HCL:AML-S805X-AC

The Libre Computer AML-S805X-AC aka La Frite is a single-board computer.

Technical details

Amlogic S805X SoC
- 4x Arm Cortex-A53
- Arm Mali-450 GPU
512 MB / 1 GB RAM
16 MB SPI NOR flash
eMMC module connector
2x USB 2.0
100 Mbps Ethernet
HDMI
40-pin GPIO connector

The UART RX/TX pins are pins 3 and 5 and GND is pin 6 on the 40-pin GPIO connector.

Installing

Flash latest firmware in SPI

Please follow this guide to flash latest firmware in SPI: http://share.loverpi.com/board/libre-computer-project/libre-computer-board/aml-s805x-ac/firmware/README.txt

The U-Boot boot order is eMMC and then USB drives.

Boot from eMMC

The latest La Frite firmware can export the eMMC as a USB mass storage device.
The USB Type A port next to the IR sensor is device-mode capable and you need to connect that port to a computer via the USB Type A to USB Type A cable included with the eMMC module.
On startup of La Frite, press escape to go into the bootmenu, then select eMMC USB Drive Mode and the eMMC module should appear as a block storage device on your computer.

Now, please follow the generic instructions found at Installing openSUSE ARM for AArch64 EFI based systems, with direct disk access, to create the bootable eMMC storage, exposed as a USB storage.

Boot from USB

Please follow the generic instructions found at Installing openSUSE ARM for AArch64 EFI based systems, with direct disk access, to create a bootable USB storage.

To get the serial connection, connect the USB/Serial cable (TTL-3V3) and run:

sudo screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

Known issues

Fix USB on Tumbleweed

Since kernel 5.8 (Means Tumbleweed only), USB has been updated on this board, so the Device Tree provided by u-boot will not work anymore. So, you want to use the DTB from the openSUSE rootfs, and thus you need to add devicetree /boot/dtb/amlogic/meson-gxl-s805x-libretech-ac.dtb on grub menu. If it is not already installed, please install dtb-amlogic package first.

For more details, see:

Upstream warning: https://forum.loverpi.com/discussion/975/linux-5-8-important-device-tree-changes-need-manual-dtb-file
openSUSE bug report: https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1182354

Enable hardware acceleration on Mali-450 GPU

To enable hardware acceleration on Mali-450 GPU, you need to install Mesa-gallium package and create /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-lima.conf file with the following content (and reboot):

Section "ServerFlags"
        Option  "AutoAddGPU" "off"
EndSection

Section "OutputClass"
        Identifier "Lima"
        MatchDriver "meson"
        Driver "modesetting"
        Option "PrimaryGPU" "true"
EndSection

As described on ARM_Mali_GPU#Mesa.2FLima.