UG008 details and questions

[jfath]

Just received a new UG008. I've rooted it using TPSarky-VonDroid-Root and am pretty happy with the performance so far. XBMC is a little laggy playing high bitrate video from an NFS server, but MX Player seems better, so I'll probably use MX as an external player for XBMC.

The box has 1GB of memory and 8GB or NAND. I'm wondering whether the internal hardware on this device might be close enough to the UG007 to allow me to use custom ROMs intended for that device. The UG007 lacks wired ethernet, so I realize that could be a problem.

Here's a list of the relevant chips on the board:

RockChip RK3066 ANFY113 1306 Processor
Rockchip RK1000-s Video Output
SMSC 8720a 10BASE-T/100BASE-TX transceiver
MediaTak MT5931SA All-In-One Wireless LAN
MediaTek MT6622N MT6622 Bluetooth v2.1+EDR
TI T659102 Integrated Power Management IC
Spectec PFB15 AR 1234 NAND?
256x8 DDR3 WT I306 (4) Memory

Can anyone familiar with the UG007 comment as to whether that device or another device might be close enough to allow use of those ROMs? Would it be helpful to use one of the tools like rkbatchtool to dump the stock firmware, look at memory maps, etc?

BTW: The only problem I've seen so far is that PC connections to the device are spotty using the OTG port. When I plug the device into my laptop's USB 2.0 port, it won't be seen at all (no connection). By plugging and unplugging it seems I can eventually get a connection. I have USB debugging and PC connection both enabled in settings and same result on both a Windows laptop and a Linux desktop. Also, tried a couple of different OTG cables.

Thanks.

Jerry

Edit: It appears the UG008, UG007 and the MX1/MX2 have the same size NAND and memory along with the same wifi and bluetooth chips. I've seen some threads about being able to interchange ROMs for the UG007 and MX1/MX2, but I don't know if there may be other considerations?

[niabi]

although I have no answers for this, I am too wondering the same thing, as I am about to order one of those after my 3 week old mk808 died on me.

have you installed the HW accelerated XBMC? does it work good? how is the wifi ?

Thanks

[jfath]

I've installed both XBMC accelerated and vanilla (with MX Player as an external player). Both work pretty well, although I did see some crashes with both and some glitches with the external player version. I think it's simply early in development and I was using nightly builds, so no big surprise.

Wifi appears to be good, but I haven't run extensive tests. I'm a full floor and several walls away from my router and iPerf showed about 16 Mbits/sec. I didn't see disconnects or other problems that plague the internal antenna sticks. I mostly use wired connection and iPerf shows 95 Mbit/sec on that interface. It's surprising how many Android apps see the wireless interface and won't run if it is disconnected even though the wired connection is up. XBMC works just fine on only wired.

No further info on whether UG007 or MX1 firmaware might be interchangeable. There could be difference in the way the NAND is mapped or the chips are connected, so no guarantees even though the HW is very similar. It seems very likely the UG007 would be compatible because they are from the same manufacturer, but I haven't dug further into it at this point.

All-in-all I'm happy with the UG008 so far and would definitely pay the sight premium to get the external wifi antenna and built-in wired ethernet.

[atf678]

I have a UG007 and a UG007II. With Finless 1.5 the UG007 worked with a USB to ethernet adapter. The adapter I used has the ASIX chip. I have not tested the ethernet adaptor running 1.7b yet. So you'll have to ask Finless what drivers he included in his rom.

[tonyz2897]

Has anybody made any progress determining if any of the existing roms are compatable with the UG008? I'm in the same situation as the OP having bought and rooted a UG008 but I have no idea where to go from here. Eventually curiosity will force me to try one and with my luck I'll brick it by flashing the wrong rom.
Thanks

[tonyz2897]

To keep this moving forward, I just successfully installed CWM recovery for the UG007 on my UG008 and was able to make a backup and then boot back into the stock rom. No drama. Everything went as it should. I may try flashing a rom later this evening and will report back with details of which rom, if it was successful, and what works/doesn't work.

