Cannot boot coreelec on X96 Air Q1000

Help & Support Installation & Booting
1

I have been unable to boot Coreelec (I have tried both a recent nightly and CoreELEC-Amlogic-ng.arm-19.2-Matrix_rc2-Generic.img ) on my X96 Air Q1000. I have tried sm1_s905x3_4g_1gbit.dtb, sm1_s905x3_4g.dtb, sm1_s905x3_2g_1gbit.dtb and sm1_s905x3_2g.dtb by copying them (one at a time) to dtb.img in the root dir of the card.

LibreElec comes with an X96_max dtb which I can boot OK. Under Manjaro I use a meson-sm1-sei610 dtb.

Are there any plans to support the X96 Air?

2

If you previously booted LE or another OS, you will need to power on the device with the reset button pressed.
Or boot into Android and issue a reboot update command, or use the Reboot to LibreELEC app.

3

I thought I only needed to do that the first time I was booting from uSD. Yes, that has fixed it and CoreELEC boots now.

Thanks

1 Like
4

CE and LE use different methods to boot, since LE is all about mainline now.
To make it boot CE after you’ve booted LE (and vice versa), you need to press the reset button again.

5

Booting CE once breaks booting any other OS via USB or uSD on my X96 although I can still boot into the stock Android on eMMC. Yes, I have tried holding in the multiboot reset switch a few times. This happened last time I tried CE too. A factory reset of Android doesn’t fix it so to re-enable USB boot I have to reflash the eMMC.

Is this a known bug? I presume CE replaces or modifies the bootloader somehow. Booting LE doesn’t cause this to happen.

6

You are incorrect in your assessment, CE uses the official boot method shipped by AMLogic and as such is compliant with the hardware as supplied. It is the other OS’s who have moved off this AML hardware standard. In fact it is one individual who has pushed this “new” bootloader method and broken compatibility with AMLogic hardware. You can thank him for your issues not the CE team.

A Reboot from SD card with the reset button pressed is the correct method to revert the bootloader to the AMLogic standard (it is hardcoded into the chip so must work), but it tends to be quite twitchy in response. The person who introduced this new bootloader to your hardware would lead you to believe that a full reinstall of stock Android is necessary - but this is ignorant and untrue.

My advice to everyone is don’t mess with inferior OS’s.

Shoog

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