Allwinner A-Series Category - Page 51 of 53 - CNX Software

June 18, 2012May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

MK802 Android 4.0 mini PC Factory Video

Nicolas Charbonnier, better known as charbax, has shot yet another cool video in one of the small factories where MK802 is assembled, showing the different steps they follow to build a complete device. The PCB assembly is probably done in another factory, and they just assemble the device in this factory, or I should probably call it a workshop… The place appears to be rather small and everything is done by hand, but that’s what makes the video very interesting. This is the company that sells it on Amazon under the brand “OEM Systems Company”. The first five minutes shows a tour of the factory, and in the rest of the video, Charbax interviews the sales manager and the owner of the factory who both dodge sensitive questions about pricing, BOM costs and quantities manufactured monthly… But hey, you’ve got to try. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 […]

June 13, 2012May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 81 Comments

Hardware Packs for AllWinner A10 Devices and Easier Method to Create a Bootable Ubuntu 12.04 SD Card

Linaro has a tool called linaro-media-create to install Linaro Ubuntu to an SD card by passing the device, hardware pack file, the rootfs and the board as arguments. Hardware packs are files that contains hardware specific binaries and configs files (e.g. bootloader, kernel…). I’ve done something similar (albeit more basic) for AllWinner A10 devices so that you can easily install and run Ubuntu (and possibly other distributions) on an SD card. I’ve written 2 scripts for this: a10-hwpack-bld.sh – Script to generate evb.bin, build the latest u-boot and linux kernel, retrieve some config files and compress all this in an hardware pack file a1x-media-create.sh – Script to make a bootable SD card for AllWinner A10 devices. You can get the scripts with git:

git clone git://github.com/cnxsoft/a10-tools.git

1	git clone git://github.com/cnxsoft/a10-tools.git

I’ve only tested it with Mele A1000, but if you have other A10 devices such as MK802 mini PC or MINI X media player, it should […]

June 1, 2012May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 33 Comments

MINI X Android 2.3 Network Media Player Based on AllWinner A10

Here’s another tiny device based on AllWinner A10 processor. The MINI X is an Android 2.3.4 set-top box with 512MB RAM and 4GB NAND Flash that costs 77.50 USD including worldwide shipping. Here are the device specifications: CPU – AllWinner A10 (Cortex A8) with Mali-400 GPU Memory – 512MB DDR3 RAM Storage – 4GB NAND Flash, microSD slot Video Output – HDMI 1.3 USB – 2x USB 2.0 host Connectivity – WiFi 802.11 b/g/n Video Formats – MKV, TS, TP, M2TS, RM/RMVB, BD-ISO, AVI, MPG, VOB, DAT, ASF, TRP, FLV etc Video Codecs – MPEG1/2/4, H.264, VC-1, Divx, Xvid, RM8/9/10, VP6 Subtitle – SRT, SUB, IDX, SSA, SMI Audio Formats – MP3, ACC, OGG, WMA, WAV, M4A, APE Image format – JPG, BMP,GIF, TIF, PNG IR Remote Control Dimension: 72 x 61 x 13mm Weight: 51g This device is half-way between the MK802 HDMI stick and the Mele A1000 STB. […]

May 30, 2012May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

Zero Devices Z900 Android 4.0 HDMI Stick

A reader (Thanks Javier!) tipped me about the Zero Devices Z900, an upcoming Android 4.0 mini PC, by one of the companies providing the MK802 / Z802 mini PC. Here are the unofficial specifications: ARM Processor @ 1Ghz with Mali-400 GPU (AllWinner A10 ?, Wrong guess. It’s Telechips TCC8925) 512 MB RAM 4 GB Flash and microSD slot HDMI video output Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n 1x USB 2.0 port and 1x mini USB port (power) OS – Android 4.0 Dimensions – 89 x 32 x 18 mm Weight – 38 grams This little device also support 3D video playback. Availability and pricing are not available yet, but we can expect it to be in the same price range of his little brother (MK802 / Z802) that is around 70 to 80 USD including shipping. Since it has an HDMI male connector, it can be more convenient than the MK802 as you […]

May 25, 2012May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Rikomagic MK802 Android mini PC Unboxing and Review

Youtube user Zaatour36 has received the low cost MK802 Android 4.0 mini-PC based on AllWinner A10 processor and has uploaded 2 videos. The first video gives an overview of the device connectors and show the different cables (mini HDMI to HDMI, USB) and adapters (microUSB to USB and power) that are provided with the MK802. The second video is more like a review, and shows how to connect the device, go to the setup menu to change the settings and language and play around with the different Android applications. You’ll also be able to get a feeling of the performance. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011. www.cnx-software.com

May 17, 2012May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 70 Comments

74 USD AllWinner A10 Android 4.0 Mini PC

A cheap white brand Android 4.0 USB/HDMI Stick based on AllWinner A10 has started to show up in Chinese websites. Initially, I thought it was like a low cost version of FXI Tech Cotton Candy (which will start shipping this month), but as you can see in the image below, the HDMI port is female so you’d still need a HDMI cable. The hole next to the USB port should be for the power supply, so this device is apparently not powered via USB (TBC). Connect a wireless mouse and keyboard to the device, the power supply, and an HDMI cable to your TV, and you’ve got yourself a cheap PC running Android 4.0. Since this is based on AllWinner A10, you could also insert a microSD card with Ubuntu, Debian or your other favorite Linux distribution and have yourself a Linux PC. Here are the specifications of the device […]

May 12, 2012May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

makeSD Script to Write Image to SD Card for Mele A1000 / AllWinner A10 Devices

Most images released for Mele A1000 (Ubuntu, Puppy Linux..) won’t fit in my SD card, and until now I had to manually partition the SD card, extract the data and copy it to the SD card. I’ve also noticed the size of the SD card slowly creeps lower overtime. I bought an SD card last week and fdisk reported 3901685760 bytes and this morning the same command reported 3898782720 bytes. That’s probably due to new bad sectors which I believe is actually normal for this type of device. The problem is that a backup of “last week” SD card done with dd might not be restored properly with dd since the SD card is now smaller. So I decided to write a shell script “makeSD.sh” that will do the following: Umount the SD card if needed Partition the SD card Copy uboot to the SD card Mount the image file […]

May 6, 2012May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments

Editing AllWinner A10 Board Configuration Files (script.bin)

AllWinner A10 based devices all have board configuration files in binary format, sometimes refereed to as script.bin, evb.bin, sys_config.{product_nane}.bin store in the FAT partition with the kernel. You may want to decode those binary files to configure your hardware and/or disable/enable peripherals. For the Ubuntu image provided for the Mele A1000 set-top box, the file is called evb.bin and the two other files (mele.bin and sys_config1.mele_mod.bin) are not used. The filename can change since it is configurable in u-boot e.g.: load1=fatload mmc 0 43000000 evb.bin bootcmd=run load1 boot_mmc If you want to decrypt the binary files into text format (fex), you can retrieve bin2fex tool: git clone https://github.com/amery/sunxi-tools Build it: cd sunxi-tools make This will compile both bin2fex (binary to fex text files) and fex2bin (fex files to bin), but the later does not seem to work right now. fex2bin also works now. If you want to decrypt a configuration […]