[project]Port android to meizu M8

evow04 · 02-08-2010

Originally Posted by r3wDy

the tree is defentily patched. if in the android way (there are android specific things innit) and in the m8 way.

What i wanted to do is do find out on which base kernel this thing is based and then just div a patchfile out. But there are so many 2.6.27 rcs that i culd not findout which is the one to use.

Maybe it would be a good idea just to dump it out of the system? If i am right there are only about 10 rc versions available? I mean it isn´t the end of the world, unfortunally it is not really my playground otherwise i would do it. If one assists me i could try to do it when i find some sparetime

So we must see if this feature is disaled in the uart driver we use. If this is on by driver, maybe the baseband is on, but the serial port is not correct.
I will write my driver and try it

r3wdy, i am wondering the following for a while, are we sure everything can be ripped out wince using the tinyloader? i mean how can we be sure that it is a match with wince not using a proper loader like normally used by android (uboot?)?

r3wDy · 02-09-2010

We casnt be sure that everything can be ripped out.
In fact it hasnt anything to do with the loader. What i do is disassemble the nk.exe (kernel) from windowsce. (last fw). With the messages from the debug output, im able to find the intresting code sections. Meizu used the smdk6410 wince6 bsp. We have the source of this (partially).
So i can find excact the debug messages from the m8 in these codes. Then i know which functions going to be calles, and so im able to find the proper part asm code in the file. This part is then converted to c.
Im really sure that i found the functions i mentioned (initGPIO, init blockpower set h and cclock and stuff).
But of course i cant be sure that this is all, as im not he mega reverse asm pro haxx0r

silent-neo · 02-09-2010

as we all know generally android phones have more hardware buttons than the meizu m8 there might be a solution for that .. it seems this company that makes the geeksphone one made an android mod to the ui so it would have those keys on screen

just thought it might help

YouTube - GeeksPhone One en Xataka
maybe if we dig more we might find the android fw they're using and port it over
or even contact the firm that makes this phone (it must be some kind of a start-up with some sort of a hacker that knows it all about android and modding it into hardware) they might give us a hand here ? i personally won't do it for a simple reason ... i would love to but i know nothing about these stuff and i wouldn't know what to say to them
so i hope i helped at least in some way
maybe a french user in our forum could try and locate them or help out with the contacting as it seems they're located in france (paris i presume)

evow04 · 02-10-2010

Originally Posted by r3wDy

as im not he mega reverse asm pro haxx0r

but you are becoming one

In fact it hasnt anything to do with the loader.

ow okay, i was thinking that using the loader some functions are called different then used under CE.

silent-neo, you can always try but since there point is selling hardware i don´t expect much help , could be wrong though!

So more interesting news (next to the fact that lang2 made it possible to load the disk & that we might have an rc 4 release, thanks again m8´y! )
I am still trying to find some usefull stuff for our android but can´t spend much time on it atm, just like the godfather from our used linux kernel.
But he could provide me with limited but very usefull feedback...
I will qoute :

android 2.1 , you just need modify a little thing only,like this:
eclair\frameworks\base\libs\ui\EventHub.cpp

device->classes |= CLASS_TOUCHSCREEN | CLASS_TOUCHSCREEN_MT;

modify to

device->classes |= CLASS_TOUCHSCREEN ;

make
copy directory system to mydroid.img, run ok.

because of the 27 kernel not support multi-touch driver yet, you can port multi-touch driver from 31 kernel.

So i am understanding this that we might be able to run android 2.1 with the 27 kernel from him - this when ripping out the Multitouch from newer kernels..

Who wants to try? with some luck we got an rc5 then :D

edit:
a bit of topic, but yet interesting to have in the future when android runs fine on m8 series : this hack

lang2 · 4 Weeks Ago

Thought I'd move to this thread for the topic.

The reason why my new image doesn't have sound is: it's turned off in the config file by default and I never looked. So I tried to turn it on... which leads to another problem: the new codec for SE is only supported in 2.6.32. Actually banxian mentioned it before. I tried to backport it and it prove too much of a job. So we might have to go to the new kernel.....

What else exactly needs the new tree?

lang2 · 4 Weeks Ago

I've generated a zImage file that has sound enabled for FE. Could somebody try it? Mine is a SE. You'd have to create your own dual-boot xip.bin though.

Here is the link: zImage-alsa-enabled.zip

r3wDy · 4 Weeks Ago

nice work

Im right now writing a linux device driver which initialzes the baseband just like the mux0710 did. Then i will see if i can get an answer. maybe just dont get an answer because i ask the wrong way

Im hacking a little bit on the serial driver as we need to manage flow control by software. with little patch this can be done with ioctls.

But i stuck on how use std. serial port functions in kernel, as there is no clib :/ ^^
ill stay tryin

evow04 · 4 Weeks Ago

r3wdy, can you confirm that audio now works on FE?

What else exactly needs the new tree?

at least the patches mentionned in the wiki, other changes are pretty unknown that is why wou would need to compare kernels :-)

Btw for SE audio, did you append this patch too?

lang2 · 4 Weeks Ago

Originally Posted by evow04

at least the patches mentionned in the wiki, other changes are pretty unknown that is why wou would need to compare kernels :-)

I seem to remember that the WIFI chip needs SPI driver from the latest kernel. True?

