Installing Armbian on Amlogic S905w Android TV Box (Tanix TX3 Mini)

#Linux #RaspberryPiAlternative #SingleBoardComputer Full steps can be found at I love the idea of the Raspberry Pi, but there are some cheaper alternative single board computers that offer a similar experience for a fraction of the cost. While the community support isn’t quite what it is for the Pi, there are a ton of projects you can accomplish on the cheap with these little hidden gems. Keep an eye on AliExpress and Amazon and you can find SBC’s sporting quad core ARM process with 2-4 GB of RAM for under $30, including a power supply and IR remote control.   The box used in this video is a Tanix TX3 Mini I picked up on eBay for $22 shipped. It sports a Quad Core Amlogic S905w @ 2GHz and 2 GB of DDR3 RAM.   -------------------------------------------------------------------- Things You Will Need --------------------------------------------------------------------    - A microSD card at least 8 GB   |   |     -------------------------------------------------------------------- Downloads and Flashing to MicroSD --------------------------------------------------------------------    01. Download Armbian   |   |      02. Download Balena Etcher      03. Run Balena Etcher    04. Burn Armbian image to microSD card    05. Safely remove microSD and re-insert    06. Ignore/close the Windows dialogs to format the inserted microSD card   -------------------------------------------------------------------- Configure MicroSD Card for Armbian --------------------------------------------------------------------    01. Open the readable partition of the microSD card in Explorer    02. Rename the appropriate file from below to on the root of the SD card          u-boot-s905 (for s905)          u-boot-s905x-s912 (for s905x and s912)          u-boot-s905x2-s922 (for s905x2 and s922)    03. Edit /extlinux/ in a text editor       a. Comment out rk-3399 lines by adding #       b. Uncomment aml s9xx FDT and APPEND lines by removing #       c. Update the FDT line to point to a working .dtb file for your device          # aml s9xxx          #FDT /dtb/amlogic/          #FDT /dtb/amlogic/          #FDT /dtb/amlogic/          FDT /dtb/amlogic/          APPEND=root=LABEL=ROOTFS rootflags=data=writeback rw console=ttyAML0,115200n8 console=tty0 no_console_suspend consoleblank=0 =yes =yes =0       d. Save       e. Close    09. Safely remove microSD    10. Insert microSD card to Android TV box   -------------------------------------------------------------------- Booting to Armbian for the First Time --------------------------------------------------------------------    01. Plug the power adapter into the Android TV box    02. If the device has never booted from external storage before the stock Android OS will load    03. In Android, navigate to the application drawer ≫ Run Update & Backup    04. Select Local ≫ Navigate to the microSD card ≫    05. Select Update    06. The system will reboot twice and should then begin booting Armbian from the microSD card    07. You should see the Armbian terminal running startup scripts    08. When prompted, input a new root password    09. Confirm the new root password    10. When prompted, input a username    11. Input a password for the new user    12. Confirm the password for the new user    13. Follow any additional the prompts    14. Armbian will boot into the desktop environment   Special thanks to the developers and forum members over at   for making this possible   ### Connect with me and others ### ★ Discord: ★ Reddit: ★ Twitter: