09:26 <arnd> mmind00: if I buy one of those rk3566 based TV boxes, are any of them more likely to eventually work with mainline kernels, or at least get android updates, than the others?

09:27 <arnd> I see models called X88pro20, T95plus, H96Max, and HK1 RBox R2

09:27 <arnd> and X96 X6

09:28 <mmind00> arnd: in general, the tv-boxes all follow the reference design most of the time ... so in terms of "works with mainline in the future" they're probably all equal

09:28 <mmind00> as for Android, no clue ;-)

09:29 <mmind00> Rockchip seems to be with 4.19 for their vendor kernel, at least looks like it when looking through the rockchip github

09:30 <arnd> right, I figured that shipping with Android 11 means their kernel is not quite as ancient as some of the other ones

09:30 <mmind00> arnd: I guess the main issue with any tv-box will be usability when reflashing ... i.e. you probably want to have a sane bootloader, which in turn demands knowledge on how to trigger the maskrom mode (to recover)

09:30 <arnd> and the other SoCs in that price range don't do 8GB LPDDR4 yet

09:31 <mmind00> arnd: I guess the easier board variant might be the Pine64 Quartz Model B

09:31 <mmind00> (raspberri-Pi sized rk3566-based)

09:31 <mmind00> https://www.pine64.org/quartz64b/

09:32 <arnd> mmind00: the primary function would be for the kids to play minecraft on, so I wanted to go with something that can run the stock firmware, but isn't too expensive that I wouldn't risk breaking it with experiments

09:33 <arnd> the quartz64b does look like a great devboard, but I don't have a shortage of those devices ;-)

09:34 <mmind00> arnd: ah ok ... then any of those tv-boxes will do ... I guess one thing to check would be if google reveals some forum post on the "maskrom" toggle for any of those

09:34 <arnd> good idea, I'll look around for that then

09:35 <arnd> so you wouldn't expect them to boot from an sdcard or usb stick with the right kind of bootloader unless I trick it into ignoring the emmc then, right?

09:36 <mmind00> arnd: correct ... rockchip boot order is somehow always spi, emmc, sd, usb-download [=maskrom mode]

09:36 <mmind00> arnd: so if you desolder the emmc this also works :-D

09:36 <mmind00> arnd: the "key" normally is just pulling the emmc clock low by either a switch or connecting two testpoints on the board

09:37 <arnd> right, I did that with my Amazon Fire

09:37 <ukleinek> is amazon fire a good device for mainline stuff?

09:37 <arnd> no

09:46 <arnd> the latest Fire HD 10 may have a chance of getting there because that uses the same MT8183 that is in some of the nicer Chromebooks, but I don't think the PostmarketOS folks have started working on that. The older models tend to either be underpowered or they have powervr graphics, so even those with some mainline support are pretty bad

10:26 <macc24> ukleinek: there are chromesticks that can be convinced to run linux easily B-)

10:27 <macc24> arnd: i am somewhat experienced with getting linux to run on mt8183...

10:57 <arnd> after looking around some more, I've concluded that none of the rk3566 tv boxes are what I want, and they appear to all be identical so far, as mmind00 was guessing.

10:59 <arnd> no easy way to get into the boot loader, or even root the android on it, and the board design apparently uses DDR3 memory, which means it's going to go out of production as soon as the next version comes up using cheaper and faster LP-DDR4, so probably no hope of getting firmware updates after that

11:02 <arnd> https://www.zidoo.tv/Product/index/model/ZIDOO+M6/target/dewFAIsPim5KKmVViAFMcQ%3D%3D.html looks like another option similar to the Quartz64 and ROC-RK3566-PC, but comes packaged as a mini-pc/tvbox

11:03 <macc24> FYI don't expect that little mali in rk3566 to be faster than llvmpipe xD

11:06 <arnd> I probably don't care too much about the gpu, but at least the reviews of the TV boxes tended to say the G52 was the main advantage over s905x3 Mali G31, though they would generally recommend the amlogic boxes overall because of more mature software

11:49 <diederik> arnd: iiuc there was a whole discussion about minecraft on #quartz64 on the Pine64 irc network. I can paste part of my log for you. Or you join yourself and ask all the (minecraft) questions yourself. (I only know minecraft is a game)

11:52 <diederik> ukleinek: the quartz64 could be an excellent kodi device. My Rock64 already does pretty well, but it has some thermal issues. The Quartz64 apparently is a LOT better in that regard

11:53 <macc24> diederik: minecraft java or bedrock edition?

11:53 <diederik> My Rock64 can play 4k HDR x265 streams, but after some time locks up due to overheating. But apparently if I get f.e. the alu case, that should take care of it

11:54 <diederik> macc24: I don't know. I saw a whole discussion about it, but didn't understand/get it bc I don't know anything about minecraft

11:54 <macc24> minecraft java edition barely ran on my laptop that is much more powerful than any rockchip soc

11:54 <macc24> * rockchip soc that hit the market

11:56 <diederik> here's that log part: https://paste.debian.net/1206879/

11:58 <macc24> running minecraft servers that are not paper on machines that are not high end is a mistake

11:59 <diederik> so 'paper' is indeed a minecraft 'thingie' ;) That's how little I know about it.

12:27 <arnd> diederik: thanks for the link, that may come in handy another time. What I actually want to do here is run the android minecraft client on the TV, I would just run the bedrock server on my big workstation

12:34 <macc24> arnd: check out mcpelauncher

12:35 <macc24> i used it for some time on a rk3288 machine

12:53 <arnd> macc24: awesome. I have no idea what kind of magic this is, but it does seem to work much better than my previous attempt of running in an android-x86 kvm guest

12:55 <macc24> arnd: also if you extract the appimage you can run minecraft bedrock edition in a script to run it automatically with no mouse or keyboard needed

13:00 <ukleinek> diederik: something that could be powered using USB would be great

13:23 <diederik> arnd: yw. Virtualization was mentioned too in that paste, but whether it's useful or applicable, I'll leave that up to you ;)

13:31 <diederik> ukleinek: afaict the quartz64 has a barrel connector, so I guess it doesn't qualify for that. I don't know if that can change. https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Quartz64 is kept quite up to date, so if it becomes possible, it should end up there

13:34 <macc24> diederik: i wish you luck getting fast gl inside of qemu ;)