[Arm-netbook] Framebuffer support - Mele A1000

[Alejandro Martínez]

There are sources out there for the Android image used on the Ainol Novo7
tablet - the Android image done by this might probably work, although you'd
lose most of the "TVfications" on the firmware of the Mele. But it's
something to begin with..

The device is *unbrickable*, not at an Android level, but at a SoC level.
There's a firmware image for the 1.2 firmware on the Mele website. You can
use it with a tool called PhoenixCard (it is included) to create an
"special" SD card image which will flash the firmware to NAND.

This SD will boot from the BROM bootloader and skip NAND entirely, so you
can pretty much dd if=/dev/zero all of the nand and it will probably still
work.
You can also use another tool, Livesuit, to flash it using the built-in
inside USB.

On the wiki there's an article about mksunxiboot, this is a tool Tom
created which will make a bootable u-boot SD card. From that, loading Linux
from the SD is a piece of cake.

The firmware image format is encrypted and there are no "open"
implementations of it (same happens with both of the updating options), but
the tools to create and dump contents from firmware images are out there,
and most of the info here is applicable to the Mele:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1490886

Also, the Mele is the first A10 device I know of that has a *working*
recovery partition, for OTAs. The rest of the manufacturers leave the
upgrading process exclusive to Livesuit, although the recovery partition is
still there and, when there's a recovery, you can boot it to it (on
tablets) by holding a volume key.

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 3:34 PM, Simon Kenyon <simon at koala.ie> wrote:

> On 03/23/12 11:37, David Given wrote:
> > So if you make the main OS unbootable, you can boot to the recovery
> > partition and tinker with the files; and if somehow you make *that*
> > unbootable you can reboot into fastboot mode and replace the OS image
> > entirely.
> certainly works and boot and does all it supposed to
> i just lost the original launcher - that is all
>
> anyway, the objective (for me at least) was to get AOSP onto this box
> anyone trying and looking to collaborate?
>
> i have it running on my pandaboard and would love to get it running on
> the allwinner
>
>
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