S-Box, S905X, 2/32GB

[soldiaz]

ATV rom would be nice!

[Kuno]

Yes..., with SD card in - LE is booting.., without SD card - Android booting...

Is it working fine with Libre? I know support was spotty.

[abc4512]

I bought this Box for 12€ on Aliexpress. Here are my experiences with it:

It says 2/16 GB on the product page but in reality, it's only 1/16. The box comes preinstalled with an extremely crappy Android 6 operating system. The performance of this Android is sluggish and way too slow for a box with this processor. Youtube does not work, but there is Kodi preinstalled with some piracy addons which is really weird. Man should install custom rom.

The box does actually have a reset switch, but it's not reachable from the outside, you have to open the box to press it. It is located between the two USB ports and labelled as "upgrade key". To open the box, look for the 4 small rubber feet on the underside. The screws to open the box are located under these feet. You can carefully pry them out with a knife or very thin screwdriver without damaging them. You only ever need to press the reset switch when you want to run an operating system directly from an SD card (such as Lakka or LibreELEC). For flashing a new operating system directly on the internal memory, you don't need the switch, it will work by just inserting the card and plugging power.

The custom roms I got working on this box so far are:

XannyTech Custom Mod Rom (Classic Android) (both SD card and USB flash work)

Aidan's Android TV Custom Rom ATV 7.1.2 (Android TV 7) (do not use the SD card flashing method, it did not work with this rom and bricked it. Only the USB cable method worked. If the YouTube app from Play Store keeps crashing, download YouTube for Android TV version 2.00.18 from Apkmirror.com , this is the only version that works. Alternatively, download unofficial app SmartYouTube TV which is really good, but you won't get home screen recommendations with it)

Lakka (runs directly from SD card)

Armbian (with mainline kernel 5.9)

You can flash roms using an USB male-to-male cable (Amlogic USB Burning Tool) or with the SD card recovery method (Burn Card Maker). Be careful when you use the USB cable, make sure to plug it into the USB OTG port on the box, not the USB HOST port (this will attempt to charge the computer on the other end, when I did this my laptop instantly turned off). The OTG USB port is the one next to the A/V connector. You can also use an USB A to USB C cable if you have a laptop. When using the alternative SD card flashing method, you don't need to hold the reset button, it's enough to power the box with the card inserted. If the light starts blinking red and blue, it means flashing has failed and your box is now useless. You have to flash a new firmware using the USB cable or another SD card image. But I did not need to short out any pins to recover it, it still allowed to flash a new image.

I uploaded a Zip file. It contains the original remote.conf file, an updated remote.conf that works with the Android TV 7 rom, and the original device tree files in binary (dtb) and decompiled (dts) format.

To install the remote files, copy them on an SD card or USB drive, then install a file explorer app with root support (FX File explorer) on the box. Open file explorer, copy the remote.conf file from your external storage to the clipboard, and paste it to /system/etc/remote.conf.

And here are two photos of the PCB, one showing the whole board and the other showing the NAND chip.
Photo 1
Photo 2

[soldiaz]

12EUR? Could you sahre link ls

[soldiaz]

I have ATV custom for this box

[abc4512]

12EUR? Could you sahre link ls

It's already gone, there were 12 pieces and they were all sold. But there are other good offers, I have seen many S905X boxes for 13-14€. Here's a tip: Go to Aliexpress, Search for S905x, sort by newest items, enter max. price of 1-20€. For example, here's another box for 14€ including shipping: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001586545191.html

[robertoenr]

Hi everyone. I recently bought one of this cheap TV Box in aliexpress. Some questions:

• Anyone has the stock firmware to flash with Amlogic Tool in case of brick?
• Any way to check real RAM and ROM in android?
• I'm going to try Coreelec, anyone has experience about this OS on this device?

Thanks, I will share my experiences.

[abc4512]

Hi everyone. I recently bought one of this cheap TV Box in aliexpress. Some questions:

• Anyone has the stock firmware to flash with Amlogic Tool in case of brick?
• Any way to check real RAM and ROM in android?
• I'm going to try Coreelec, anyone has experience about this OS on this device?

Thanks, I will share my experiences.

