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I’ve been lurking on several tablet forums and waiting. Waiting until things get mature enough that I can load a new ROM on my tablet to solve some of its problems. After a couple of success reports, I tried it myself and loaded a Cyanogen 6.1 RC for Telechips on my tablet (X6D), and it made it much faster/responsive (and on Froyo now). Unfortunately, it regressed in some areas, but more on that later. This post is for instructions on how to flash your ROM.

Step 1 – Make NAND backup
I don’t know if this is necessary, but it’s better to be safe than bricked. You’ll need the Telechips drivers (which should also come with the FDWN application). You can follow these instructions to backup your NAND (first 1-6 steps).

Step 2 – Copy new ROM onto SD card
On your SD card (the external one, not the NAND), create a folder called clockworkmod, then create a folder in it called backup, and then finally a third folder to store your ROM (can be whatever you want). Unzip the proper boot image for your device (2 files – boot.img and nandroid.md5) and the system.img (this is the actual ROM) to that folder. The boot image is tied to the actual device, so you must know which device you have! If you use the wrong boot image, your machine won’t boot and you will have to reset it. You can get these files for a variety of telechips tablets at Team TeleChips (of which 2010112 is the latest release). Also, get the (Clockwork) recovery image that is for your particular device from Team TeleChips and unzip it onto your SD card.

Finally as Cyanogen no longer ships with the Google apps, you have to get them separately (which are legally available somewhere but I don’t have the link on hand right now). Put these zips on your SD card (doesn’t matter where)

Step 3 – Backup relevant files
There are several files that exist on your tablet that are specific to your hardware, and if you don’t back them up then you will lose them forever and your tablet won’t work properly. To back the files up, boot up your tablet normally and attach the USB cable. Then in a command prompt on your PC, use adb pull to backup the following files to your PC:

• /data/data/pointercal
• /data/softmac
• /system/lib/hw/sensors.tcc92xx.so (this one might not be necessary)

Step 4 – Flash recovery
While you are using ADB, also flash the recovery image from step 2 as your recovery image. You can do this with the following command:

adb remount
adb shell flash_image recovery /sdcard/path/to/your/recovery.img

Then reboot your tablet into recovery mode. This is probably different for all tablets, for the X6D you have to hold down the home button and the power button while it is being booted (adb reboot recovery doesn’t work). The tablet should boot into a recovery menu instead of Android.

Step 5 – Backup and Restore
In the clockwork recovery, do the following things:

1. BACKUP your existing ROM (so you have something to revert back to, unless you’re like me and you accidentally delete it afterwards)
2. RESTORE the Cyanogen ROM (if you don’t see any choices aside from your backup, then you didn’t setup the folders on your SD card right)
3. UNZIP the 2 (Google Apps, then Market) google app zips from your SD card
4. Optionally, do a factory reset/wipe all user data
5. Optionally, wipe the cache
6. Optionally under Advanced, wipe the Davik cache
7. Connect your USB cable and use ADB to push the files you’ve saved. They go into the original locations except pointercal which goes into /system/etc/.
8. Under Advanced, fix permissions

Now reboot your tablet!

Step 6 – Fix a couple of things…
Once you’ve booted into Froyo, don’t setup your Google account yet. There are a couple of things that you must do:

• Go under Settings->Ethernet and disable ethernet. You must do this before setting up your wifi connection or you won’t be able to access the Internet (it will default to ethernet).

Resources
These threads were useful to me:

• Original TeamTelechips thread
• X6D hacking/flashing thread
• Successful attempt on Haipad
• Installing Froyo on Coby Kyros 7015

Once you’ve flashed, you’ll have to install all your apps and configure everything again (assuming you did a factory reset). Most things are working and are snappier. The regressions I have found are:

• Notifications drawer is not drawn correctly – looks bad but functionally ok
• Video can’t be played
• Unexpected behaviour with the NAND (even though it is automounted) – I’m still investigating this, but media (jpg, mp3s) that I have stored on the NAND does not seem to be found

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: android, geeky, hacks