You can use Device Tree Overlay feature to enable/disable some hardware functions without to recompile the kernel source code.

The dtbo files are stored in directory /boot/dtb/amlogic/kvim4.dtb.overlays:

khadas@Khadas:~$ ls -al /boot/dtb/amlogic/kvim4.dtb.overlays/
total 28
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul  6 14:55 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jul  6 14:55 ..
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  462 Jul  6 14:55 ext_board.dtbo
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  223 Jul  6 14:55 i2cm_a.dtbo
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  223 Jul  6 14:55 i2cm_f.dtbo
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  225 Jul  6 14:55 pwm_f.dtbo
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  225 Jul  6 14:55 uart_e.dtbo

There are some ready to use dtbo files, you can also add your own dtbos to enable or disable the peripherals.

khadas@Khadas:~$ ll /boot/dtb/overlays/kvim3

• Write your own device tree overlay file, for example `example.dts`:

  /dts-v1/;
  /plugin/;
  
  / {
      fragment@0 {
          target = <&i2c3>;
  
          __overlay__ {
              status = "okay";
          };
      };
  };

This device tree overlay is to enable `i2c3`.

• Compile it to dtbo

  khadas@Khadas:~$ dtc -I dts -O dtb -o example.dtbo example.dts
  khadas@Khadas:~$ ls example.dtbo
  example.dtbo

• Move the dtbo file to /boot/dtb/overlays/kvim3

• Edit /boot/env.txt to add in node overlays

• Reboot the board