Working on adding another Flash to the empty slot

[sabercatpuck]

First I would like to point out 2 things. I have not yet gotten this to work, and it was a real bugger getting the additional FLASH installed. Also, while flashing carries risks with bricking the device (though minimalized by the hardware FEL boot program), hardware modifications do carry very great risks for bricking the device.<BR><BR>That said, so for I have found indications that the Allwinner A10 IC is very adaptable to many different types of flash. I am wondering if the one that I picked up is either the oddball one it wont work with, if there is still some software configuration that I am missing, or if it just plain doesnt like having multiple different types of flash installed and defaults to the first one it sees.<BR><BR>I have been able to put together a schematic of the flash circuitry, that should be at least reasonably accurate. It includes a block diagram of where the surface mount 0 Ohm jumpers are located on the board.<BR><BR>Any other questions feel free to ask.

[Finless]

Are you wiring this up to make both flash chips to look like a bigger flash chip? Or 2 seperate areas?
IN both cases code mayt need to be changed to deal with it. So maybe it is working and is just getting formatted and mounted by the recovery/boot system as the original size?

Bob

[Lexridge]

Perhaps I am misunderstanding what you are trying to do, but I would think that both slots are already in use. First, the internal 2GB flash, and second, the Micro SD slot.

Just my 2 cents.

[c,lei]

Are you wiring this up to make both flash chips to look like a bigger flash chip? Or 2 seperate areas?
IN both cases code mayt need to be changed to deal with it. So maybe it is working and is just getting formatted and mounted by the recovery/boot system as the original size?

Bob

Here's something you guys might want to look into. It's part of a discussion about porting XBMC to Android that I came across while looking for information about the 701 tablets. If this proves to be workable, we might be able to run things like XBMC on this and other Allwinner A10 based-tablets without any hardware mods at all.

http://forum.xbmc.org/printthread.php?tid=126995

RE: Allwinner A10 : Is XBMC ported to MALI-400MP ? - j1nx - 2012-03-30 09:09

(2012-03-29 23:36)bornagainpengui Wrote:

(2012-03-29 23:27)j1nx Wrote:

(2012-03-29 21:58)bornagainpengui Wrote: This looks great, too bad it runs Android. :-(

--bornagainpenguin

You clearly did not read the information provided.

I did. Clearly my bitterness at a lack of Android port for XBMC has colored my sarcasm all wrong. I look forward to seeing Ubuntu (Linaro) for this, and hope to see more ARM powered hardware released with source code, maybe eventually finally even seeing a Smartbook some day....

I know how you feel about an android port, but we have to fair to ourselfs. Android is a very strange thing, yes it uses a linux kernel, but the whole "OS" is more like one big program acting as a Virtual Machine (Dalvik). It will maybe be very difficult and maybe impossible in the end to port all libraries to this machine. To me Android look more like something as VMWare ESXi. A bare kernel booting a VM where your software runs. Accessing you hardware from within those VM's is hard. I am no Android expert, so I might not be right at everything, but the essence sound about right

But you never know. The devs are working on it in the background, so you never know where they might come up with in the (near) future.


To come back to this device. It is really great news one of those chinees factories finally acknowledge the is something as GPL. Having the full kernel/driver sources for this device making it nothing less than the pandabours / beagleboard. Only the price is a lot less.

The U-Boot on the Allwinner devices basically always boot from sd-card prior to NAND, so if you put your kernel and rootfs on a sd-card, slide it in, it will boot. You don't even touch the official stuff, breaking any warranties. This Mele 1000 box is very nicely priced, but whatever comes out of this whole process, can also be used at almost all of those Allwinner A10 tablets out there. Believe that are a lot of different tablets. You don't talk about XBMC on android anymore, but a full supported "dual" boot option, directly booting into XBMC.

I have great expectations about the Allwinner devices.

[sabercatpuck]

soldering on the motherboard

Perhaps I am misunderstanding what you are trying to do, but I would think that both slots are already in use. First, the internal 2GB flash, and second, the Micro SD slot.

Just my 2 cents.

There is a second open space for a tsop-48 nand flash. The hope is to be able to populate it with a new ic and get significanty more, ideally 16GB of onboard flash, with a 16GB sdcard to bring it to the max supported 32 GB. It is not the easiest thing to do though since the space between the pins is miniscule. Requires a very steady hand and a decent amount of flux to do it, unless you have a surface mount soldering station handy. A general purpose hot air gun will work, but other components have a tendancy to move around too.
for me, i have been a hardware guy for most of my life and i think it too about 3-4 hours to get al the connections made while making sure there were no bridges.

Also, i did notice that i had a copy paste error on the schematic that i need to correct tomorrow. The signal names for the chip enables on flash 1 are really ce and ce1. I think i will change the reference designators so the jumper numbers match the designator number to mimimize comfusion

[sabercatpuck]

not sure how it is handling it

Are you wiring this up to make both flash chips to look like a bigger flash chip? Or 2 seperate areas?
IN both cases code mayt need to be changed to deal with it. So maybe it is working and is just getting formatted and mounted by the recovery/boot system as the original size?

Bob

While there is a cryptic note in the allwinner datasheet about how accessing the nand flash ic's is software configureable, i couldnt find much yet on exactly how it is pulled off. I know there are some files packed up in the image file that are specifically there for formatting the flash, and some line items in the config that allow adjusting the signals to the ic's but again not much in the way of documentation.

My guess is if i had picked up another hynix 4GB like was already on it that i would have been successful getting 8G, but i went with an 8GB one from a pny stick instead. Was an Intel js29f64g08aate1 specifically. Not sure where in the kernel to look if i cant find anything in the config.
speaking of which, just to make sure it isnt something simple, is the user flash partition fixed, or variable based on available memory normally in android?

[FM45]

Just a thought--

is there any software or maybe a script that could be written, that you can use the external sd card as extra ram. I know on pc's there is software that does just that---flash drive as ram. Rather than opening up the tablet, maybe there is an easier way--I just wish I had the skills



-=FM45=-

[sabercatpuck]

Just a thought--

is there any software or maybe a script that could be written, that you can use the external sd card as extra ram. I know on pc's there is software that does just that---flash drive as ram. Rather than opening up the tablet, maybe there is an easier way--I just wish I had the skills



-=FM45=-

For me it is an excercise in skill building. I have been an electronics tech for a really long time, but hadn't worked on anything this fine a pitch before so thought I would give it a try.
Looks like the next thing up will be setting up a console cable. There are enough details scattered around that I think it shouldn't be too hard to do. I have seen a few of the dumps people have made with other A10 devices and it looks like there are some low level NAND tools that are accessable through there as well as some other things. I will need some of my other electronics tech skills though since I need to etch a board to take the place of the mmc/sd to talk through.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1636019

http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/hacking_the_mele_a1000/bootlog_sata_ubuntu_mini_log.txt

HELLO! BOOT0 is starting!
boot0 version : 1.2.1
dram size =512
Succeed in opening nand flash.
Succeed in reading Boot1 file head.
The size of Boot1 is 0x00036000.
The file stored in 0X00000000 of block 2 is perfect.
Check is correct.
Ready to disable icache.
Succeed in loading Boot1.
Jump to Boot1.
[       0.116] boot1 version : 1.2.5
[       0.117] pmu type = 3
[       0.144] axi:ahb:apb=3:2:2
[       0.144] set dcdc2=1400, clock=1008 successed
[       0.146] key
[       0.159] no key found
[       0.159] flash init start
[       0.787] flash init finish
[       0.788] fs init ok
[       0.789] fs mount ok
[       0.793] script finish
[       0.795] power finish
[       0.799] BootMain start
[       0.799] 13
[       0.812] gpio config
[       0.812] gpio ok
[       0.812] gpio finish
[       0.815] The all optional count is 1
[       0.818] recovery config
[       0.823] test for multi os boot with display
[       0.825] show pic finish
[       0.828] load kernel start
[       0.848] load kernel successed
[       0.848] start address = 0x4a000000

U-Boot 2011.09-rc1-00000-g0283ea7-dirty (Feb 10 2012 - 18:08:25) Allwinner Technology 

