Hacking MK908 mini PC for Serial Console Access

Thanks to Omegamoon (and this brother) we already have instructions to connect the UART pins on MK808 in order to access the serial console. He’s done it again with MK908 mini PC featuring Rockchip RK3188.

Tx and Rx pads are located on the RAM chips side, and he has connected the green wire to Tx (Going to Rx on TTL debug board), and a yellow wire to Rx (Tx on debug TTL board).

MK908_Tx_Rx_UART

A ground pad is available on the other side of the board.

MK908_UART_GND

Since I got a sample for review from Geekbuying, I decided to give a try myself. The pad are quite small, so this may require patience, but it’s perfectly feasible. I wanted to keep the device closed, so I passed the wires through the ventilation holes (enlarging them a bit with a precision screwdriver), put back the main heatsink on RK3188, and reassembled the enclosure. I did not include the thin heatsink on the other side of the board. Finally, I inserted a 3-pin right angle header in the casing, solder the wires, and connected a USB to TTL debug board.

MK908_with_TTL_USB_Debug_Board

Final check is to check the connection is fine with minicom configured on /dev/ttyUSB0 with 115200 8N1:


Good! I can also type in the console, so both Tx and Rx are working fine. I love when everything goes according to plans!

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ROCK 5 ITX RK3588 mini-ITX motherboard
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Bartman
Bartman
10 years ago

Seems that the Tronsmart mk908ii has solder pads for UART (r=read, t=transmit, g=ground).

Khadas VIM4 SBC