htpc android box woes

A few months back I bought this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HRC158Y/

I bought it because I decided this was the processor I wanted regarding its capabilities/features. It was well rated, it was less than the current price, it was a value hard to pass up for a beginner. First off the software sucks; it has android 5.1 on it which should be boinc capable. First thing I did was install boinc, even before starting the horrible kodi package they included. Boinc never got past the initial title screen. Anyways, I want to run a different OS, this one has no update ota/repositories and I can't change them. So i've gotten to a point that looks like this: https://www.digitalreins.com/wp-cont...pplyupdate.jpg the recovery screen (holding the hidden button in while powering on).

Mine looks similar but i've got different options or they're named differently but the problem is the couple of images i've tried don't appear. as if it isn't looking for a .img file. On one attempt, wetek play's openElec, i can see the folder structure and a couple of files but not the actual image file. Anyone have any words of wisdom or input?

Have you searched the Freaktab forum to see if they have a different ROM you could flash it with?
http://freaktab.com/forum/tv-player-...-players/s905x

Yeah i was looking there, one of the roms I've tried were from there but I feel like im missing a step, these guides are written as if it will boot from the sd card if its bootable but mine doesn't.

I just saw something in a guide that said to use a "16gb or smaller" sd card, do you think the 32gb one I'm using is too large? I'll see if I can find a smaller one.

I've never used a SD card in a android TV box. There are different tools used to flash the ROM. Just depends on the model of the box. And you have to be careful. The same name might be used for systems that actually have different boards. CPU might be the same but it can have a different board with different components and require it's own ROM. Some threads have pics of the board and that sometimes be the only way to ID them. There can definitely be some trial and error. If you've not actually overwritten the ROM yet, as soon as you have the tool setup to read/write, down load it and save it as a backup.

EDIT: ROM, on these boxes, is a misnomer. It's really just non-volatile RAM. They usually come with 8GB-16GB Flash storage also. I've only run NativeBoinc on them though which requires installing to memory (the 1GB-2GB) non-volatile RAM. Native Boinc won't run on Android 5 or higher. Waiting for friends to build a version that will run on new versions.