H3-based boards that boot EngineBASIC NG

guidol

Hawk
I think you have also to differ between the NanoPi M1 and the NanoPi M1 "plus" with 8GB eMMC 😉
But when the NanoPi M1 does work then also the really tiny cute NanoPi ZeroPi should work, because it also uses a H3-CPU and for $26 it has a metal case included 🙂
https://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=69&product_id=266

ZeroPi

Hawk

guidol They look very small and compact, but without onboard HDMI output they are not much good to me for a BASIC Engine platform.

guidol

Hawk
Oops - Sorry - I totally missed to se that the NanoPi ZeroPi has no HDMI, because with armbian (where it is supported) I mostly run the boards headless via SSH 😉

MC10Guru

Ahoy,
First, what Hawk said...I looked at the OPi Zero and it also has no video output. I'm not into SSHing or UARTing. Last night on eBay a Chinese dealer had OPi One 512mb boards for $25+tax (it has HDMI). They sold out overnight. "He who hesitates is lost" I thought 😐

Now about a strange thing that happened this week. I bought an MXQ Pro 5G box out of curiosity. It's supposed to have an Amlogic S905, Android 10.1, 4G+64G, BT4.0 etc. This box turned out to be a total fake. It's really an H3 1+8 board with Android 7.0. I consider that a plus if it boots EB NG. Unlike the R69 it has all 4 USB ports and a fullsize SD slot but, also like my R69, this fake MXQ Pro will not boot anything from the SD card slot (EB NG, Armbian 10, Lubuntu 16.04, ROPi 4.3). So for now it's in my "junk TV Box" Box.. Out of 5 H3 Tv Boxes one boots everything, one boots EB NG only and the rest boot nothing from the card slot 🙁

Guidol: You of Armbian fame (I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy) I'm reading the R69 thread on the Armbian forums right now. Perhaps you could tell me why 3 of my 5 H3 Android TV boxes will not boot anything but a recovery SD card even though the H3 should boot from SD first? I futzed up my Turwell T95S box in a failed flashing experiment so I successfully flashed the original firmware from a uSD card just fine. But it still boots nothing else. And the Longyi T95S boots EB NG but not any other Op Sys from the card slot. It's very confusing 😅

I do wish we had private messaging on here. Other than that I like this forum very much 😁 Happy holidays all!
daveyb

guidol

MC10Guru
I thin when the one box boots only EB NG and no other OS its up to the .DTB (Description of the Hardware Tree) . The .DTB of EB NG may be a cutdown version which doesnt support/need much different hardware and drivers (only display, sound, input) but maybe not the right wifi.
If you try to start a more complex os like armbian the .dtb should fit the sbc-hardware.
But why buy an TV-Box only if there a more (non-working) components, when you could get a OPi One which does work fine with EB NG 😉

I only did buy 2 TV-Boxes. The Sunvell R69 H3 and a Sunvell T95K Pro OctaCore S912.
The T95K Pro cant run EB NG. In the past it did run "unofficial" TV-Box armbian - but the amlogic-CPU support has been dropped. So now its my TV-ANdroid-Box for Netflix.
And my trusty old OPi PC (H3) is running H3droid as Text-to-Speech-Server.
In the last 1.5 years ther were so many fakes of TV-Boxes and new hardware in every revision 🙁
And on the most of this top-feature TV-Boxes the Android runs much slower with Octacore than on some old DualCore-TV-Boxes from kknown-good brands 🙁

Hawk

I didn't want to totally throw my money away with my failed purchase of a R69 H3 smart TV, so I've been experimenting with the other OSs I can install on it.
I have successfully installed Armbian and LibreElec. I don't actually need either of these OSs on it, but it's been fun learning about how the OSs get installed. I'm still trying to learn about the early boot phases of the SoC with the aim of working out whether EB NG could be ported.
I know guidol said why bother with the smart TV boxes, when the OPi PC is a known working platform, but it was that the smart TVs were cheaper. I guess I'm not really thinking about me, as I already have a couple of working EB NG platforms. More other people who may wish to get involved. For teaching programming, some of these smart TVs can be bought in bulk for not very much at all. I still like Engine BASIC as a learning platform.

Hawk

Wahoo, my new H3 board arrived. I ordered an Lctech Pi H3 (LCPI-H3-V7R3) from Aliexpress and guess what it was labelled on the board...Cherry Pi PC. It's not quote identical form/fit to an OPi, but the dimensions are the same. It uses a USB-C for power instead of the barrel jack which gave me a moment of grief. I guess it's just a new cable that I need to buy.
Anyway, I'm happy to report (as you all know already) I plugged in my EB NG SD card and it booted up straight away.
I now have 3 different SBCs that will boot EB NG. 😄

guidol

Hawk
the Cherry Pi was covered in a report by 02/2021 on the CNX-site:
https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/02/22/cherry-pi-pc-sbc-is-a-clone-orange-pi-pc/

Hawk

MC10Guru The boards are currently listed as AU$31.44 for no eMMC and AU$44.06 for eMMC version. I bought the non-eMMC version, as I'm happy booting from SD card.
I like that I can plug the same SD card into any of the boards I have and it looks and feels the same.
I still require the support of a regular PC of some description to transfer external software onto the SD card. I can't plug in a second SD card and just copy stuff from one to the other. It feels a bit like a single floppy drive system of old. 😆
guidol It's a good report. I contacted the supplier to see if they would provide the cheaper non-WiFi version, as I just wanted it for EB NG, but they are not producing it, and would only do so if I ordered in quantity. I only want one to test. I expect that it would work fine, and be the same form as the WiFi version.