I'll see if I can make an image of the stock firmware. But you can't brick this box, it is always possible to install another firmware using an USB cable or SD card . Real RAM and ROM can be checked by installing any custom Rom and installing a system info app.

[robertoenr]

Thanks abc4512. I'm also trying to get the stock ROM from the chinese seller, but he says continuosly that I must wait because they "are checking it" (no hope to get it).

I share my experience until now:

The stock android ROM it detects 2 GB of RAM, but it says that mounts 3GB (weird and strange). Also it shows that it has only 8GB of storage. The ROM is really crappy, and wifi stops working sometimes at random momments. Also check with CPU-Z and DevChecker but still shows 2GB of RAM.

Tried to boot Coreelec 9.2.4.2 from SDcard with several DTB's:

• gxl_p212_2g -> It doesn't boot, freeze on the Amlogic logo.
• gxl_p212_3g -> It doesn't boot, freeze on the Amlogic logo.
• gxl_p212_1g -> The only wich boots OK

Cause the only DTB wich boots is the 1GB, like abc4512, my conclusion is that the device only has 1GB of RAM, instead of 2GB (in Aliexpress the descriptions and details said that the device has 2GB).

With Coreelec the device has 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage.

Edit: I've created NEC configuration files to make the remote works with Coreelec (linux). Once Coreelec booted up, the file "sbox" must be copied to "/storage/.config/rc_keymaps". And the file "rc_maps.cfg" must be copied to "/storage/.config/". After this, reboot.

Remote control config for Coreelec: https://mega.nz/file/KYoEwJAK#agpoOO..._TWQWt1XfLmLaE

Until now with CE I have an issue: sometimes in the System Information screen it freeze. I don't know why... I will keep testing...

Also I have disassembled the device. The memory 2 RAM chips shows "H5TQ8G63CMR", but this chips realy don't exist. The most similar Hynix chip is "H5TQ8G63AMR", but the authentic are 8GB, so the chips mounted I'm sure are fake.

I attach photos of motherboard and screenshots of stock android and Coreelec.

https://mega.nz/file/LVZjXKQb#y1aQGG...q9zzL-DRFFLakQ

https://mega.nz/file/KJABAQzD#w6l7fP...4jfuP3xPRMsm2k

https://mega.nz/file/TRJ1WC6T#fkhn8p...qVEfd3h3wbNnvI

https://mega.nz/file/zRZHwICJ#l8gibn...KgipAcDxYki1h8

https://mega.nz/file/SIYzCA5I#haOyRG...tv10lAawSAgQx8

https://mega.nz/file/mBYTCYJQ#vbCB2N...h38ExZ9qj8bNfg

https://mega.nz/file/3FQzESKJ#llxXK9...rcaFUoz4vLWC6I

https://mega.nz/file/eYBjBKiK#Jvqb7T...zJbSOFXIkMgXA0

[abc4512]

Interesting, thanks for the remote file. Have you tested CoreELEC with the newer 4.9 kernel? Does it have working HDMI audio? I have tested LibreELEC with kernel 5.9, it works fine but it does not seem to have audio support.

[soldiaz]

It's already gone, there were 12 pieces and they were all sold. But there are other good offers, I have seen many S905X boxes for 13-14€. Here's a tip: Go to Aliexpress, Search for S905x, sort by newest items, enter max. price of 1-20€. For example, here's another box for 14€ including shipping: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001586545191.html

thanks!

[abc4512]

Another thing that I noticed with this box: The original firmware had one advantage, it allows booting from an SD card by installing a reboot app that will reboot the box to recovery mode (example: "Reboot to LibreElec" this works well, but you can use any other reboot app). This means that you don't have to open the box and press the reset button to boot from SD. Use the reboot app once and the box will always boot from the card until you remove it. But when I replaced the stock firmware with Android TV, this did not work anymore, it just reboots to TWRP instead of booting from the SD card. This is one reason why I will try to recover and upload the original firmware for this box.

[abc4512]

I make upload of stock firmware. Here is it: Download

I also uploaded an image of the stock boot device sections mmcblk1boot0 and mmcblk1boot1. You do not need it for this guide, it's useless because you can only restore this area using a regular firmware update. But I uploaded it anyway in case it's useful for someone: Download

The firmware file is a raw DD backup of the internal MMC storage. It is not in Amlogic firmware or Android backup format, so regular firmware update tools and TWRP will not work.

