Re: [SLUG] Hacking "Hackable Android Pads"

[David Lyon <david.lyon.preisshare@xxxxxxxxx>]

That's very interesting information. Perhaps because I half understand
what you're talking about.

I bought an ARM development board and it exposes the exact same
serial console on boot. So many the Arm boards work like this?

So I would be looking for two pins on the processor ?

I'm up to speed with running a 5v serial line. But aren't those processors
a bit lower? as in 2.7v or something?

Thanks for the leads. Fantastic.

On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 2:45 PM, Christopher Barnes <
chris.p.barnes@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I don't know about these tablet devices but I once had to "hack" a little
> android netbook because it had been bricked.
>
> If the tabs are anything like this netbook then its generally not too hard.
>
>
> This netbook was an ARM based system with about 128meg ram and 2gig
> onboard Nand flash for storage.
>
>
> In a nut shell I had to get a RS232 to lvTTL converter - FT232 chips do
> this or there's old nokia USB sync cables you can butcher.
>
> Had to find the serial port pin-out on the system board and solder the
> serial converter wires onto it.
>
> That gave me access to the netbooks serial console.
>
> I was then able to get access to the boot loader on the device (uBoot).
>
> From there I could manipulate boot settings, i could boot from SD card,
> boot from TFTP, copy a new kernel into the onboard flash, change the boot
> splash, etc.
>
>
> Finding good working android images was the hard part because the
> manufacturer didn't publish any android images so I had to rely on images
> people had dumped from their devices.
>
> And due to significant hardware differences they didn't really work well -
> no sound, or no mouse, or no wifi, etc.
>
> In the end I dumped Debian on it and used an android kernel to boot it.
>
> ------Original Message------
> From: David Lyon
> Sender: slug-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
> To: SLUG
> Subject: [SLUG] Hacking "Hackable Android Pads"
> Sent: Feb 17, 2012 2:02 PM
>
> There's lots of inexpensive Android Tablets. Junk? perhaps:
>
>  - http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=android+tablet&catId=0
>
> Question is, how to hack these things?
>
> They have a linux bootloader, where's information on that generally ?
>
> I know you have to build a kernel. That means picking devices on the board.
>
> How's this all done ? Any good sources for Linux Kernels? Whats a good
> Pad to use as a base?
> --
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