M8 Android TV Box

Bob Gray

Newbie
Hi All a merry Christmas and all that stuff to one and all, not sure if this is right place to ask, but sure somebody will point me in right direction. During this boredom period of lockdown found 2 old M8 TV boxes in garage to play around with, 1st one got working brilliantly, 2nd was poorly, spent all day yesterday finding firmware and loaded onto SD card, but cannot get box to accept, so assume box is bricked, on tinternet they talk about shorting 2 nand pins, to aid with rebooting thru SD card, but I cannot find which pins to short, any ideas??

AMLogic S802 quad core Cortex A9r4 processor @ 2GHz with Mali‐450MP6 GPU. System Memory – 2GB DDR3. Storage – 8GB NAND flash + SD card slot.


Pic 1.jpgPic 2.jpgPic 3.jpgPic 4.jpgPic 5.jpg
 
Moved to Android section, please be careful when posting, there is a section for practically everything, just go down the list.
Usually, stuff posted in the general chat section lazily gets deleted - you have caught me on a good day.
Best of luck with your problem
 
from what iv'e read it is nand pins 17 + 18
found this info.

The USB port on the M8 box is a multi functional port, I found with the jumper off with my bricked box booted into TWRP on a bootable SD Card that the USB port nearest the HDMI port was detected as an ADB device without the Jumper on and when the Jumper was on it was detected as an OTG.

My situation was my box was dead red standby light and wouldn't boot into recovery, what I had to do was make a bootable SD scard using the Amlogic tools and I put TWRP with the recovery.img on an SD card.
I had to short pins 17+18 on the nand to get the device to boot from SD card, now in order to get get OTG I had the unti powered off, USB cable connected to Box and PC and the jumper next to the HDMI on, booted up tthe box with pins 17+18 shorted and the recovery button held in for 12 seconds or so, 7 seconds is to let the nand hack allow the boot from Sd card and then the 5 seconds for switching to OTG, I had a two folded issue no recovery and needing to get to OTG, normally if recovery works the box should take a few seconds to switch to OTG.....still with me on this?
Box booted with blue led but TWRP shouldn't start just a blank screen, PC detected an unknown device and I installed the USB Burn tool. It installed and loaded the world cup drivers. as part of the install.
I ran the USB Burn tool and it detected the Box on Hub1-2. I imported the Probox2 .img file and selected Force erase, below this box on the burn tool are various options for erasing the flash, what I found is in order to get my box past a 2% or 3% flash before it failed I had to deselect Erase Bootloader. The USB burn tool will fail at about 6%. This is the interesting thing once I managed to write 6% I rebooted the box left it with the red led showing but the box was detected by the PC and an OTG port, this is I think is the twist where I was going wrong.
Once you've flashed and got beyond 5% the box will be detected by the PC as an OTG port when its in standby, no need for trying to get to recovery or short the nand pins anymore. I just ran the USB Burn tool again with the unit in standby and the burn tool detected the unit as an OTG and completed a 100% flash. The trick seems to be to allow the burn tool to fail at 6% using the recovery method making sure you deselect erase bootloader in the USB burn tool or it fails at 2% which isnt enough of an erase to get u-boot sorted and repaired. Restart the box as if it's in standby run the Burn tool again and it should complete a full flash.

Crows you really need to establish whether your getting a connection, try booting to recovery, if you cant get to recovery you'll need to prepare a bootable SD card and short the nand pins 17+18 get into recovery with the USB Jumper off and see if your PC recognises the box as an ADB device, Moborobo should load drivers for a mobile ADB device. If you can establish ADB all your problem is is getting the USB port into OTG. Let me know if you can get ADB drivers installed first. No you don't need to mod the cable.

I have used Amlogic usb flashing tool before on MXQ boxes and T95Z Pro using usb A to A cable only one I could get to work was really short one 30cm long
And to get it to flash I run the burning program then connect the box. other than that i had problem like above only getting to 6%.
 
Hi urie this is brilliant, read that piece on M8 box myself, only bit I am struggling with and hence the post and pictures, is where to short, I do not understand where pins 17 & 18 are on my box if you look at pics are you able to identify 4 me.

