[Arm-netbook] evaluating rk3188

[Dr. David Alan Gilbert]

* luke.leighton (luke.leighton at gmail.com) wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 8:27 PM, Dr. David Alan Gilbert
> <dave at treblig.org> wrote:
> > * luke.leighton (luke.leighton at gmail.com) wrote:
> >> http://rhombus-tech.net/rock_chip/rk3188/
> >>
> >> starting a page for evaluation of rockchip rk3188, putting links
> >> together.  $12 plus about $0.70 to compensate for the rk3188 not
> >> having SATA (using the JM20329) is not to be sneezed at.
> >
> > Is it possible to reflash the rk3188's boot flash without a windows
> > machine?
> 
>  we have absolutely no idea.  basically the learning process which we
> went through with allwinner, that has to be done all over again.

OK, so my understanding for the rk3066 is that:
 a) The flash driver is a closed binary blob - i.e. you can't even read the flash
  a1) It's broken enough that people tell you never to dd into a partition,
because as I did it broke it so that the following didn't work.

 b) There are at least 2 levels of USB programming protocol
  b1) 'rkflashtool' (there are various github copies) can reflash one layer
  b2) But if it's too broken for that you're stuck....
  b3) .... except with rkbatchtool which is a windows program that
can reflash via USB if you short some pin on the chip to force
some fallback mode.
     (Which I've not got a windows box to try; doesn't work in wine,
even with the wine USB hacks)

Dave
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