Help Request M8S firmware issues

[bluesmanuk]

Well for now then it does seem like a little bit of a dead end.

But many people read the forums, so hopefully there will be a fellow user out there that has the required goods.

[reeves1985]

Hopefully so as I can't believe there's no Rom out there that will work.

I've just taken delivery of a h96 pro plus variant but would like at some point to get this back up and running. As it would be useful.

The issue I'm having is finding now is finding files i can flash from the usb burner software they all seem to be down
As I'm a little more confident something will stick using that firmware

What I am going to do when I get a minute I get the recovery Rom on so it initially loads and then install the cpu-z so I can see exactly what chip it's running.

That might give me a direction to go in.

I appreciate you trying to help. Hopefully somebody else will see it and chime in with hopefully more information

[bluesmanuk]

When you do find a suitable firmware, then this alone will almost certainly tell you what SOC is in there as firmware downloads tend to be very specific to avoid bricking.

Hopefully it will be the S812, which is the top of the line of that series.

I guess that people that originally posted these links will have moved on to other boxes and tidied up their cloud storage.

[reeves1985]

When you do find a suitable firmware, then this alone will almost certainly tell you what SOC is in there as firmware downloads tend to be very specific to avoid bricking.

Hopefully it will be the S812, which is the top of the line of that series.

I guess that people that originally posted these links will have moved on to other boxes and tidied up their cloud storage.

Yeah I agree.
I can get the box to boot into android just by using the brick recovery files posted up on here.
But like I say it only works until a reboot with no Wi-Fi which I'm not bothered about.

So I know I will be able to find out exactly what SOC it has.
I just haven't had time to do it yet.

I generally get my stuff from Ali and **** and the like so It wouldn't surprise me if it's a completely different chip.

Generally with the android stuff I just try and get something that works out the box and never update them. But as with kodi moving on to 5.1 it forced my hand a little bit as there wasn't anything particularly wrong with the box but even the on demand official players were gradually stopping working on pre 5.1 devices

[reeves1985]

bluesmanuk
I'm back again I managed to get into android like I was saying before. Which will be ok until I reboot.
I've ran cpu-z and looked at the soc info
There's no mention of amlogic in the soc section
See below image as I don't know that much regarding chips etc

[bluesmanuk]

Hmmmm

Not quite the information that I was hoping for.

Does the device and system sections say any more?

What i do find interesting though are the CPU core results.

CPU 0 at 96 and the rest stopped, especially with the CPU load showing 16%, meaning that the numbers don't add up.

I know that the kernel will stop cores running if they are not needed but I've never yet run a CPU-Z analysis and seen any actually in a stopped state or even running at such a low figure.

Other reasons for cores not running are low power issues and overheating.

I guess we cannot rule out CPU-Z simply getting it wrong but with it being an older SOC, I would have thought that they would have covered any detection issues by now for this older SOC.

[reeves1985]

Hmmmm

Not quite the information that I was hoping for.

Does the device and system sections say any more?

What i do find interesting though are the CPU core results.

CPU 0 at 96 and the rest stopped, especially with the CPU load showing 16%, meaning that the numbers don't add up.

I know that the kernel will stop cores running if they are not needed but I've never yet run a CPU-Z analysis and seen any actually in a stopped state or even running at such a low figure.

Other reasons for cores not running are low power issues and overheating.

I guess we cannot rule out CPU-Z simply getting it wrong but with it being an older SOC, I would have thought that they would have covered any detection issues by now for this older SOC.

The cores might be due to me using ish to power it at the time. I'm not sure .
Also it might be to do with the fact that the only Rom I can get to load and boot is the brick recovery Rom.

http://freaktab.com/forum/tv-player-support/amlogic-based-tv-players/s802/eny-acemax-ott/537243-m8-ott-android-tv-box-possible-brick-no-blue-light-after-flashing-wrong-rom/page2

Second post down in the brick recovery is the only one that will boot but it isn't for my Wi-Fi chipset so Wi-Fi and Bluetooth don't work.

All the others I've tried won't boot.

Not sure what's different about that particular firmware.

Also I don't seem to have any recovery partition and I tried again loading twrp from sd card but it won't and just does nothing

[bluesmanuk]

A bit of a head scratcher for sure.

When you say "using ish to power it at the time", what does ish mean?

I'm guessing at a typo but just want to clarify.

[reeves1985]

A bit of a head scratcher for sure.

When you say "using ish to power it at the time", what does ish mean?

I'm guessing at a typo but just want to clarify.

Sorry I meant usb to power it silly predictive text

[reeves1985]

Bit like I mentioned there seems to be no way for this specific bit to boot into recovery.
When I got it booted I even tried from the menu to boot into recovery and it just restated and didn't go into recovery

[bluesmanuk]

Lol

Same result with the AC adapter supplying power?

[reeves1985]

Lol

Same result with the AC adapter supplying power?

In terms of not being able to flash roms yeah.
Haven't tried a.c. power and loaded cup z
But at same time that could just as well be because the specific Rom isn't actually for my specific device.

Certainly struggling here.

Nobody else seems to be able to jump in either other than yourself of course

[bluesmanuk]

I've never yet seen a firmware load up correctly and then no so after a reboot, so that is a first for me.

There are always people popping in to look at the threads, so I'm sure that others will come along and put their own thoughts forward at some point.

[reeves1985]

bluesmanuk I'm making some progress from my own trial and error.

I've managed to load a different Rom one of the cyx rims.

I had to use the uboot from the recovery firmware I linked above but it surprised me it installed and is definitely a different firmware as Wi-Fi etc works where as the recovery Rom it didn't.

I ran cpu-z again and this time it showed 2 cores running and the other 2 stopped as opposed to just the 1 in the images I posted.

The funny thing is the very first splash screen shows m8s 8 core
But it's actually 4 core so something amiss there.

I still have no recovery even if I use the reboot to recovery app.

The next thing is everything I read up from the cpu-z info seems to point to a s802 chip (even though cpu-z doesn't actually state?)
It also seems to point everything to mxq or m8s so I'm not actually sure if this isn't a cloned mxq3 box but again cpu-z states m8s.

I'm not sure how I'm going to get a recovery partition or image to work at all as even twrp won't work but I may be trying the wrong one as I can't work out which twrp version I should be using.

I've also confirmed it reboots and loads instead of freezing although I managed to get the recovery firmware to reboot last night also

[bluesmanuk]

That progress is good to hear.

Perhaps, if you are of a mind to try, you could load up a few different firmwares based upon your suspicions of what it might actually be and see if one does the trick.