CPU:   SUNXI Family
Board: A10-EVB
DRAM:  512 MiB
NAND:  3800 MiB
MMC:   SUNXI SD/MMC: 0
In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
--------fastboot partitions--------
-total partitions:9-
-name-        -start-       -size-      
BOOTFS      : 100000        1000000     
LROOTFS     : 1100000       2000000     
LSYSTEMFS   : 3100000       10000000    
LDATAFS     : 13100000      60000000    
MISC        : 73100000      100000      
LRECOVERYFS : 73200000      2000000     
LCACHEFS    : 75200000      8000000     
env         : 7d200000      200000      
UDISK       : 7d400000      70400000    
-----------------------------------
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0 
sun4i#
sun4i#
sun4i#
sun4i#
sun4i#
sun4i#
sun4i#
sun4i#
sun4i#help
?       - alias for 'help'
base    - print or set address offset
boot    - boot default, i.e., run 'bootcmd'
boota   - boota   - boot android bootimg from memory

bootd   - boot default, i.e., run 'bootcmd'
bootm   - boot application image from memory
cmp     - memory compare
cp      - memory copy
crc32   - checksum calculation
env     - environment handling commands
exit    - exit script
false   - do nothing, unsuccessfully
fastboot- fastboot- use USB Fastboot protocol

fatdown - download data to a dos filesystem
fatinfo - print information about filesystem
fatload - load binary file from a dos filesystem
fatls   - list files in a directory (default /)
go      - start application at address 'addr'
help    - print command description/usage
key_test- Test the key value and dump key registers
loop    - infinite loop on address range
md      - memory display
mm      - memory modify (auto-incrementing address)
mmc     - MMC sub system
mmcinfo - display MMC info
mtest   - simple RAM read/write test
mw      - memory write (fill)
[B]nand    - NAND sub-system
[/B]nboot   - boot from NAND device
nm      - memory modify (constant address)
printenv- print environment variables
reset   - Perform RESET of the CPU
run     - run commands in an environment variable
saveenv - save environment variables to persistent storage
setenv  - set environment variables
showvar - print local hushshell variables
test    - minimal test like /bin/sh
true    - do nothing, successfully
version - print monitor, compiler and linker version

As for methods of using the external flash for additional memory, that isn't too hard. There is a whole thread about it on here, and there are some who have a nearly working version of Ubuntu running off the SD card on other A10 platforms.

http://www.cnx-software.com/2012/04/28/how-to-create-your-own-debian-ubuntu-image-for-mele-a1000-allwinner-a10-based-stb/

[Finless]

Comment about adding NAND memory to RAM....

Please understand our tablets memory Architecture. There is RAM and there is NAND memory. They are very different.

RAM is where the OS runs and APPs you run. This is fast RAM e.g. DDR2 or DDR3 etc. It is made to be fast for performance of "running" things.

NAND is a replacement for a PC hard disk. It is storage area. For Android devices, again it is really the hard disk. NAND is not nearly as fast as RAM. Letting programs run in NAND is like having no memory on your PC and everything runs from your hard disk. Extremely SLOW.

NAND as the ROM'ers here now know is paritioned just like you would a hard disk.
/system
/data
/cache
etc.....

Again it's your hard disk!

Trying to extend RAM into NAND you are asking for a slow tablet. Sure there might be reasons to do it like runing an OS that needs more than the 512KB RAM most tablets have. But that is for tinker'ers. Certainly not something someone would want to do for a daily USABLE tablet. Use a PC with little RAM and has to SWAP out memory to the disk cache, and WATCH it slow down to a CHURN in the process.

Anyway I am explaining this so people understand the memory architecture in our Android devices. Things can be done but usable? I question that.

Persoanlly, while Sabercat is having fun trying to add to internal NAND space is fun and all but if you really want to get more performance try doubling the RAM. In many cases you can just solder on a 2nd RAM chip on top of the first, and rewire it's addressing lines and BAM... Automatic RAM upgrade
This to me would be of more benefit than adding NAND (hard disk space).

