Installing Volumio on a Autonomic MMS-3e

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Hi everyone,

I’m working on repurposing an Autonomic MMS-3e music server and would love some advice. The goal is to install a fresh Linux OS, ideally Volumio, to modernize the unit.

I’ve gathered a lot of information about the hardware, which I’ll share below. Despite some progress, we’re hitting some roadblocks due to missing device tree and driver support.

If anyone has ideas on compatible device trees, kernel sources, or similar experiences getting Volumio running on custom ARM hardware, I’d really appreciate the help!

Here’s what we know so far:

Device: Autonomic MMS-3e
Serial Number: ST1909xxxxxxxxxxx
Model ID: 485e30d5-f977-494b-a5f4-953494bdaabf

CPU: Quad-core ARM Cortex-A55, 1.6GHz (based on board markings and boot logs)
Architecture: Appears to be ARM64 (aarch64)
RAM: Onboard, unknown exact size (likely between 2–4GB based on OS behaviour)
Internal Storage:

  • SSD: 128GB Kingston A400 SATA SSD (factory installed)
  • SD Card: 16GB Sandisk Class 10 microSD (boot loader)

Board Details:

  • SoC (CPU package) visually looks similar to Rockchip RK3566 or RK3568 families (based on chip markings and comparisons)
  • Audio interface: Board uses an ES8388 DAC/Codec chip (confirmed via dmesg logs: rockchip-snd-es8388)
  • Likely has an onboard I²S audio bus routed to the ES8388
  • Onboard Gigabit Ethernet
  • Several USB ports (some internal headers visible)
  • SATA port for SSD
  • HDMI output
  • General layout suggests a custom board loosely inspired by Rockchip development boards (NanoPi M4, RockPro64, etc.)

Software/Boot Behavior:

  • Bootloader present on SD card
  • OS boots off SSD after handoff
  • Custom Linux OS built by Autonomic (based on Debian/Ubuntu structure)
  • Special web setup access is available via <device-ip>/setup (similar to Volumio’s /dev access)

What We’ve Tried:

  • Booting standard Armbian (Bookworm/Noble, both Minimal and Desktop variants)
  • Tried board profiles for: Rock 5B Plus, RockPro64, NanoPi M4, NanoPi M4V2
  • Standard images either hang during early kernel boot, or get stuck with I2C timeouts and soundcard (ES8388) registration errors.
  • Unit needs a custom device tree (.dtb) file to boot properly (likely custom pin mappings and I2C settings).
  • SSD and SD can be easily removed and cloned if needed.

Current Challenges:

  • Without the correct device tree or kernel configuration, vanilla Linux distributions cannot properly initialize the I/O hardware (I2C buses, sound card, USB timing).
  • Boot hangs during device initialization loops.
  • No public documentation exists for the hardware platform or board.
    Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.