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Turning a TV set-top box into a Linux computer (2022)

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Re: Turning a TV set-top box into a Linux computer (2022)

#91

Post by n8henrie »

redfast00 wrote: post #22
n8henrie wrote: post #20

I love these kinds of writeups, thank you! How did you determine what addresses to read things into? (the chainloaded bootloader, then its initrd/ FDT / etc.).

Mainly by looking at what addresses the original bootloader loads them into. The addresses don't matter too much, as long as you load them into valid memory, since for most you pass a reference to them anyway in later steps.

Thanks for your response!

I'm a hobbyist that's been tinkering with uboot now and again for years and can never figure out the right addresses for stuff, or where / how to learn this.

I assume this memory is subsequently released for the OS? Or does the OS just work around it?

Are you hobbling your runtime experience in some way if you load to the wrong address?

Re: Turning a TV set-top box into a Linux computer (2022)

#92

Post by mikepurvis »

wyldfire wrote: post #81
Klasiaster wrote: post #39

You can also get a similar board with that CPU here: https://libre.computer/products/aml-s905x-cc/ It's optimized for mainline Linux and since u-boot supports UEFI booting, you can just throw a downloaded Fedora arm64 image on it and it will boot.

I've had trouble sourcing reliable SD cards for these SBCs. I have had the Le Potato, ODROIDs, RasPis. And they will generally work really well 98% of the time. But I keep them in a closet and I hate that I need to service them once a year or so. I tried buying SD cards from several different retailers and never got reliable results like from SATA SSDs (or even rotating disks it seems). I eventually just bought an in…

Can you network boot a Raspi? This source seems to think so, as of the 3B+, anyway: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/network-boot-raspberry-pi-with...

I guess it requires them to be on wired network, but if they're in a closet, that's probably the case anyway.

Re: Turning a TV set-top box into a Linux computer (2022)

#93

Post by detrites »

squarefoot wrote: post #65

Very interesting writeup, bookmarked! I wish there was a community willing to reverse engineer those very cheap DVR/NVR video surveillance boxes and boards sold on Ebay and Aliexpress. They have USB, SATA, some GPIOs and quite fast ADC chips on board to achieve high definition video sampling so they could be repurposed for various uses like SDR. They already run Linux inside, although it is predictably tight closed,…

Do you happen to know other spec's on these or similar? (Eg, CPU type/speed, RAM etc)

Re: Turning a TV set-top box into a Linux computer (2022)

#94

Post by paraselene_ »

wyldfire wrote: post #81
Klasiaster wrote: post #39

You can also get a similar board with that CPU here: https://libre.computer/products/aml-s905x-cc/ It's optimized for mainline Linux and since u-boot supports UEFI booting, you can just throw a downloaded Fedora arm64 image on it and it will boot.

I've had trouble sourcing reliable SD cards for these SBCs. I have had the Le Potato, ODROIDs, RasPis. And they will generally work really well 98% of the time. But I keep them in a closet and I hate that I need to service them once a year or so. I tried buying SD cards from several different retailers and never got reliable results like from SATA SSDs (or even rotating disks it seems). I eventually just bought an in…

What cards have you tried? If you stick with general-use mSD card these days they'll most likely be TLC. The issue mostly is they don't* support TRIM unlike an SSD, and they use bottom-of-the-barrel flash chips (cause consumer grade, pricing is important here).

Pony up a bit more cash for "high endurance" grade (mostly MLC), or even industrial SLC cards at a much higher price point. My current roster for my small pi4 cluster is a mix of Samsung Pro Endurance, SanDisk High Endurance and Kioxia High Endurance. So far they've been working pretty great for me. Last time I checked they're about $15-25 a pop, which isn't cheap but not that bad either. I've been meaning to checkout SanDisk's max endurance which supposedly has much better write cycles, which I'll probably do after the card in my dashcam dies.

*On SBCs you could do something *like* trim, but it's not as straight forward, and support depends on the controller of the card wildly.

Re: Turning a TV set-top box into a Linux computer (2022)

#95

Post by Matsta »

avidiax wrote: post #87
kasabali wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These boxes generally utilize stock Cortex A53/A55 which are quite good IMO.

"Good" as in they can do anything slowly. A7x boxes won't struggle.

Exactly. A53 cores are efficiency cores designed for non-intensive background tasks in phones to save battery.

The only decent cpu atm that will eventually show up in TV boxes is the Rockchip Rk3588, but they aren't as cheap as some old s905x chips, and software support is very early days, so it will be a while before we see them in any android tv boxes.