Thanks for taking so much time and effort in trying to help, it is greatly appreciated, that’s what I love about this site, all so knowledgeable and helpful, happy new year

Bob
 
Just one other thing “ jumper” ????, am I able to turn on/off or is that where you mean short the pins?

bob
 
Just one other thing “ jumper” ????, am I able to turn on/off or is that where you mean short the pins?

bob
I recently had the same problem with an old Justop Droibox MXQ box (Android 4.4.1) and after trying a 5.1 Lollipop update i bricked it .

Shorting the quoted pins should put the box into a "mask mode" were it should then be picked up/detected by your pc via USB a to USB a cable.

Install the relevant rockchip,allwinner, amlogic burning software to your pc and use it to flash the appropriate firmware .

Given the date on your board there should be custom firmware available somewhere , have you checked freaktab?

here is some more information on the process:

Help! OTT M8 Bad Flash Recovery using shorted Nand pins. - FreakTab

These boxes are so old now and its hard to get firmware you may be better making a bootable openelec/alexelec /extsdcard and writing to EMMC . This will at least make your box usable again and install just enough OS for Kodi
 
Last edited:
Hi bertonumber1, not really sure to be honest where the pins are on my box, are you able to highlight on pics I have shown?

regards and thanks for your help
bob
 
Ps I have all the firmware downloaded on SD card ready, it’s the updated firmware but I know it works cos I reflashed an identical box that had not been bricked and that is still good
 
there is a jumper in place already but to be sure , count from bottom of that row to pins 17-18. This is a clone so its been shadily patched to make it run properly
 

Attachments

  • 20210101_142401.jpg
    20210101_142401.jpg
    28.2 KB · Views: 9
Last edited:
Yes have seen that pic on Freaktab, my problem as you can guess is no it will not reset thru AV porthole, have opened box hence pics above, but I really dont know which pins to short on MY box, it is obviousley not showing same internal layout as the MX Pro or MX 111 box as shown in your pic.
 
Yes have seen that pic on Freaktab, my problem as you can guess is no it will not reset thru AV porthole, have opened box hence pics above, but I really dont know which pins to short on MY box, it is obviousley not showing same internal layout as the MX Pro or MX 111 box as shown in your pic.
that pic i uploaded is the M8 box mate , if its not the same as yours then you have a clone . yours will be located under heatsink in your pic .....where the bridge/jumper is in place in this photo is an example of where you should be looking to short (on the NanD Chip).
when you short these pins and connect your box (providing you have correct drivers installed) your box should then be recognised on USB and from there you should be able to "adb reboot recovery" or at least communicate via Amlogic burning tool
 
ok now it’s making sense, thanks, just understood mine is a clone, well here goes will have a play and see what happens, as you rightly say this is an old box and got nothing to lose trying, just gonna use as a basic android box like the other one I have, which by the way is brilliant

thanks for your help will let you know what if anything happens

cheers Bob
 
ok now it’s making sense, thanks, just understood mine is a clone, well here goes will have a play and see what happens, as you rightly say this is an old box and got nothing to lose trying, just gonna use as a basic android box like the other one I have, which by the way is brilliant

thanks for your help will let you know what if anything happens

cheers Bob
yeah nothing to lose really if its not booting , youll get one of these for a fiver on the bay nowadays
 
OK heres the update on the bricked M8, it is DEAD, funeral held and confined to wheely bin, thanks for all your help guys, onward and upwards to another project, like converting zgemma box to Android system hopefully with anbox? HELP!!!!
 
@Bob Gray , Zgemma to android still waiting on release for android image for zgemma h9 combo and its been out well over a year there bringing out series 10 and still not supported series 9. If they are not going to release android for series 9 Air Digital should at least modify boot menu to remove boot from android that one one of the main reasons I bought this box was to try dual booting.
 
urie have you looked at an box, had a quick glance this morning, operates as standalone is within your box, I think, anyhow will read up a bit more and then might have a play around
 
Back
Top