Installation:

• Copy the firmware file to an USB disk or network share. You could unzip the .xz file before, but it's very big (16 GB), so I recommend leaving it zipped and decompress it on the fly later.
• Create an SD card with a live operating system. You can use any live system that runs directly from the SD card and allows access to a terminal. I recommend Armbian because it has the most tools and easy access to the command line. Lakka, LibreELEC and OpenELEC are also possible. With these systems, you need to google the key combination to switch to the command line, or you can connect over SSH to get a terminal.
• Boot from the SD card. If you have Android installed on the box, most Android systems allow to reboot to SD card using an app, if that doesn't work, you need to open the box and use the reset button method instead.
• On the live system, open a terminal window. You can also use a terminal over SSH using another computer.
• Type lsblk or ls /dev/mmcblk* to find the storage eMMC device of the box. It's usually mmcblk1, because mmcblk0 is the SD card you're booting from. If you type ls /dev/mmcblk1*, you should see at least three entries, mmcblk1, mmcblk1boot0 and mmcblk1boot1. This should be the correct one.
• Insert your USB device that contains the firmware image. You can also mount a samba network share on Armbian:

sudo apt-get install samba cifs-utils
cd ~
mkdir share
sudo mount -t cifs -o user=username //computername/sharename/ share

• Then, write the firmware file to the eMMC. If your file is still zipped:

xz -dc /path/to/sbox-firmware.xz | sudo dd of=/dev/mmcblk1 bs=5M --status=progress

• If you have unzipped it before:

sudo dd if=/path/to/sbox-firmware.img of=/dev/mmcblk1 bs=5M --status=progress

• After that, remove the SD card and reset the box, it should boot the stock Android system.

[soldiaz]

Android 9 for the s box sappy : maybe you could add firmware links to 1st post: https://forum.freaktab.com/forum/tv-...415#post816415

[robertoenr]

I make upload of stock firmware. Here is it: Download

I also uploaded an image of the stock boot device sections mmcblk1boot0 and mmcblk1boot1. This is useless for this guide because you can only restore these sections using a regular firmware update, but I uploaded it anyway in case it's useful for someone: Download

The firmware file is a raw DD backup of the internal MMC storage. It is not in Amlogic firmware or Android backup format, so regular firmware update tools and TWRP will not work.

Installation:

• Copy the firmware file to an USB disk or network share. You could unzip the .xz file before, but it's very big (16 GB), so I recommend leaving it zipped and decompress it on the fly later. If your USB live system
• Create an SD card with a live operating system. I recommend Armbian (see link above). You can also use LibreELEC, OpenELEC, Lakka, but you will need to connect over SSH using these systems to get a terminal. You can use any live system that runs directly from the SD card and allows access to a terminal.
• Boot from the SD card. If you have Android installed on the box, most Android systems allow to reboot to SD card using an app, if that doesn't work, you need to open the box and use the reset button method instead.
• On the live system, open a terminal window. You can also use a terminal over SSH using another computer.
• Type lsblk or ls /dev/mmcblk* to find the storage eMMC device of the box. It's usually mmcblk1, because mmcblk0 is the SD card you're booting from. If you type ls /dev/mmcblk1*, you should see at least three entries, mmcblk1, mmcblk1boot0 and mmcblk1boot1. This should be the correct one.
• Insert your USB device that contains the firmware image. You can also mount a samba network share on Armbian:

sudo apt-get install samba cifs-utils
cd ~
mkdir share
sudo mount -t cifs -o user=username //computername/sharename/ share

• Then, write the firmware file to the eMMC. If your file is still zipped:

xz -dc /path/to/sbox-firmware.xz | sudo dd of=/dev/mmcblk1 bs=5M --status=progress

• If you have unzipped it before:

sudo dd if=/path/to/sbox-firmware.xz of=/dev/mmcblk1 bs=5M --status=progress

• After that, remove the SD card and reset the box, it should boot the stock Android system.

Thanks you so much for your work abc4512

I've tried to load your stock firmware .img file into Amlogic USB Burning Tool, but it says "Parse burning image fail". Any ideas about the reason?

Thanks again!