I have an old Android TV box that has been collecting dust for many years: the Himedia H8 Lite. I thought I possibly could revive this box by installing ARM Debian or Arch Linux on it. Problem is that I cannot get into recovery mode through the conventional way.

Pressing down the pinhole button and then plugging power in boots the box onto a screen with the Android robot with the text under it that reads "resetting". I expect the box to boot into recovery mode but it doesn't, it just resets the box to factory settings.

I have then enabled debugging in developer settings and connected with adb over wireless internet. I then ran adb reboot recovery only to run into the same screen; the box gets reset to factory settings without showing the recovery menu at all.

These are the box' device info:

• Android 5.1.1
• Kernel version 3.10.0
• Build number HMD-1.1.7 2017-03-15.183641

I can't find any firmware only and the OTA says it's already at the latest version.

Any help is appreciated. My only other option is installing an outdated version of Termux (Android 5-6 support dropped) and make do with outdated packages.