator> it's more than HDMI, i can connect to the device using adb through that port
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[Discord] <heanihilator> and mount it as a storage device
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[Discord] <menu> ooh, okay that may actually be a proper implementation
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[Discord] <menu> supporting it in software is going to be a ballache though
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[Discord] <heanihilator> probably, but what i'm hoping to do was gonna be complex anyway, i specifically need the video-in, i'm hoping to actually make it spoof being a multi-monitor dock 😆
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[Discord] <microlinux> Video in on linux with a tv box
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[Discord] <microlinux> That's the hardest thing to accomplish since moon landing
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[Discord] <microlinux> Seriously, do not waste your time
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[Discord] <heanihilator> DisplayLink is already a well established thing, no?
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[Discord] <heanihilator> I'm not planning on inventing new tech, the hardware already supports it and the XREAL team got it working with android
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[Discord] <heanihilator> I don't think these guys were writing new drivers or anything
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> Probably start by seeing if there is a device tree that works. Otherwise you will need to create one.
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> I have spent a lot of time on video in for my use case.
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> If you can use something in kernel or a standard you will have an easier time.
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> The Rockchip drivers that I was working with wasn't great, just understanding the thing caused me to fix weird timing bugs / race conditions.
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> If you haven't done much kernel development, you are probably going to do a lot of it. But if that's your thing, and you have the time, run it
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[Discord] <microlinux> The hw can support everything on hw, most of that on android, very few things on linux. Although, I thought you were talking about hdmi input, like, real hdmi input.
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[Discord] <heanihilator> i was hoping i could keep it entirely user-space, i guess that's probably not realistic?
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[Discord] <heanihilator> i guess the disconnect for me is that most of these boxes are probably running android, so we're saying there's better android driver support than linux for these chipsets?
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[Discord] <microlinux> 110%
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[Discord] <microlinux> Tv boxes are android stuff.
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[Discord] <heanihilator> i see
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> For video in that works well?
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> Probably not.
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> Depends on your use case though.
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> Nvidia drivers got updated which is causing a race condition somewhere in the driver for v-sync issues. I can either restart my main computer frequently, or fix the driver issue. Maybe that works for you, maybe it doesn't.
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> Just as an example
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[Discord] <microlinux> Who is selling tv boxes with linux?
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[Discord] <microlinux> Who is selling tv boxes with linux? Maybe just retroemulation ones, based on proven to work hw and on bsp kernels
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[Discord] <heanihilator> i don't know anything about tv boxes, but all my recent dev has been in linux and it would allow me to keep things lighter weight, so that route was most natural for me
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[Discord] <microlinux> Well, in order to boot mainline linux, you would need a working device tree for your specific hw. This isn't a UEFI x86_64, you have to resolve that first.
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> probably a device tree followed by a boot system that works. I haven't ventured into it too much, but there is a lot of custom-ness done on boot as well.
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[Discord] <heanihilator> forgive my ignorance, when we talk about device tree, we're talking about all chipsets on this board (rk30board)? so not just the rk3568 but the USB dp-alt (maybe displaylink as well?), wifi, storage, etc..?
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[Discord] <microlinux> The device tree is a compiled file used by uboot to prepare the linux boot. It can be easily deocmpile into readable text that shows all the configuration of your specific hw in low level details. A wrong dtb would not address a pci properly, or a usb port properly, or the vpu, or the gpu, etc.
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[Discord] <microlinux> So, you would have to get the device tree from your tv box android, and tweak it until it's able to boot mainline linux. A very hard task. I have no idea how to do it
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> You will probably want a schematic / documentation. Which is why people originally said no to tv boxes.
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[Discord] <microlinux> Welcome to the embedded world ! ❤️
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[Discord] <heanihilator> are teardown photos enough?
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> It's outside the things that I know about.
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> If you look at one of the nodes in one of the dtsi's, you normally need the memory address for things, offsets, and etc etc. All of these are defined already.
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> Off the cup I would say teardown photos are necessary but not sufficient
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> If I personally was going to do it, I would look into how possible it is to decompile the binary of the system that is already there and do some reverse engineering
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> It's outside the things that I know about.
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> If you look at one of the nodes in one of the dtsi's, you normally need the memory address for things, offsets, and etc etc. All of these are defined already, but you would have to figure them out
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> Off the cup I would say teardown photos are necessary but not sufficient
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> For video in that works well?
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> Probably not.
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> Depends on your use case though.
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> Nvidia drivers got updated which is causing a race condition somewhere in the driver I am using for v-sync from the output of the nvidia card.
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> This means I can either restart my main computer frequently, to reset the driver, fix the driver issue, or maybe figure out how to restart the driver completely. Maybe one of those tradeoffs works for you, maybe it doesn't.
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> Just as an example.
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[Discord] <heanihilator> i appreciate both of your patience with all my silly questions 🙂
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[Discord] <beohoff3174> people on this discord helped me out with my silly questions when I started, so happy to pass it along
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[Discord] <mecoblock> apparently people are still having issues with (sata over) pcie on Rock-5-ITX and 6.1 vendor kernel? Where it only works after cold boot?
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[Discord] <raspberrygb> Any ideas what might cause this error when compiling Armbian for Orange Pi 5 Max?