The TX6 looked like a nice box to have connected to the TV and run Android applications. Unfortunately, the Alice UX user interface was not very nice. Also, I no longer needed the box for streaming, so I decided to turn it into a Linux box.

Having read a whole bunch of different instructions and seen several videos on youtube, here’s what worked for me:

Useful links:

• https://i12bretro.wordpress.com/2020/05/04/installing-armbian-on-allwinner-h6-android-tv-box-tanix-tx6/
• https://i12bretro.github.io/tutorials/0434.html

1. Download Armbian from the link above. I used Armbian_20.10_Arm-64_focal_current_5.9.0_desktop.img.xz.
   extract the .img file
2. Download uboot from the link above. u-boot-allwinner-h6-tanix-tx6.img
3. Flash Armbian onto a microSD card. I used multibootusb.
   Select the tab for “Write image to disk”, choose the Armbian .img file you downloaded and click “Write image to USB”
4. Flash uboot onto the same mircoSD card.
5. Eject the microSD card
6. Insert the microSD card again
7. open the following file in a text editor: extlinux/extlinux.conf
   comment out all lines by adding #, except the following:
   FDT /dtb/allwinner/sun50i-h6-tanix-tx6.dtb
APPEND root=LABEL=ROOTFS rootflags=data=writeback rw console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0 no_console_suspend consoleblank=0 fsck.fix=yes fsck.repair=yes net.ifnames=0 video=HDMI-A-1:e
8. save changes
9. Insert microSD card into the TX6 and reboot while using a paper clip or a pin to hold down the reset button.
   Remove the power cable, hold down the reset button with a paper clip or pin, then insert power cable and hold.
   Wait until the boot prosess starts and let go of the pin.
10. Let Armbian boot, choose root user name and password, enter your own name and follow the other prompts.
11. By this time you should see the Armbian desktop, possibly with many drives. This is OK.
12. Now you can run Armbian from the microSD card
13. If you want to install Armbian to the eMMC, essentially replacing the Android system, do the following:
    sudo su
cd /root/
ls
sudo ./install-aw.sh
    
    This will install the Allwinnner version.
    there may be some errors saying that there is no room on the disk. This is OK
14. Reboot as in step 9
15. Run the following commands again
    sudo su
cd /root/
ls
sudo ./install-aw.sh
    
    This will take some time, let it work.
16. Now you should see a confirmation of success:
    “Complete copy OS to eMMC”
17. Shutdown
18. Take out the microSD card, remove the power cord and then plug it back in
19. You should see Armbian booting from the eMMC! Success!
    

It works well enough, but the performance is not so good. Now I may have to revert to Android 😊

Or maybe I’ll keep it as a linux box, because it’s fun!