I need an address for a 2.6.32 s3c6410 patched tree (I think). Anybody got an url?

Btw for SE audio, did you append this patch too?

That's only part of it. Here (zImage-alsa-enabled.zip) is the full patch. It uses too many features from the new kernel to be easily backported to 27. But of course porting M8 patches towards 2.6.32 is a even bigger job.

evow04 · 4 Weeks Ago

Indeed, that is what r3wdy´s research pointed out.

for the kernel, normally the basic kernel should contain support for the soc, but you could have a look on linux-2.6-samsung.git, that´s a kernel build by samsung dev´s.

There should also be a kernel from aesop.or.kr, but i do not know the latest revision number.

edit, the most recent aesop kernel is on gitorious
edit M900 from samsung could be a similar kernel

evow04 · 4 Weeks Ago

Originally Posted by evow04

edit M900 from samsung could be a similar kernel

SPH-M900_OpenSource.zip => linux 2.6.27
SPH-M900_OpenSource_Update1.zip => updated linux 2.6.27

Interested to know the differences between our and their 27 kernel.
it might help r3wdy for the base band.

lang2 · 4 Weeks Ago

The stock kernel has all the patches? You can see I'm pretty new to this.

Also, from looking at the top level Makefile, the bill tree is based on 2.6.27 stock kernel.

r3wDy · 4 Weeks Ago

Here is the samsung git
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kerne....git;a=summary

the se dont has a spi wlan chip, i think se has sdio chip.
Look 4 drivers here
Drivers - Linux Wireless
i have no knowledge on sdio dunno what it is or how it workx.
Hopefully its easier than spi ^^

evow04 · 4 Weeks Ago

lol :-)
R3wdy,
did you every try to run the samsung kernel?

edit:
i noticed i could repartition the m8´s movinand in win 7 control panel - computer management. Going to have a look how hard it would would be to add a 2nd partition and edit tinyloader to be able to load it from there, it would be a better bugfix (i think) then lang2´s solution & would make it easier in the future if we could really install android there?

edit:
Lang2, the android image works fine in combination with /disk,i could open all my mP3´s but ofcourse no sound.Wanted to run usbnet.. but didn´t work either

silent-neo · 4 Weeks Ago

the day android fully works on the m8 will be the day the M8 reborn !!! the hardware is just perfect for the android experience (mind few of the buttons ) :'(

silent-neo · 4 Weeks Ago

i found this :

Sim Toolkit Application (STK) | Android Open Source

i donno if it helps but it seems to be a way to interact with the baseband :S i think

r3wDy · 3 Weeks Ago

re. was in munic for work.

Now im back. thats the standings:
No sry, we cant use this application. The problem is not how to communicate with the baseband. There are RIL (radio interface layer) implementations in the android sourcetree. I looked at them, and there are mux0710 (gsm protocol) implementation.
So i think we could do this (in any way, i dont think implementing such a thing is easy, but with this documentation source i think we could do it)

The problem is communication at all. The baseband has an own firmware (version can be seenin phone info). To cumunicate with it at commands are used. But to use this at commands, we need to get the commands to the baseband. (enabling it or seting the comport right etc)
Problem at all: we dont even know if the baseband is connected to the comport. And we dont even know if we can enable it with gpio. maybe its i2c bus or maybe spi oder sdio. or maybe it uses the modemctronl memory and not the comport....
All we know is from the reversed windows drivers and thos showing that it should be gpio and comport, but sure is this not.

My problem right now: im trying to write a kernel driver for lilnux which behvaes like the mux07190.dll in windows ce. But i cant use clib function in kernel space. So fopen fread and fwrite and stuff is not avaliable there.
Anyone knows hot to communicate with the comport in kernel space??

uh

too much text ^^

lang2 · 3 Weeks Ago

Did anybody try the alsa enabled kernel and managed to hear audio?

@evow04
I tried usbnet as well and it wasn't working for me. I might try it again.

The 2.6.32 kernel tree doesn't appear to be patched with Android code. Strange. I'll checkout a Android experimental kernel and have a look.

@r3wDy
There is inb() and outb() for accessing IO ports. No experience with them though. But if it's only reading/writing to comport, what's stopping you from doing it from the user space?

evow04 · 3 Weeks Ago

Originally Posted by lang2

Did anybody try the alsa enabled kernel and managed to hear audio?

On my SE it doesn´t do a thing :-)
Maybe r3wdy can confirm it? he has an FE:-)

@evow04
I tried usbnet as well and it wasn't working for me. I might try it again.

too bad, i thought it was me doing something wrong.

The 2.6.32 kernel tree doesn't appear to be patched with Android code.

what one? from google, git, samsung,..?
I thought that the way android interacts starting from .32 was another way(not sure) then in older kernels.

lang2 · 3 Weeks Ago

Originally Posted by evow04

what one? from google, git, samsung,..?

android.git.kernel.org Git

I'm not even sure what version it is. Just read some that there is an experimental tree that's supposed to be the latest.

I thought that the way android interacts starting from .32 was another way(not sure) then in older kernels.

What difference?