Vontar X4 - no CE boot without HDMI

Help & Support Installation & Booting
1

Hi all,

I’m using Vontar X4 64GB+1Gbit LAN + ‘ne.aarch64-20.3’ image installed to emmc. DTB file is sc2_s905x4_4g_1gbit.dtb. Fact is if I startup a box without HDMI cable - it freezes just after a boot loader image. I see also some yellow stripes on a screen.

Does anybody familiar with such a problem? Any ideas how to fix? Thanks.

2

CoreELEC is a media player. Why you want to boot without a display?

It is related to the kernel driver what does not get a EDID so init fails.

3

I’ve had a similar issue with my N2 (running no). I found my N2 “stuck” on initial Hardkernel boot screen with strange yellow cast. I discovered that it was because my AV amp and/or TV were not powered up beforehand. Only recovery is to power cycle - not ideal. The older kernel used to allow boot to a default resolution and frame rate.

4

Hi Portisch,

fact is that initiation of TV’s HDMI works slower than TVbox, i.e. every time I

  1. switch on electricity for TV+TV-box - CE boots to black screen (I read some advises how to fix it related to previous versions of Kodi but not tested it on aarch64)
  2. if I switch on electricity for TV-box only (I prefer to use it as SPDIF standalone network audio player controlled by Yatse) - this time CE doesn’t boot at all.
  3. for safety reasons I power off/on all my network equipment by using automatic power switch, and CE fails with the boot.

I guess CE developers must envisage such annoying behavior of CE kernel. It would be great if anybody develop/change the kernel accordingly (at least to automatic booting to 1080p60hz). This will be real step forward for new CE releases. For example, ancient TX3mini easily boots up CE without HDMI, plus have fully working WakeOnLan as a big bonus compering to VontarX4 (still missing BL301 blob solution, working WOL even in NG release).

5

Feel free to fix it and make a PR to CoreELEC, thx.

The item is on list but very low down…

6

Same problem. Coreelec starts before the tv (connected tv and coreelec with alexa) and the screen remains black, it cannot be controlled with CORE, tvheadend does work. You have to switch to the coreelec hdmi input and reboot to show the main screen. On mecool ki pro it doesn’t happen at all, only on vontar x4

7

Refresh topic in case there is news about it

8

It’s already fixed in CE-21 nightly.

9

Is it solved in CE 21?

10

I don’t understand the question

11

The question is if CE-21 boot without HDMI is solved

12

@fr24 - @Portisch has answered you already! Fixed in CE-21 nightly.

1 Like
13

where is the topic? I can not find it

14
15

thank you!!

16

I have Omega stable on Vontar X4 connected to AVR. My AVR controls power supply for CoreElec and CoreElec boots, when I turn on AVR. Probably this is similar to no HDMI connection. On first boot, I get no sound from CoreElec. But it works correctly after restart.

I have noticed, that the difference in dmesg is that at first boot kernel gets option vout=576cvbs, while on next restart it gets vout=1080p60hz.

I have put option vout=‘1080p60hz’ in config.ini, but evidently it is not active at the first boot.

17

Received a Vontar X4 4GB -32GB a few days ago. Installed coreelec 21 (Omega) on SD card (slimbox on EMMC)
I have observed the following incident related to the Wi-Fi connection (connecting to a 5Ghz network):

  • On Android, wifi speed is good.
  • In Coreelec, without making any modification, it is quite slow (rates of 1.8 - 2 MB/s) Impossible streaming in 4K.

Connecting via SSH, I notice that the card is configured with a fixed txpower of 31dbm. By forcing txpower auto, there is an immediate increase in the rate to 12 - 14 MB/s, enough for 4k streaming.
It could be a bad default configuration set in the firmware.
I also note that establishing a regulatory domain different from the default one through the interface (coreelec settings) is not reflected in the configuration (iw reg get), if I am not doing something wrong

18

I have HK1X4 Rbox S905X4 same as Transpeed/Vontar basically.
I use wired ethernet, when testing wifi had similar issues with 5ghz.
Try 2.4 was good

Maybe Try a different SD Card

Also there is a DTB specific for Vontar with fix for av port/audio out.

Maybe test that DTB ,see if same results

19

Thanks for your reply.

At the moment I have solved it by setting ‘txpower auto’ at system startup. Currently I have no possibility of using an Ethernet cable.

The SD card is a new Sandisk, I don’t think it produces errors, in that case it would also cause problems after changing txpower.

What is the specific dtb for Vontar X4? I am now applying ‘sc2_s905x4_4g_1gbit.dtb’ included in the CE 21 stable distribution

20

Should be in DTB folder

SC2 S905X4 vontar x4 dtb