Calling INTEL Atom Clover Trail + zxxxx device owners. Collaboration on Developement

[madhits45]

Hello all Intel atom owners,

I am the owner of a device destine for the trash heap (e-waste sucks) but I'd like to save it from that fate. My device is a z2560 soc asus Trio TX201LA. Its tablet half is what has been deemed ewaste by asus & id like to save it from that fate. Windows 10 has also ended support for clovertrail now so that also SUCKS..

This thread is being started to talk about development on these devices that intel gave up on. Android is primary focus but I don't want to limit it to that cuz the soc can do more. I'd like to discuss the following:

1. How the device boots? In what order? What files are used? Variations per device? Similarities between asus & Dell and Samsung (3 largest intel atom inside device makers during 2011-2016)?

2. What tools are available to us to save our devices and in save I mean upgrade.5 tools Ive found that are so interesting are the following:

1. 2A. Intel Manufacturing Flash Tool lite (For dual booting devices specifically?)
   
2. 2B. Intel Platform Flash Tool Lite (For both atom & intels Edison devices): https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/flash-tool-lite-user-manual
   
3. 2C. Intel xFSTK Downloader (rescue flasher, seems to be primarily for bay trail but also clovertrail)
   
4. 2D. ASUS Flash Tool, not sure about this one, I bet its only for zenfone, have to check.
   
5. 2E.. Flashall for Edison devices only, so useless for atom tablets: /docs/DOC-25154 https://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-25154

4. I'd also like to look at droidboot ver 2.0 and 2.1, whats the difference? It seems droidboot is intel and is intel own way of getting android to boot. What is also interesting is that some devices running android 5 got an update that changed droidboot a lot. So much so that it has a uefi partition (dell venue 7, asus memo pad 7 & maybe others) & after that update boots android differently using what seems to be a more generic x86 android (like a pc image).

5. Intel DnX (download and execute) mode. This seems to be a product of Device updates beyond droidboot 2.1 and android 5.0. Id like to discuss if its possible to add DnX to devices that don't have it. It runs from an image off the main disk just like droidboot and even android. So the theory is it could be simply added to other images & devices?

6. Alternative OS options (Reference: https://communities.intel.com/thread/120652):

1. 6A. Sailfish OS devices that are atom based such as the Geeksphone Revolution & Jolla Tablet have sailfishOS, but so do dual boot atom devices including CHUWI hiboot, Hi8, a bunch of Lenovo devices, to many to mention here.
   
2. 6B. Ubuntu this is possible but only if clovertrail can gain either DNX, droidboot 2.1 or uefi (my theory) .
   
3. 6C. Remix OS see: https://forum.xda-developers.com/remix/remix-os/release-remix-os-pc-32-bit-t3305916 Remix OS can be run on our devices but again only if we can gain droidboot 2.1, uefi & or DNX (again my theory)
   
4. 6D. MultiROM for intel (unknown) see: https://www.xda-developers.com/install-use-multirom-xdatv/ There is also support for galaxy tab 3 10.1 a fellow z2560 soc device. So getting multirom support could be added for almost all z2560 devices via this support see: https://www.getdroidtips.com/dual-boot-galaxy-tab-3-10-1-dual-boot-patcher/
   
5. 6E. Others including second stage bootloaders. Google that term and many come up.

Ok so that is about it. I did not include a lot of links here purposefully, almost every term I used here can be googled for the info I found. The x86 android devices are flexable and able to do more but have primarily not been developed for because intel sucked at advertising them, failed to get them into apple devices and killed them off early. So we are where we are but intel is also very open. There are so many tools to develop for this platform if you know and understand x86. I believe I could rebuild my entire tablet image using the Intel Manufacturing Flash Tool include the newer droidboot 2.1, dnx image, and a updated kernel and system image of android with my device specific drivers and be up and running to a point where I could then dual boot other OS's. I theorize that if you tried this and failed you could still use the Intel xFSTK Downloader to rescue the device completely. Yes I'm a noob & its why I want to learn more via this thread. Think this development is a waste of time, see: https://www.asus-zenfone.com/2015/07/asus-zenfone-2-running-windows-7.html

I'd love to see other intel owners join and discuss these ideas, grab your intel device dust it off and join me in experimenting.

