[Arm-netbook] evaluating rk3188

[FUKAUMI Naoki]

On 07/16/2013 05:38 AM, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote:
> * 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.

structure of firmware image/flash rom and USB flashing protocol should 
be basically same from RK28 ages(from users' PoV). there are some amount 
of experiences.

some open source tools such as rkflash/rkflashtool can do some work for 
RK3188 too.

> 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

probably you're talking about kernel NAND/MTD driver. it's binary blob, 
true, it's strange(some difference from standard MTD device), true, but

>    a1) It's broken enough that people tell you never to dd into a partition,

it's possible. all you need is 'don't use MEMERASE ioctl, use bs=16384'.
if you need working flash_image command, you can get it from my site,

  http://androtab.info/clockworkmod/rockchip/

> 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

there are 2 modes for USB communication.

mask rom mode, like as FEL mode on sunxi, bootloader needs to be loaded 
by rockchip official tools such as RKAndroidTool, RKBatchTool, etc.
rkflash/rkflashtool doesn't support this mode yet.

bootloader mode, bootloader(currently made by rockchip only) is loaded 
from flash or USB, it should be possible to read/write RAM, NAND and 
IDB(bootloader) via USB.
rkflashtool can read/write NAND and can read RAM/IDB for now.

if you don't touch bootloader, rkflashtool works nicely for 
kernel/userland development.

there are a lot of rkflashtool forks, but this one should be better,

  https://github.com/crewrktablets/rkflashtools