The key does seem to be you need at least a quad-core of high-efficiency cores. The Nvidia Tegra X1 found in the Nvidia Shield and Switch runs fine even though it has even older A57 cores(predecessor to the A72). Compare this to rockchip's last-gen Rk3399, which only has 2x A72 cores (and 4x A53 cores) and is pretty slow compared to a Rpi 4 (but that could also be because of crap software support on the Rockchip side)

Re: Turning a TV set-top box into a Linux computer (2022)

#96

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

mikepurvis wrote: post #92
wyldfire wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had trouble sourcing reliable SD cards for these SBCs. I have had the Le Potato, ODROIDs, RasPis. And they will generally work really well 98% of the time. But I keep them in a closet and I hate that I need to service them once a year or so. I tried buying SD cards from several different retailers and never got reliable results like from SATA SSDs (or even rotating disks it seems). I eventually just bought an in…

Can you network boot a Raspi? This source seems to think so, as of the 3B+, anyway: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/network-boot-raspberry-pi-with... I guess it requires them to be on wired network, but if they're in a closet, that's probably the case anyway.

Yep, I've done network boot with mine. It's a lot easier these days since you don't have to manually generate an initramfs with the modules.

Re: Turning a TV set-top box into a Linux computer (2022)

#97

Post by BizarroLand »

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #90
BizarroLand wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if nothing else when the device reaches EOL what would it hurt to release a bootloader unlock?

“What would it hurt” is the wrong question. The question is “how would it profit them”? If it wouldn’t, they have zero incentive to do it.

It would profit them by generating buzz and good will from their customers towards their future products, knowing that at some point, the customer will be given complete ownership of the product.

Plus, if the parts of the underlying software that are not going to be reused without modification in future products were open sourced, then for most semi-successful products there is the possibility of the code base growing, new tools and utilities being created, and information being generated that would improve their future products.

The only potential downside is that if the newer products that are released are retrogressive or are deemed to not be enough of an improvement then their own older systems with better software might crowd out their market share.

This would be a dramatic blow to sales of products like iPhones which have not had any MAJOR hardware upgrades in a few years, but for SBCs, a new processor, additional cores, faster memory, stronger graphics cards, USB-C, there's dozens of small improvements each generation that make a newer version worthwhile to customers.

Re: Turning a TV set-top box into a Linux computer (2022)

#98

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #90
BizarroLand wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if nothing else when the device reaches EOL what would it hurt to release a bootloader unlock?

“What would it hurt” is the wrong question. The question is “how would it profit them”? If it wouldn’t, they have zero incentive to do it.

Perhaps the regulatory solution is to offer the option: Either the vendor covers the cost of recycling, or they liberate the devices so recycling isn't the only option.

Re: Turning a TV set-top box into a Linux computer (2022)

#99

Post by arglebargle123 »

wyldfire wrote: post #81
Klasiaster wrote: post #39

You can also get a similar board with that CPU here: https://libre.computer/products/aml-s905x-cc/ It's optimized for mainline Linux and since u-boot supports UEFI booting, you can just throw a downloaded Fedora arm64 image on it and it will boot.

I've had trouble sourcing reliable SD cards for these SBCs. I have had the Le Potato, ODROIDs, RasPis. And they will generally work really well 98% of the time. But I keep them in a closet and I hate that I need to service them once a year or so. I tried buying SD cards from several different retailers and never got reliable results like from SATA SSDs (or even rotating disks it seems). I eventually just bought an in…

I've given up on SD cards for general purpose OS disk storage, I use small (≤16GB) SD cards for boot and small mSATA or m.2 SSDs in USB3 enclosures for everything else. Performance and reliability are drastically better, SMART gives you a heads up when a drive starts lotlike it will need replacement, cost isn't even much of an issue if you source your SSDs from fleaBay.

Re: Turning a TV set-top box into a Linux computer (2022)

#100

Post by doublepg23 »

Klasiaster wrote: post #39

You can also get a similar board with that CPU here: https://libre.computer/products/aml-s905x-cc/ It's optimized for mainline Linux and since u-boot supports UEFI booting, you can just throw a downloaded Fedora arm64 image on it and it will boot.

Wow, I've been looking for a replacement for my ancient BeagleBone Black for ages. This fits the bill to a T! 64 bit, mainline linux, u-boot, it's all there. And for less than I bought the BBB for. Thanks for the link!
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