Armbian image with modern 2026.x bootloader and kernel 7.x

Armbian · October 24, 2026, 7:41am

What works

Area	Status
SD card	50 MHz
eMMC	8-bit, 52 MHz, about 42 MB/s read. `armbian-install` installs to it, and the board boots from it.
Ethernet	10/100, 94 Mbit/s each way. The jack LED and the blue LED below the M.2 slot work. The MAC address is fixed, made from the eMMC CID.
USB 2.0 host ports	Work
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth	RTL8821CU, on USB
CPU	4 cores, 300 MHz to 1.3 GHz, with frequency scaling
Thermal throttling, status LED	Work
HDMI console	1080p60. The audio firmware runs the HDMI output, and Linux uses it as a `simple-framebuffer`.
HDMI audio	2 channels LPCM, 32–192 kHz, S16/S32, through a new ALSA driver
PCIe, M.2 Key E	The link trains at Gen1 x1. Gen2 also trains but stays off, as in the BSP. INTx interrupts only.

Current 6.18:
- 10 of 10 cold boots.
- Stress test for 7 minutes at 1.3 GHz: 3 GiB SD writes, Ethernet receive and CPU load at the same time. No errors, peak temperature 77.8 °C.
Edge 7.3-rc7: installed with dpkg on the current image. The same stress test passed, peak temperature 75.9 °C.
Final current image: the HDMI console works on a fresh install.
eMMC: armbian-install to an erased eMMC, then a cold boot with the SD card removed.
U-Boot v2026.10: boots from eMMC. Ethernet LEDs, the fixed MAC address and the ethtool speed report checked.
PCIe: link up at Gen1 x1, and Gen2 also trains. An MT7925 card enumerates, but its driver does not work (see below).

DRAM size: the vendor loader reports 2 GiB on this 1 GiB board, and Linux then corrupted its memory under load. U-Boot now probes the real size and uses 1 GiB.
eMMC access: after reset, only the secure world can use the eMMC controller. U-Boot now opens it to Linux.
eMMC boot: the SPI loader cannot read U-Boot raw from the eMMC. eMMC installs get a FAT partition 1 that holds U-Boot.
ethtool speed: the first read after a link change showed an unknown speed. Shared with the BPI-W2.
USB PHY: the second port of the USB 2.0 PHY used the wrong register.
Audio CPU interface: the RTD1395 firmware takes plain physical addresses.

HDMI mode changes: the output is fixed at 1080p60.
PCIe cards with a BAR over 120 KiB: this is a hardware limit, and the Realtek BSP has the same limit. Large-BAR cards such as the MT7925 do not work. Cards with small BARs should work, but no small-BAR card has been tested yet. Examples are RTL8821CE/RTL8822CE Wi-Fi and RTL8125 Ethernet.