Installing Debian Linux on H96MAX rk3318 TV box.
(RK3318 device) 4gB ram
There is a shortage of Raspberry PI 4's at the moment due to some production problems and I was looking for alternative for the Raspberry P4
I found the H96MAX TV box that is about 20% slower that a Pi 4
Comparison speed wise
Test done at http://mrbluecoat.blogspot.com/2020/10/install-linux-on-x96-max-x96-max.html
Performance compared to Raspberry Pi 4:
Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (2GB LPDDR4 RAM) 32-bit:
- CPU Performance: Duration = 8.80 seconds (lower is faster)
- CPU Temp: Idle = 38'c | Full load = 48'c
- RootFS: Write = 18 MiB/s | Read = 41 MiB/s
- RAM: Write = 339 MiB/s | Read = 606 MiB/s
Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (2GB LPDDR4 RAM) 64-bit:
- CPU Performance: Duration = 7.27 seconds (lower is faster)
- CPU Temp: Idle = 45'c | Full load = 52'c
- RootFS: Write = 18 MiB/s | Read = 22 MiB/s
- RAM: Write = 448 MiB/s | Read = 1163 MiB/s
X96 Max (4GB DDR4 RAM):
- CPU Performance: Duration = 10.39 seconds (lower is faster)
- CPU Temp: Idle = 36'c | Full load = 44'c
- RootFS: Write = 35 MiB/s | Read = 43 MiB/s
- RAM: Write = 555 MiB/s | Read = 978 MiB/s
X96 Max+ (4GB DDR3 RAM):
- CPU Performance: Duration = 10.78 seconds (lower is faster)
- CPU Temp: Idle = 36'c | Full load = 50'c
- RootFS: Write = 53 MiB/s | Read = 154 MiB/s
- RAM: Write = 507 MiB/s | Read = 868 MiB/s
Following the instruction to load debian linux on tvbox
We need to create an SD card with Debian for the H96max to boot from and here is the procedure.
First download the image from Armbian here is the link.
Download the debian image from here https://users.armbian.com/jock/rk3318/Armbian_22.02.0-trunk_Rk3318-box_bullseye_current_5.15.25_minimal.img.xz
Multitool menu installing image from image directory to internal flash
Download the Multi tool here https://users.armbian.com/jock/rk3318/multitool.img.xz
Using the ubuntu write click and select multitool.img.xz and select Open with disk image writer
Then select the SD card as destination
- If the SD cart writing is complete you know need to copy the debian image in the images directory on the sd card.
- This copying of the image might take a while.
- The unmount the card and remove it from your laptop and place it in the TVBOX
Use a tooth pic press the button in the 3.5mm earphone plug and the plug in the power keep it in until the Mutitool menu has started
Quick installation instructions to boot from SD Card:
- If you are already running Armbian from eMMC, skip to the next step. Instead if you are running the original firmware you need to first erase the internal; to do so download the Multitool, burn it on an SD Card, plug the SD Card and power the TV Box. Use "Backup flash" if you want to do a backup of the existing firmware, then choose "Erase flash" menu option.
- Build or download your preferred Armbian image;
- Uncompress and burn the Armbian image on the SD Card;
- Plug the SD Card in the TV Box and power it on;
- Wait for 10 seconds, then the led should start blinking and HDMI will turn on. The first time the boot process will take a couple of minutes or more because the filesystem is going to be resized, so be patient and wait for the login prompt;
- On first boot you will be asked for entering a password for root user of your choice and the name and password for a regular user
- Run rk3318-config to configure the board specific options
- Run armbian-config to configure timezone, locales and other personal options, or also to transfer the SD Card installation to internal ;
- Run apt-mark hold linux-image-*-rockchip64 linux-dtb-*-rockchip64 to avoid the upgrade of kernel with the armbian official one, since it still does not contain rk3318
- Congratulations, Armbian is running from SD Card!
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