[tonyz2897]

Still trying to decide what to do. I'd really like to try one of the finless roms that I've read so much good about but I'm not sure how to go about it. I think that they aren't designed to be flashed through CWM due to resizing partitions? I also think that to stand a chance of keeping the analog AV output and the built in ethernet working I'd need to replace the kernel in the finless rom with the original kernel from my stock rom or find a way to add the drivers to the kernel from the finless rom? I'm trying to read as much as I can as quickly as I can to get up to speed. I've been flashing roms on my android phone for years, but that was simple because there were roms made specifically for it. It was just a matter of copying the rom to the sd card, booting into recovery, wiping data, cache, and dalvik cache and flashing the rom. This seems like a whole different world. I'm not giving up but I freely admit that I'm in over my head and could use some help.
Tony

[snakekiller]

To keep this moving forward, I just successfully installed CWM recovery for the UG007 on my UG008 and was able to make a backup and then boot back into the stock rom. No drama. Everything went as it should. I may try flashing a rom later this evening and will report back with details of which rom, if it was successful, and what works/doesn't work.

i just read the specifications from the UG008
its the same processor and gpu.
so it must work.

[tonyz2897]

i just read the specifications from the UG008
its the same processor and gpu.
so it must work.

It did. The only thing really different that I can see between the UG007 and the UG008 are the analog A/V output and the built-in ethernet. I assumed that wouldn't matter to the recovery. Having now made a backup, I'm ready to try a different rom but I have much to learn first. I'm reading leolas guide about how to make a rom flashable through CWM at the moment. Once I understand that, I hope to try flashing a rom for a similar device to the UG008.
Thanks!
Tony

[tonyz2897]

All the reading finally paid off. I'm currently running a hybrid of the iMito MX1/2 Finless 1.7a rom with the stock UG008 kernel. Everything seems to be working as it should. Wifi, ethernet, Bluetooth, A/V out (at least the audio component, I don't have the right lead to check video), etc. The camera app even works with my logitec webcam. So far it's been extremely stable. I'm going to run it for awhile to check for bugs and then if it's ok with Bob, I'll upload it for anybody with a UG008 that wants to try it. I can't take credit for anything on this one. All I did was take Bob's rom, the stock UG008 kernel, and put them together into a .zip for flashing with CWM recovery by following leolas' guide.

[jfath]

Re: UG008 details and questions

tonyz thanks for doing the work on this. I would love to flash your hybrid rom if you can make it available.

Sent from my cm10 touchpad using Tapatalk 2

[tonyz2897]

tonyz thanks for doing the work on this. I would love to flash your hybrid rom if you can make it available.

Sent from my cm10 touchpad using Tapatalk 2

I didn't do much work. Bob made the rom and leolas made the CWM .zip template. All I did was open the template in 7zip and paste the .img files from Bob's rom and the UG008 kernel.img from one of my backups into it. I'll PM Bob this afternoon and ask if it's ok to make it available.

[Finless]

I'll PM Bob this afternoon and ask if it's ok to make it available.

Tony, go ahead buddy.... Just give credits and all is good.

Bob

[leolas]

Re: UG008 details and questions

Feel free to use the zips, and if I can help only tell me.

[tonyz2897]

Sorry I'm taking so long. We had a relatively dry day yesterday and I got caught up in yard work and equipment maintenence. I'm ready to upload it now.

Thanks Bob and Leolas!

Bob, this is your rom packaged with the UG008 kernel. The rom itself is completely unaltered and still has your original boot animation. I'm planning on starting another thread with the download link, crediting you for the rom and Leolas for the CWM .zip template and explaining what I've done. I definitely don't want to take any undeserved credit as all I did was a little copy and paste. If there's anything else I need to do, please let me know.

Thanks,
Tony