MC10Guru

Ahoy,
Hawk: This is just bizarre but this morn I was reading at Linux Gizmos and just read about this exact H3 board. I made a note to check it out. What was the price range? There was none given at the website.

A bad week so far. I'm just trying to keep my mind in gear. daveyb

Willard

Hawk, are the mounting holes on the Lctech Pi H3 board the same as on the Raspberry Pi board? I received the Vilros 10 Inch Screen with Flip Stand Case for Raspberry Pi 4 Model B and 3 Model B-B+. It comes with a USB-C cable for power on the Raspberry Pi 4. The opening on the side is cutout for the different ports on the Raspberry Pi 4 and 3. If the mounting holes are the same, the Lctech Pi H3 board may also work with this case and screen. I am going to try it with my Libre ALL-H3-CC 1Gb board this weekend.

Hawk

Willard I believe the dimensions are the same as RPi, but I'm not sure which model. I don't have a RPi 4. I have a RPi 3 that I will check against.
The dimensions and basic layout are the same as the OPi, except that the USB-C is on the same side as the uSD slot. Two of the mounting holes are in the same place, but two of them are about 1/4 of the way along the edge, rather than in the corners.

MC10Guru

Ahoy,
Willard: I have my Libre Tritium mounted inside the Vilros 10" flipcase thing and it fits tight but fine. The IR detector and the heatsink really fit tight with the fan though. I have the Libre blue heatsink which keeps it cool enough so I just removed the cooling fan. The monitor doesn't have sound built-in so I can either hook my little powered speakers to the analog sound port or use my HDMI sound extractor adapter to get sound. I do see myself cutting more port access in the case soon though as with sound and such I have to keep the lid unlatched. Since I have my Nanopi M1 booting EB NG mounted on a 7" lcd touchscreen w/sound I may end up using the flipcase for a RPi 4B booting Recalbox. I found a keyboard that is basically the exact size of the fliptop too, but unfortunately it is bluetooth 🙁

I'm off to bed, gotta be at hospital early tomorrow. daveyb

Willard

MC10Guru: I have been working with my Libre Tritium and the Vilros 10" flipcase screen. I also have the Libre blue heatsink on it. I check it out with a monitor to make sure it was working before mounting it in the Vilros flipcase. there was no problem. I decided to connect the Vilros cables to it to test the screen before mounting it. When I turned it on the Vilros splash screen came up then a no source message. I never got past the no source message. I have Armbian on another SD card, so I changed SD cards and the Armbian SD card booted past the no source message into the desktop. I connected the Libre board back to the monitor and tried different CONFIG 10,#s. None of these changes got me past the no source message.

Did you have to change anything to get it working on your Vilros 10" flipcase screen? I would appreciate any help you can provide me.

MC10Guru

Ahoy,
I don't really do anything too special with EB NG other than set a screen 3 (to use with HDMI or A/V modes) and load my TI99 font file.

This is my config.ini:
keyboard=1
mode=3
font=0
keyword_sep_optional=0
language=0
filter=0
cursor_color=0xff009500
beep_volume=3
phys_mode=0
tv_norm=0
color0=0,0,0
color1=192,192,192
color2=255,255,255
color3=128,128,128
color4=10,120,160
color5=140,140,140
color6=244,233,123
color7=214,91,189
color8=50,50,255
color9=238,137,17
color10=84,255,0
color11=0,0,0

This is my autoexec.bas:
10 REM TI99 font start
20 LOAD FONT "TI99.ttf"
30 FONT "TI99"SIZE 8,8
40 FILES
50 END
Line "40 FILES" is just to see that it changed to the TI99 font.

I just got back from my last RAD treatment today (WooHoo!!) so I'll try to set up later after my head clears and check everything for sure.

I have a Kano 10" monitor I use on my HiFiPi system and RPi OS didn't like the 1280x800 resolution until I adjusted to a closer one before boot. And the default orientation on those monitors puts the screen upside down (horizontal tablet not vertical monitor) so I had to rotate RPi OS 180 degrees to use the monitor in vertical orientation. That is not a problem with the Vilros screen.
daveyb

painintheworld

MC10Guru Wishing you the best of outcomes on your treatments!

MC10Guru

Ahoy,
I'm trying to figure out why some of my posts are marked as deleted? Am I deleted here? I'm logged in and my posts seem to go through...

Anyway, I got another H3 TV Box for $25.00 on eBay.:
RockTek RT-A2 A H3 1G+8G Android 4.4 Kitkat
At first it seemed to boot nothing, but I tried again with my battery of op sys. When I tried Armbian for OPi PC I waited about 3 mins then it suddenly took off. After that it booted EB NG and all my others. Apparently the magic of Armbian adjusted the uboot enough to boot from uSD? I guess I'll try that method on some other H3 boxes.

I also bought this for $25.00 at the same time:
EASYTONE T95 Super Allwinner H3 2G+16G Android 10
It didn't boot from uSD either so next time I'll try Armbian and let it sit.

Methinks I have enough EB NG boxes and boards now. You know I haven't even booted Android on either box...
daveyb (I hope I'm still here officially)

painintheworld

MC10Guru I'm seeing your posts, MC10Guru 🙂

In my experience and in my opinion, Android is a less than optimal on the H3. It would likely be better with 4.4 Kitkat than a later version, or if it had 4GB of RAM. It'd be nice if there was an easy (software?) method of overclocking the heck out of the H3.

Now you need to work up some sort of message passing and build an H3 BASIC Engine supercomputer 🙂

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