2019 NEWLY RELEASED S905 TV BOXES WITH NOUGAT AND OREO

[canadien]

I wonder if there is a way to use their rom for our older s905 boxes

[algdu831]

Alfawise A9 4K heve Amlogic S905 Android 8.1

[canadien]

If you have it, could you send the firmware? Could be useful for atvxperience. Thx

[robi217]

If you have it, could you send the firmware? Could be useful for atvxperience. Thx

I can send you a TWRP backup of the original Alfawise A9 OS if you ware interested
It's a bit confusing because AIDA64 shows the model as p212 (which should be for S905W) but when I take the box apart and look at the SOC it's got S905 on it (without W or X or anything else).
Sadly I've succesfully bricked the device and now I'm searching for a s905 FW that I can flash without any errors in USB tool and then use TWRP to restore the stock OS.

[canadien]

I can send you a TWRP backup of the original Alfawise A9 OS if you ware interested
It's a bit confusing because AIDA64 shows the model as p212 (which should be for S905W) but when I take the box apart and look at the SOC it's got S905 on it (without W or X or anything else).
Sadly I've succesfully bricked the device and now I'm searching for a s905 FW that I can flash without any errors in USB tool and then use TWRP to restore the stock OS.

Yes please, that would be much appreciated. I will pass it to atvxperience devlopper. For the brick you could use amlogic tools from Ricky Divjakovski to tranform your twrp backup to a usb flashing rom. You could also wait that the atvxperience rom to be ready. But if you are in a hurry I would go with coolio rom or ugoos rom and forget about the wifi but am not a pro to advise you on the best rom for your a9...

[robi217]

Yes please, that would be much appreciated. I will pass it to atvxperience devlopper. For the brick you could use amlogic tool from rogasky to tranform your twrp backup to a usb flashing rom. You could also wait that the atvxperience rom to be ready. But if you are in a hurry I would go with coolio rom or ugoos rom and forget about the wifi but am not a pro to advise you on the best rom for your a9...

Thanks for the advice
Anyway, here's the TWRP backup uploaded on Google Drive:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CzW-_HhtwlXNo1YVjEHLQJ1mPAjFYu6i

[robi217]

I've made some photos showing the board inside the TV box, so you can see how it exactly looks like.

So, as for the brick, I was able to locate the NAND short pins for this board to get recognized by the PC. It's got a SAMSUNG KLMAG2GEAC-B031 NAND and the shorting pins are 7 and 8 on the left side (counting from up to down). But I run into some trouble by using USB Burning Tool. (Using a prepared SD card does not work at all)

I originally bricked my device by flashing the S905X 2GB version of AtvXperience to the board. The flashing proccess was done without any problems (with USB Burning Tool), but when I plugged it into my TV after, nothing happened, there was only a red light (as in standby mode). Plugging it back to my PC while holding down the reset button (behind the AV jack) did not wok, so I started taking apart the box and shorting the NAND chips until I found the right ones (see at the start of my comment).

I tried flashing some S905 images (including the Beelink MiniMX3, MXQ Pro 4K and SCV1 H96 projector), but all of them stopped at 2% with Romcode/Initialize DDR/Read initialize status/USB Control setup error.
I also tried flashing S905X and S905W images (considering that before the brick I've succesfully flashed an S905X image), and got a bit further, but they stooped at 4% with romcode/switch status/identify/error result. I tried AtvXperience (the same one that resulted in the brick), MXQ PRO+, X96 Mini (that's a S905W one), but all of them stopped with this error.
The last thing I tried was combining the DDR file of an S905X image with the rest of an S905 image and repacking it in Amlogic Tools, but it also stopped at 4% with the same error.

I don't really know how the SOC and the board comes together, since the SOC is S905 but the board seems to be designed for S905W (the codename next to the plugged in USB cable is S905M201 [which I did not got any results on Google for], and S905M is an early name for S905W as I found out).

I don't know what to do now, since I can't find an official flashable firmware for Alfawise A9 and I can't restore my backup without flashing a working (or at least booting) firmware first.

Does anybody have ideas to try? I would be really thankful for any advice

[canadien]

I've succesfully flashed an S905X image

What was the rom??

Usually you cant flash s905 on another model s905x or s905w, thus the bricking. So from here I can't tell. But the things that I know is I own a ki plus and qbox. Both can be flashed only using one specific usb port. Using the other ports for flashing won't work. On my qbox, once it is recognized I need to plug the power supply or it will stop at 4% or 8% something the like.