Bob

[Lexridge]

If anyone has actually taken their PMID701i apart, please share some hires photos of the guts. I would love to see them. Or, if there are photos already on the web, please share the link.

thx.

[N4RPS]

A general purpose hot air gun will work, but other components have a tendancy to move around too.

Hello!

You go!

A tip from a career manufacturing tech (yes, me...):

You can mask off around the component you want to solder with a heat gun (or blow dryer on low speed + high heat, if you will) with Kapton tape or some other high-temp, non-flammable material, to prevent other components from the heat.

For me, i have been a hardware guy for most of my life and i think it too about 3-4 hours to get al the connections made while making sure there were no bridges.

A tiny, low-wattage tip, Pb 63/Sn 37 solder, a good-quality rosin flux, and 91% isopropyl alcohol for cleanup is ESSENTIAL for this kind of fine work.

Also, i did notice that i had a copy paste error on the schematic that i need to correct tomorrow. The signal names for the chip enables on flash 1 are really ce and ce1. I think i will change the reference designators so the jumper numbers match the designator number to mimimize comfusion

Good luck! You are a braver soul than *I*!

73 DE N4RPS
Rob

[mrshoe]

If anyone has actually taken their PMID701i apart, please share some hires photos of the guts. I would love to see them. Or, if there are photos already on the web, please share the link.

thx.

That can be found here

http://www.freaktab.com/showthread.php?723-PMID701i-(no-TV-out)-teardown-shots-A13-Chipset

Persoanlly, while Sabercat is having fun trying to add to internal NAND space is fun and all but if you really want to get more performance try doubling the RAM. In many cases you can just solder on a 2nd RAM chip on top of the first, and rewire it's addressing lines and BAM... Automatic RAM upgrade.

This to me would be of more benefit than adding NAND (hard disk space).

Now that's what I am talkin' about..... Who whats to give that a try?

[sabercatpuck]

RAM will be much harder to do

That can be found here

http://www.freaktab.com/showthread.php?723-PMID701i-(no-TV-out)-teardown-shots-A13-Chipset

[COLOR=#333333]

Now that's what I am talkin' about..... Who whats to give that a try?

The above link is for the A13 model. It has a different motherboard and slightly different processor. The original PMID701C pictures can be found here:

http://www.freaktab.com/showthread.php?520-PMID701c-Another-Tear-Down-Photo-Shoot

Now as for adding extra memory, that will be a great deal harder to do than adding an extra flash bcause the RAM's are all Ball Grid Array (BGA) and will need a real steady hand with your surface mount tools to change and they wont allow for just mounting a new one on the old one since the contacts are all under the IC not off to the side. I would love to find a way to do it though , cause you are right on, Finless, with your assessment of the difference of adding RAM vs flash

[N4RPS]

Persoanlly, while Sabercat is having fun trying to add to internal NAND space is fun and all but if you really want to get more performance try doubling the RAM. In many cases you can just solder on a 2nd RAM chip on top of the first, and rewire it's addressing lines and BAM... Automatic RAM upgrade
This to me would be of more benefit than adding NAND (hard disk space).

Bob

Hello!

Back in the day, we used to do that to the Commie 64 1700/1764/1750 RAM expanders. Boy, does THAT bring back memories!

I ran a pretty good BBS in San Antonio, TX in the mid to late '80s. Seems like ancient history now!

73 DE N4RPS
Rob

[sabercatpuck]

your taking me back aways Rob

Hello!

Back in the day, we used to do that to the Commie 64 1700/1764/1750 RAM expanders. Boy, does THAT bring back memories!

I ran a pretty good BBS in San Antonio, TX in the mid to late '80s. Seems like ancient history now!

73 DE N4RPS
Rob

i cut my teath on a Vic 20, computes gazette, and 6502 machine code. it was about 15-20 years later before i finally had some formal classes at DeVry. ahh, memmories. i gotta say that has come in handy while dissasembling the source code on my cars brain box. did make a reverse assembler for its 68hc11 processor so i could take the stuff coming from my logic analyzer and turn it back into debug code. i dont think my logic wave analysers are anywhere fast enough for the tablet thougg