AMLogic aml8726-mx TV BOX new PCB "HD18 v2.22"

Hello,

there is a new board label "HD18 v2.22" at the market. It looks like the known "HD18 v2.2" (detachable wifi antenna cable connector) and "HD18 v2.21" (not detachable wifi antenna cable), the only thinks that are different
- there is a little bit bigger headsink witch is 45° rotated (covers the NAND a little bit) and is fixed to the board with two plastic pins/sticks
(- there are more louver at the bottom of the case)

More I can not say at first stepp, because I've received a defective device.
No Signal at HDMI or AV.
The only think that works is that the color of the light will toggle between blue and red by using the red RC power-button.

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

Hello,

one step further: the A/V cable delivered with the device is damage!
(PS: there was a plastic selvage at the pin, so I can't put the pin deep enough into the hole; I've cut it with a knife, now the cable works)
Now I try another cable and get A/V out. But HDMI don't work furthermore, not at my TV.
At my TV I try every display resolution in the android, that is possible, but no output, only "no signal"...

One or two times at my many many trey after startup to plug the HDMI parallel to the A/V into the box, I got a videoout at HDMI, but the system freez at that moment...

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

System
a) not rooted
b) Settings -> System -> About MediaBox

Model number: MBX reference board (g18ref)
Android version: 4.2.2
Kernel version: 3.0.50 / ubuntu@ubuntu-desktop #4 / Sat Jun 29 10:13:43 CST 2013
Build number: JDQ39.20130629

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SSHelper

[@localhost /data/data/com.arachnoid.sshelper/home ]$ cat /proc/mtd

dev: size erasesize name
mtd0: 00800000 00200000 "bootloader"
mtd1: 00400000 00200000 "ubootenv"
mtd2: 00800000 00200000 "logo"
mtd3: 00800000 00200000 "aml_logo"
mtd4: 00800000 00200000 "recovery"
mtd5: 00800000 00200000 "boot"
mtd6: 40600000 00200000 "system"
mtd7: 20000000 00200000 "cache"
mtd8: 10000000 00200000 "backup"
mtd9: 18c600000 00200000 "userdata"

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http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=46059326&postcount=158 ????


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This device really sucks me out...

It seems so, that it only doesn't work at my TV (WUXGA 1920 x 1080).
At a monitor (1280 x 1024) with 720, at two HDready TV and another fullHD TV it works fine via HDMI....

I also try a HDMI-Splitter (v1.4)... I get a lighting InPut LED at the splitter until I connect the splitter-OutPut with my TV, then the InPut LED stops to light (output LED is lighting)...
(BTW: onetime at the beginning of my many trys with the spillter, I got a signal to my TV, but it wasn't reproducible???)

My notebook, SAT-receiver and a RK3188-box works fine with my TV...

Than I found out, at the toothpick method, there isn't any output via AV...
(opening the device and pressing the little switch)
Know I don't really know, whether a bootable SD-card (using DD or SDTools or the Matricom recovery SD respectively the merge by BenniBenassi-solution) is helpful, because I think it's a generally problem of the output-possibility of the recovery and I don't know, whether it is possible to use a choice with the knowing recovery.img like here


I found any way out, how to root the existing installed android...
Perhaps
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2146226
http://tabletrepublic.com/forum/and...how-root-any-aml-8726-based-mini-pc-3449.html
BUT without any output, so I can forget it...

And don't found any exploit like this ...

I want to root it, because of the possibility to use
- dmesg
- cat log (whichever)
:

And last but not least, the "cat /proc/mtd" output I found at my device don't compare to the standard output flying around in the I-Net, so I don't really sure that I can reflash my box with the g-box MX2 FW...
I thinking about it, perhaps it isn't a HW problem/incompatibility with my TV, because it seems so the actually installed FW have some bugs (because in Settings for example, if I move trough the sections, the background colure sometimes still is blue and not grey when I leave that point... on the other hand perhaps it's "normal")

Greetings

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BenniBenassi said:

Confirming HD18 v2.22 works with the image.....

CWM works, too.

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osm0sis said:

Hi Benni, thank you for all your extremely informative and helpful work over on the FreakTab and AndroidGadget Forums where I've been reading up on things.

Do you know any way to use CWM with the AV output, or is HDMI required?