But since you have a twrp backup, I could be wrong but it would be easy to create a twrp recovery card meant to only boot in recovery than flash your backup. In any case you should try to validate my comments first.


***edit***
By the way, thanks for sharing your backup.
For Ricky Divjakovski's amlogic tool they are here here:https://forum.xda-developers.com/and...tools-t3786991

[robi217]

What was the rom??

Usually you cant flash s905 on another model s905x or s905w, thus the bricking. So from here I can't tell. But the things that I know is I own a ki plus and qbox. Both can be flashed only using one specific usb port. Using the other ports for flashing won't work. On my qbox, once it is recognized I need to plug the power supply or it will stop at 4% or 8% something the like.

But since you have a twrp backup, I could be wrong but it would be easy to create a twrp recovery card meant to only boot in recovery than flash your backup. In any case you should try to validate my comments first.


***edit***
By the way, thanks for sharing your back backup.
For Ricky Divjakovski's amlogic tool they are here here:https://forum.xda-developers.com/and...tools-t3786991

The rom that I flashed first (and that resulted in a brick) was s905x_2G_atvXperience_v2FF. It was before I took apart the box and saw that there was really an S905 inside, so I relied on the AIDA64 report (that showed p212 as model which is an S905X board) and took it granted there was a S905X inside (that was a bad idea, now I know that )
There are two USB ports on this TV box, both are full size (USB-A) but my computer can only recognize the device if I plug the cable to the port further from the microSD slot. So, I think that's my only choice here.
The AmLogic tool you linked is the same one that I tried to customize some S905 images using the Customize Tool (like copying the DDR file from an S905X image to get past 2%), but it did not work. I did not find any option to convert my TWRP backup files to a flashable img format. I also tried using an S905 image and replacing the partition files with the ones that TWRP made, but they are not the same format and size, so I could not repack the .img file. Two things that I could actually replace were the boot and recovery partitions, but it did not help, the flashing of the repacked image also stopped at 4% with the same error.

Anyway, thank you very much for your help I hope that soon there will be an .img file available at some page for this TV box, since it's relatively new and not many people have one (I got mine yesterday).

**************
Edit: I also searched for a TWRP that's flashable from Amlogic USB burn tool, but did not find one. I tried copying TWRP as recovery.img to USB drive and microSD as well, but nothing happened. Using a USB cable AND a power brick also did not help get past 4%.

[canadien]

Ok cause I assumed "successfully flashing" meant that the rom was rolling fine on your box. Have you tried https://forum.freaktab.com/forum/tv-...-atv-by-coolio or https://forum.freaktab.com/forum/tv-...-mxq-g9c/page2

I know for sure that superceleron rom come with twrp installed. Coolio rom might have it too. Also I'll ask nayam (main developper at atv) if he can be of any help.


***edit***

Try the power plug trick in any case...

[robi217]

Ok cause I assumed "successfully flashing" meant that the rom was rolling fine on your box. Have you tried https://forum.freaktab.com/forum/tv-...-atv-by-coolio or https://forum.freaktab.com/forum/tv-...-mxq-g9c/page2

I know for sure that superceleron rom come with twrp installed. Coolio rom might have it too. Also I'll ask nayam (main developper at atv) if he can be of any help.


***edit***

Try the power plug trick in any case...

I tried both (with and without power adapter as well), but I can't get past 2% with any S905 rom. ([0x10105002]Romcode/Initialize DDR/Read initialize status/USB Control setup error).
It is strange but with an S905X rom I can get past DDR however it fails at downloading UBOOT ([0x10303004]Romcode/Switch status/Identify/Error result)

[canadien]

Oh. Just got an first answer from nayam here. Won't be able to reply for the night but perhaps you want to chat with nayam there?

[robi217]

Still no any progress further, but at least I've managed to get a firmware file from Alfawise. Unfortunately it was on pan.baidu.com and it was really hard to register on that page (I had to buy a temporary Russian phone number), but at least it's downloading now. I'll see what's inside the file they sent (I hope it will be an .img and not an update zip package) and try to flash it on my faulty box

[canadien]

Good news!! But I think there is a tool to switch a zip into img. Perhaps not twrp but zip yes. I am sorry you had too get a russian number, a sure pain in the ass... I thought baidu was free.

Keep us updated with your devlopments!

[robi217]

It works! I can not believe it
Getting an image from Alfawise was really my last hope, and it looks like their firmware actually fixed my TV box.
Anyway, thanks for your help canadien