 

[madhits45]

Bumpy boompop shazam.. Hello Atoms not DEAD yEt.. https://www.pcworld.com/article/315...m-chip-in-panasonics-2189-android-tablet.html

 

[pcwizzy37]

Yep, I'm still working on trying to get unsigned stuff to work myself.

 

[madhits45]

Yep, I'm still working on trying to get unsigned stuff to work myself.

Any progress? Its a shame such a great device is meant to die...

UPDATE. I found this topic.. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/android-contrib/t6AEhwaILUs

Interesting..

 

[pcwizzy37]

Any progress? Its a shame such a great device is meant to die...

UPDATE. I found this topic.. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/android-contrib/t6AEhwaILUs

Interesting..

Nope, no progress, my backlight also got messed up pretty bad by a diode being defective and letting current pass both ways, so now I cannot change brightness, or else the screen turns off. But nope, still stuck.

 

[madhits45]

Nope, no progress, my backlight also got messed up pretty bad by a diode being defective and letting current pass both ways, so now I cannot change brightness, or else the screen turns off. But nope, still stuck.

Bummer, What tablet do you have? I have a Asus TF201LA its also know as the transformer trio. The tablet half has android 4.2 and its basically useless, the screen of the tablet is shared with windows 10 dock which I am still using daily. The atom z2560 cpu in the tablet is still pretty fast with 2gb of ram, but no updates or i should say no unlock keeps it useless.

 

[pcwizzy37]

Bummer, What tablet do you have? I have a Asus TF201LA its also know as the transformer trio. The tablet half has android 4.2 and its basically useless, the screen of the tablet is shared with windows 10 dock which I am still using daily. The atom z2560 cpu in the tablet is still pretty fast with 2gb of ram, but no updates or i should say no unlock keeps it useless.

I have an Acer Iconia One 7 (B1-730HD), which has the Z2560 as well, but a pitiful 1GB of RAM.

 

[madhits45]

I have an Acer Iconia One 7 (B1-730HD), which has the Z2560 as well, but a pitiful 1GB of RAM.

VERY exciting info to come. I am working with a zenfone hacker who hopefully will help me adapt his bootloader unlock to my device. Ill update when I get something and document everything for you.

 

[DPyro]

Keep us updated. I have a Asus VivoTab ME400c.

 

[kelvinhall05]

Any updates? I have an HP Elitepad 900 G1 with a Z2760.

 

[natsupeng]

I have ASUS Memo Pad 7 (K017) with atom Z2520, which is no calling edition with FE170CG...

 

[madhits45]

I have found some new information and ideas for this.

https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Getting-Started/#how-to-prepare-a-sd-card

http://www.linuxium.com.au/how-tos

I am trying to understand how you boot from droidboot to a SD card or via USB. I'm willing to try some of these because they do not evolve flashing a recovery which does not match mine. I also found a CWM recovery for the memo pad 10 FHD but whats the point without a new rom. If I can boot linux I could boot x86 android.

 

[squirvel]

I have an acer w3-810 with some (fairly buggy) uefi firmware.

Since this is a windows device I've been able to disable secureboot and play around with unsigned uefi programs. If for some reason your device doesn't disabling secureboot, you might be able to change the variable in your firmware file via uefitool (popular in the bios modding / hackintosh community) and then reflash it if there's no signature checking pre-flash.

On the linux side I've basically gotten no where. The graphics module / kernel params should be set up similar to cedar trail (from my basic research clover is just a lowend version of cedar). But unfortunately that doesn't get me anywhere. Disabling uefi via the kernel param noefi or disabling uefi runtime services gets the display to spazz black and white lines. Going to try to compile a custom kernel later though and see if I can get preboot early efiframe buffers working for earlyprintk.

Interestingly the tablet (through some trickery (force it to boot to a non-present device)) will let you switch the graphics mode of operation between pci and agp