[project]Port android to meizu M8

r3wDy

it was romoured that meizu worx on android.
The phones hardware, the SoC and stuff is good supported by olinux, and samsung steadiely worx on these kernels.
These are the kernel we use too. So from that point there should be no problem. I think its more a microsoft problem. Meizu is ms partner and the m8 is a windows phone. When you now bring andoird (official) to the phone, its in direct confrontation with ce and i think the contract with microsoft doesnt alow that.
We would do is ourselfs. Im really sure if we could get at least the baseband (modem) to work so you could use it as phone, we could attract much more developers. Im working on this, but as said this (seems) is very hardware dependet and we now nothing about the hw. i asked in android mailing list but still no usable answer :/

vytautas_g

Do you need high qualification Flash programmer at the momment? work experience is about 4 years spent in IBM ( Finland) this guy is currently not working at all, so maybe he could help you

r3wDy

the problem here is not programming anything.
Its about to get the drivers running for the hardware.
Wait i do right now:
-try to compile a kernel and get it to boot on the m8
-once this is done i look for the spi busmaster driver in the kernel tree
-when i found one, i try to compile it as module and then i try to load it.
-when the driver loads, i try to add the correct spi devices in machine config file and compile this info into the kernel.
-then i try to load this driver, and then the wlan driver. the spi subsystem should recognice that the loaded driver belongs to the spi bus and sould init the wlan driver.
mostly the kernel cant compiel the spi driver because some modifications are needed (the driver is from another kernel etc..)
when i can compile it, mostly the kernel crashs when loaded. -> i modified something wrong, try to debug and fix it, or try to get the kernel running to which the driver belongs.

Right now i try to get the 2.6.33 rc3 samsung kernel to get running on the m8 because there seems to be a suitable spi driver right in the tree.

Unfortunatly banxian failed to get it to run. The only running kernel right now is 2.6.27 (which is an android kernel). But the 6410 support in there is more basic and is just modified 2410 stuff.

So get the spi running in 2.6.27 or get the 2.6.33 rc3 running on the m8 are the two otions we have. tried spi on 27 i did lot of times, failing like described above. now i try the 33 to start.
But the 27 is modified for the m8 to fit and the 33 not. So i must try to compile it and then add the m8 stuff if i can find it.

As you see, its not to test and not much to programm something. Its just try, read code/documentation, then change a little bit on driver and configs, compile and try again.

thats it

willl

For the hard work

evow04

r3wdy,
any idea´s on how to document the changes between the original 2.6.29 kernel and the one the currently runs m8?
cause doing it line by line is a crazy man´s job

and could this help?

silent-neo

dont know if that helps but its better than nothing i guess :
[android-porting] Re: Device Driver Development for Android - msg#00230 - android-porting
the guy is telling the modder to use goldfish kernel or something like that ....

r3wDy

you cant work on the linux kernel line by line, this would make you crazy

As said im targetting to get the 33 kernel booting.
Then i will try to find a suitable undmodiefied 27version and do a diff with the basic tree.
This should give me all the changes which are made. Unoftunately the only thing i know is that its an .2.6.27 kernel. there are so many rcs and subversions that i already failed in finding the rigt version
(btw anyone knows how the get the compete kernel version from the sources?)

All in all i dont think that the android changes for m8 are that much. LCD, some plattform stuff and maybe gpios fpr the keys and thats it. But to just start the kernel on the m8 with debug output on the console, all these things are not needed.

As i read in the mailing lists, and saw in the samsung phones, they use 2.6.27 too so maybe this is the best one to use... so i thought about just keeing it, but i cant get spi to work. But its not trivial to get the new spi driver to run in the old kernel as there where significant changes. So i think take a new kernel should be easier. Right now i ddidnt got it compiled because of some framebuffer stuff so im going to remove this and ust use serial out to start.

PS i just saw that the kernel in the official android git is 2.6.27 too.... so maybe it isnt clever to try to get another kernel running...
Okay back to driver testing *lol*

evow04

indeed, but lucky some people are cazy :-)

you mean android 1.5? Or the 2.0/2.1?

here?

I am still trying to figure out the debug pinout on SE (not rushing it, don´t want to brick my se) it is been a long time we heard from banxian too bad since i think he knows what pins are been used on SE.

__________________
Mint Linux - Android Wiki - Dutch Wiki

r3wDy

Blubb me again
I just managed to compile the HSPI driver into the kernel. I will not test this right now as i need my phone tomorow But with a bit of luck tomorow we could have a running android spi device, which brings us a big step towards wlan.
Sadly i could not find something new about the Baseband chipset :/ Im still onnit though

silent-neo

im a realy new-by to this so if you will could you tell me what does hspi driver give us ?

just a side note : really r3wdy thank you for all the work you are doing ... android will solve a lot of problems some of the users are having with the device .. being a full fledged os that is very usable ... the only things that are missing right now to make it work as i understood is the ability to cal and receive calls sms and receive sms and blutooth and wlan (well i would compromise the later two for a working android two tbh :P)

so again thank you and to all those who helped get it up to this point ... good luck

r3wDy

you could read in the wiki
spi driver is needed to get the wlan/bluetooth chip enabled on the oldsk00l m8.

This is just a try to get something done while im thinking/reading about the SGold2 chip and how to get it on.

r3wDy

Shame that there is a new fw with long message support... i will test this one.

My m8 said
sounds very good to me, lets see if we can configure and load a wlan driver
I must see, this is a /dev driver i dunno if this could make any trouble. i will see

evow04

sounds good r3wdy, goodluck with it!!

LVL

Fingers crossed
I really hope to see wlan working...
Wlan and baseband is enough for me
Android on the M8, something i can only dream of...

banxian

Seems I missed some news...
I went to the hospital several times from last month, but they can not cure me.
And I failed to make a working PCB in some weekend. I used three different tools. I'll try to use iron this week.

tumi07

oh my God, what do you have? I hope you all the best!!!!

Welcome back, we have missed you

LVL

What? Seems like WE missed some news.
How are you? What do you mean, can't cure you?
You have to live, you need to finish android
We all missed you, android was beginning to die here.
And r3wdy had some trouble that you can probably fix
You and r3wdy are the people that created android for the M8!
Without you, all hope is lost....

__________________
Ben je Nederlands?
Dan kan je ook gewoon in de Nederlandse sectie reageren en vragen: http://www.meizume.com/dutch

evow04

indeed, we began to miss you, how are you doing?
you mean to jtag?

ps, did you ever found the serial out on SE ?

lang2

Welcom back banxian!

r3wDy

okay this spir diver isnt right.
As expected the right one is in kernel 33 and greater. there are two driver (s3cpsi and spi_s3c64xx) but both of them need more or less work to get it into the 27 kernel.
we need another android kernel but i cant do it because im nor familar eneugh with andoird and git to merge a 2.6.33 android kernel from the official 2.6.27.
So i will concentrate on the baseband problem, thats way more important at all