What about the other way around? Move windows RT to different hardware?

jordanmills · May 15, 2014

Saw you could find an ARM platform that did not have secureboot forced on. Assuming the peripherals are similar (i.e. the included drivers work), shouldn't windows rt boot on that hardware?

Once you got it to boot without secureboot enabled on the hardware, shouldn't it be trivial to do some binary slicing and dicing to cut the signature checking out of the kernel?

It seems too easy. Where does my line of though fail?

GoodDayToDie · May 16, 2014

In theory, yes. "Trivial" is hardly accurate, but it would be relatively easy. Of course, on hardware without Secure Boot enabled, you wouldn't need to do that in the first place; there are ways to disable the signature checks at boot time (but Secure Boot blocks them).

In practice, good look finding anything that *isn't* a Windows RT tablet but which has firmware Windows RT can run on. ARM isn't much like x86, where everything is designed to be compatible with everything else. Even relatively simple ports of open-source OSes (Linux, including Android, for example) are difficult and typically fraught with driver issues. RT is not open source, and is targeted at very specific hardware. Frankly, I would give poor odds of success. Doesn't mean you shouldn't try, if you get the opportunity, but don't hold your breath or expect somebody to do it for you just because it's "easy".

jordanmills · May 16, 2014

GoodDayToDie said:
In theory, yes. "Trivial" is hardly accurate, but it would be relatively easy. Of course, on hardware without Secure Boot enabled, you wouldn't need to do that in the first place; there are ways to disable the signature checks at boot time (but Secure Boot blocks them).

In practice, good look finding anything that *isn't* a Windows RT tablet but which has firmware Windows RT can run on. ARM isn't much like x86, where everything is designed to be compatible with everything else. Even relatively simple ports of open-source OSes (Linux, including Android, for example) are difficult and typically fraught with driver issues. RT is not open source, and is targeted at very specific hardware. Frankly, I would give poor odds of success. Doesn't mean you shouldn't try, if you get the opportunity, but don't hold your breath or expect somebody to do it for you just because it's "easy".

Nah, I'm the hardware guy. This hairbrained idea is all on me.

From what I see, RT uses class drivers where it can, to keep function as generic and widely supported as possible. That should help with a good bit of it. Far as the rest, there are a LOT of drivers for it out there between windows phone and windows RT and not that much ARM hardware that is a suitable factor. That should help narrow it down a lot.

I'm gonna make an order from china and warm up my heat gun...

GoodDayToDie · May 16, 2014

Good luck! Let us know.

BTW, not sure how useful WP8 drivers will be. Even leaving aside the fact that most tablets won't have much phone hardware (possibly some, though) the kernel is pretty different. They're both technically NT 6.2 (or 6.3) and so drivers may be compatible at the ABI layer, don't be too sure. The phone kernel is very slimmed down and missing a lot of stuff. Win32k.sys, for example, only has about 1/3 the entry points that it does on the desktop (or on RT).

jordanmills · May 16, 2014

GoodDayToDie said:
Good luck! Let us know.

BTW, not sure how useful WP8 drivers will be. Even leaving aside the fact that most tablets won't have much phone hardware (possibly some, though) the kernel is pretty different. They're both technically NT 6.2 (or 6.3) and so drivers may be compatible at the ABI layer, don't be too sure. The phone kernel is very slimmed down and missing a lot of stuff. Win32k.sys, for example, only has about 1/3 the entry points that it does on the desktop (or on RT).

If RT has more entry points than WP (and the drivers don't use to WP-unique parts of the kernel), then they should plug in fine. At least as far as that goes. I would expect the other way around (RT driver on WP, assuming signing is turned off) would not have a chance of working though. It is POSSIBLE that something as simple as the Bluetooth HID binaries would work, given that WP already has more BT support and HID support. But I wouldn't spend the time on anything more complex than that, going that way.

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What about the other way around? Move windows RT to different hardware?

jordanmills

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GoodDayToDie

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jordanmills

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GoodDayToDie

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jordanmills

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