DT: newbie questions

[Neil Armstrong]

On 05/17/2017 05:41 PM, Chris Moore wrote:
> P.S.
> 
> Le 16/05/2017 à 12:51, Chris Moore a écrit :
>> Le 16/05/2017 à 10:08, Neil Armstrong a écrit :
>>> On 05/16/2017 06:18 AM, Chris Moore wrote:
>>>> Le 15/05/2017 à 11:28, Chris Moore a écrit :
>>>>> I would like to add support for the cheap Chinese KI PLUS S905 boxes which seem very popular.
>>>>> They are re-branded (or cloned) by several different vendors.
>>>>> In particular the most serious seem to be:-
>>>>> VideoStrong (http://www.videostrong.com/product.asp?sid=257)
>>>>> Acemax (http://www.acemax.net.cn/droid-world/droid-box/hybrid-android-dvb-t2-dvb-s2/kii-pro-ki-plus-s2-t2-combo-149.html#.WRls_GjyiUk)
>>>>>
>>>>> I actually have an Xtreamer mxV (http://www.xtreamer.net/mxv) which seems to be an exact clone.
>>>>>
>>>>> My first question is what to put in the compatible line.
>>>>> I could put:
>>>>> a) compatible = "videostrong,kiplus", "acemax,kiplus", "xtreamer,mxv", "amlogic,meson-gxbb";
>>>>> but there are many other KI PLUS vendors so I could maybe omit the vendor:
>>>>> b) compatible = "kiplus", "xtreamer,mxv", "amlogic,meson-gxbb";
>>>>> but this poses the problem of what to put in amlogic.txt which seems to require a vendor.
>>>> Another solution to the multi-vendor problem could be to create a pseudo-vendor "generic" (or similar) and then have:
>>>> c) compatible = "generic,kiplus", "xtreamer,mxv", "amlogic,meson-gxbb";
>>>> Would this be acceptable?
>>> Sorry, the generic is not really acceptable here since there is always a vendor, and adding a new
>>> vendor is easy and well accepted.
>>>
>>> The point with Amlogic based Set-Top-Boxes is that they are 99% based on a reference design given
>>> from Amlogic, and only the SBCs (Odroid-C*, Khadas, NanoPi K2) differs.
>>>
>>> Here is the list of Amlogic Reference Designs I am aware of :
>>> - S905 : P200 and P201
>>> - S905X : P212
>>> - S905D : P230 and P231
>>> - S912 : Q200 and Q201
>>>
>>> When pushing S905 based boxes, we were not really aware of that, but starting with S905X we started
>>> to base the board DTS on the Reference Design DTSI like the Khadas Vim and the Wetek Hub/Play2.
>>>
>>> I'm aware there is a lot of work to clean up all the other S905/S905X and S912 based boxes... but
>>> the majority of boxes should run unchanged with the reference design DTS.
>>
>> The KI PLUS has GXBB (S905), Fast (100Mbs) Ethernet, 1 GiB RAM, four USB ports and often Realtek RTL8189ETV WiFi.
>>
>> The P20x boards are probably the closest but they have Gigabit Ethernet and the KI PLUS only has Fast Ethernet.
>> (Indeed the stock uBoot prompt and some Linux boot messages contain the string "p20x".)
>> So, although obviously derived from these reference designs as you say, Ethernet doesn't work with the P200 and P201 DTS.
>> Obviously working Ethernet is essential.
> 
> In fact the P201 probably does have Fast Ethernet.

Yes, P201 should be the closest, it's basically P200 with 10/100 ethernet, and way simpler.

> I remember that my board used to work well with the P201 DTB.
> But this was with the Amlogic 3.14.y kernels.
> In the mainline 4.x kernels it was incorrectly described with Gigabit Ethernet.
> But I see that this has just been corrected in 4.12-rc1.
> However unfortunately I cannot get 4.12-rc1 to boot: I get no kernel output at all on the serial console :(
> I have never had any problems with the 4.10 and 4.11 series.
> 
> Have you tried 4.12-rc1 on a GXBB board?
> What bootargs do you recommend?

Not yet, but this version should already boot some GXBB boards on kernelci.org

>>
>> The only existing GXBB DTS with 1GiB RAM and Fast Ethernet is the GXBB version of the Nexbox A95x.
>> But USB on the KI PLUS doesn't work with this DTS.
>>
>> So I really do need a new DTS.
> 
> Well, in view of the above I probably can make do with the P201 DTS, at least until I try to get the internal DVB tuners working.
> 

Yes, you can stick with P201 until you figure out how to use the DVB tuners, then it will need a new DTS !

Neil