Thursday, August 18, 2016
Allwinner A13 android based tablet running on debian
Allwinner A13 android based tablet running on debian
I am a mobile phone techinician by profession. Included in my line of work is to repair all kinds of mobile phones, computer and laptops, and tablets. Here in my country, the Philippines, Android chinese tablets proliferate :):). One of those is the Allwinner A13 chip based android tablet. One of the problems that these tablets are having is hanging on android logo. This problem can be solved by wiping the /data partition or resetting the tablet to factory defaults, provided that the usb debugging option is enabled. Take note that these tablets have no recovery menu unlike those other branded tablets. Also there are no two tablets that are equal even though they look physically the same. You can visit this site http://www.techknow.me/forum/ and look inside the forum to find out more about these tablets.
Now, there is a way to fix the problem, by flashing. These tablets can be flashed using the Livesuit software which can be downloaded here. This aforementioned site also contains instructions on how to flash the tablets. But there is a catch here, as I mentioned above there are no two tablets that are the same, no..I am just kidding, there is, but only if you keep trying and flashing the tablet with so many firmware that are available in the internet and you might just get lucky :) :). So what is the solution?.
From the above site, information regarding booting from an sd card is also provided. So if we can boot from an sd card and we can mount the /data partition, we can effectively wipe that partition by removing its contents. Sounds logically right??:) :).
So, now my journey to A13 hacking is underway. BTW, the video below will show that I was able to create a bootable sd card with minimal debian on it.
But herein lies the problem, when i try to mount /dev/nande data, it seem to took too much time. So I guess I need to do some more digging.
Btw, I use minimal debian as my rootfs. You can wget/download it here.
I will try to do update on this one until i got it working.
Also, I will post the procedure that i did in creating a bootable sd card on my next post.
P.S. If anyone have an idea on how to go about this problem or why mount /dev/nande data is taking so much time, feel free to put a comment. Thanks.
Go to link download