Also did you ever get adb shell working with the Male-to-Male USB cord? I'm customizing your image via Titanium and File Explorer but some things would definitely be more straightforward with adb.

Edit: I'm planning on pulling and modding the kernel ramdisk on this thing via dd commands to add init.d support, if possible. I'll keep you posted. :good:

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BenniBenassi said:

Adb shell instructions are here :

http://forum.androidgadget.co.uk/showthread.php?tid=1140&pid=3173#pid3173

Male-to-Male ADB does not work out of the box.... USE the instructions above !!!

And for the CWM with AV output, man you have to be kidding..... just boot the device by inserting the CWM sdcard and holding the match in the AV hole... let's say you wait about 50 seconds. Afterwards you insert the AV cable and you can use the CWM and see it from the TV.

The device and Android system does not need AV screen or monitor or TV to boot up, is is only for us humans to see what is on the screen.

Just boot without the TV connection and insert it afterwards..... come on ....


And keep me posted.... keep up the good work

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# backing up partitions on MX MediaBox CS838 with USB Debugging and root.

md backup

adb shell

su

#backup=/storage/external_storage/sdcard1/backup/`date +"%Y-%m-%d.%H.%M.%S"`;
backup=/sdcard/backup/`date +"%Y-%m-%d.%H.%M.%S"`;
mkdir -p $backup;
cat /proc/mtd | tail -n +2 | while read mount; do
  part=`echo $mount | cut -d '"' -f 2`;
  mtd=`echo $mount | cut -d ':' -f 1`;
  echo $backup/$mtd-$part.img;
  test $part != "userdata" -o $part != "system" && nanddump -f $backup/$mtd-$part.img /dev/mtd/$mtd;
done;
echo Calculating checksums...;
cd $backup
busybox sha1sum * > $backup/backup.log;

exit

exit

adb pull /sdcard/backup backup/

#!/system/bin/sh

if [ `getprop service.adb.tcp.port` != 5555 ]; then
  echo Restarting adbd with TCP port 5555 open...;
  port=5555;
else
  echo Restarting adbd with TCP disabled...;
  port=-1;
fi;

su -c setprop service.adb.tcp.port $port;

su -c stop adbd;
su -c start adbd;

#!/system/bin/sh

/system/xbin/busybox run-parts /system/etc/init.d;

osm0sis said:

Alrighty, well I tried it again, and I still get no AV output with the sdcard trick, so I guess CWM is out of the question for me until I can test out HDMI.

I used my own Android Image Kitchen to split the boot.img but it's not a normal image and contains several kernels in one, and the extracted ramdisk (the root fs where all the init.* files come from) isn't recognized and looks like pure data.

If there's another kitchen that can handle them better I'd definitely be interested to know.

Either way, I'm pretty happy with things now, with init.d I'm enabling network adb, overclocking to 1.5GHz, raising the min freq to 192MHz, switching the governor to ondemand from conservative, etc.

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BenniBenassi said:

Care to share how you increased cpu speed etc...

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/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/
0 1 affected_cpus
336000 cpuinfo_cur_freq
1512000 cpuinfo_max_freq
48000 cpuinfo_min_freq
200000 cpuinfo_transition_latency
0 1 related_cpus
96000 192000 312000 408000 504000 600000 696000 816000 912000 1008000 1104000 1200000 1296000 1416000 1512000  scaling_available_frequencies
conservative ondemand performance  scaling_available_governors
336000 scaling_cur_freq
meson_cpufreq scaling_driver
conservative scaling_governor
1200000 scaling_max_freq
96000 scaling_min_freq
<unsupported> scaling_setspeed
 stats


/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/conservative/
1 change_skips
50 down_threshold
8 freq_step
0 ignore_nice_load
100000 sampling_rate
20000 sampling_rate_min
408000 screen_off_max
80 up_threshold


/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/ondemand/
0 ignore_nice_load
0 io_is_busy
0 powersave_bias
1 sampling_down_factor
200000 sampling_rate
20000 sampling_rate_min
95 up_threshold


/sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/


/sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/iosched/


/sys/block/mtdblock9/queue/
1 add_random
0 discard_granularity
0 discard_max_bytes
0 discard_zeroes_data
512 hw_sector_size
 iosched
1 iostats
512 logical_block_size
127 max_hw_sectors_kb
0 max_integrity_segments
127 max_sectors_kb
65536 max_segment_size
128 max_segments
512 minimum_io_size
0 nomerges
128 nr_requests
0 optimal_io_size
512 physical_block_size
128 read_ahead_kb
1 rotational
1 rq_affinity
noop [deadline]  scheduler


/sys/block/mtdblock9/queue/iosched/
16 fifo_batch
1 front_merges
500 read_expire
5000 write_expire
2 writes_starved


/proc/sys/vm/
0 block_dump
0 dirty_background_bytes
5 dirty_background_ratio
0 dirty_bytes
200 dirty_expire_centisecs
20 dirty_ratio
500 dirty_writeback_centisecs
0 drop_caches
0 highmem_is_dirtyable
0 laptop_mode
32	32 lowmem_reserve_ratio
65530 max_map_count
2415 min_free_kbytes
4 min_free_order_shift
32768 mmap_min_addr
0 nr_pdflush_threads
1 oom_dump_tasks
0 oom_kill_allocating_task
1 overcommit_memory
50 overcommit_ratio
3 page-cluster
0 panic_on_oom
0 percpu_pagelist_fraction
0 scan_unevictable_pages
1 stat_interval
60 swappiness
100 vfs_cache_pressure


/sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/
0,1,2,4,9,15 adj
32 cost
2 debug_level
8192,10240,12288,14336,16384,20480 minfree

#!/system/bin/sh
# chmod -R 755 /system/etc/init.d

# allow network adb shell access
setprop service.adb.tcp.port 5555;
stop adbd;
start adbd;

# cpufreq tweaks
for i in /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq; do
  echo 1512000 > $i/scaling_max_freq;
  echo 312000 > $i/scaling_min_freq;
done;

# tcp tweaks
echo "reno" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_congestion_control;

BenniBenassi said:

HERE'S HOW to use CWM with AV:

Open up the MX box (unscrew 4 screws), insert the AV cable and then press the reset button UNDER IT - its possible while the box is open, only then plug in the POWER cable.

That should do it!

Other:

I used the same kitchen, ramdisk was opened successfully...

Maybe your boot img is corrupted? How did you extract it? I took mine directly from the box.

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osm0sis said:

Thanks I'll try nanddump. I'm not too familiar with mtd just yet.

Easiest method to do this is make install-recovery.sh with the run-parts command and have it in the same directory as a script that'll install init.d support and then the settings script of your choice. I'll write it for use in recovery (only difference is the location of sh in the first line):

Code:

#!/sbin/sh

busybox mount -o remount,rw /system;
rm -f /system/etc/install-recovery.sh;
cp install-recovery.sh /system/etc/;
chmod 755 /system/etc/install-recovery.sh;
mkdir /system/etc/init.d;
cp 900bootscript /system/etc/init.d/;
chmod -R 755 /system/etc/init.d;

You may have to add paths for the scripts that need to be copied since I'm not sure what that looks like from recovery on the sdcard.

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BenniBenassi said:

Evidently has something to do with nandargs.... Haven't been able to figure out fully...

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osm0sis said:

Ah damn.. I just saw that the value set correctly and didn't follow up to make sure it actually was using the new max. I'll look into it too.

The other weird thing is that it always says 336 is the current frequency, but it's not even one of the listed scaling_frequencies options.

I did a quick search for Mali 400 to see if I could find anything to overclock/tweak with, and didn't come up with anything useful at first glance, but hunted around and found /sys/module/mali/parameters/ which may contain something useful, just not too sure what to do there. Looks like we could potentially expand the shared memory it uses at least?

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BenniBenassi said:

The script you ran shows this line: 336000 scaling_cur_freq .....

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osm0sis said:

Exactly, it always says that's the current frequency, but..

96000 192000 312000 408000 504000 600000 696000 816000 912000 1008000 1104000 1200000 1296000 1416000 1512000 scaling_available_frequencies

It's not actually in the list,

48000 cpuinfo_min_freq

and neither is the apparent board min. Very odd. Could just be an issue with the meson-cpufreq driver not outputting the proper values to userspace, but this definitely makes it difficult to tell if it's properly using the frequencies we set, or even they set.

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