MPMAN MP1047 Tablet (AllWinner A10) success on dCore 5.x

[frimical]

Hello everybody,

Thanks to you all  who made things easier to have Core ported on Arm.
I wanted to share my experience with all who might be interested to use its tablet as a linux desktop too.

This tablet is deliverd with Android. It's of course an Allwinner A10 board with all the common details.
I was curious to try Linux on it. My target was of course TinyCore. Which I did successfully install and use recently.

The moment I tried to install linux, I mean any linux available to start with and see the result, Tinycore was just at the beginning of its trial and error phase.
So I went through one of the easiest way available, BerryBoot, wich prepared my SDCard and downloaded and installed Linaro Linux first, then PuppyLinux next.
Lately I decided to try to install dCore, but using the files that Berryboot has extracted already to the SDcard (the bootloader and script.bin).
I copied TinyCore files ( boot.scr, uEnv.txt, umage and uCore ) to the first (FAT) partition of the SDcard. Booted and then followed the instructions of Tinycore site for AllWinneA10, starting with README1ST, until X and others etc...

What is working or not yet:
Everything worked quite fluently, importing, loading etc..,

-<category>:< [packagename] > < (comments: [!] fail/problem, [ok] success, [?] to dig further ) >

INPUT:
- physical keyboard and mouse on USB host (wireless)
- virtual OnScreen keyboard: [xvkbd] [ok]

OUTPUT:
- lcd 1024x600 - multipoint touchscreen
- tty: [ as configured] [ok]
- X : [Xorg-fbdev] OR [Xorg-all] (better) ( [!] fails when no wm is used [?] NO ACCELERATION Nor 3D yet,  [?] neither TOUCH Screen ).

INPUT/OUTPUT:
- wifi : [8192cu & wireless] [ok]
- sound: [ALSA...], input and output ( [?] but cracking a little bit, needs 'digging' more..., actually I just tried arecord & aplay).

APPS:
- file manager: [ mc ]
- wm: [ flwm_topside ]
- browser: [ links, Iceweasel ] , ( [?] iceweasel showed with video NO sound... )
- app building : [ build-essential & xorg-dev]  ( [ok] compiled easily personal apps needed for this stage ).
- office: [ abiword & gnumeric ] ( [?] abiword wasn't showing chars correctly under xorg-fbdev) 
- paint : [ mt-paint ] [ok]

I'd like to go further. I wish I could use this tablet as a handy desktop with more than a correct autonomy. Things are not working fully yet.
( Regarding touch screen, I couldn't figure it out correctly ( sunxi-ts driver?)  neither 3D or 2d acceleration (G2D, Mali, lima ...), and other correct needed modules, for sound etc...).
If someone has any idea, or suggestion to make this tablet work fully under TinyCore would be great. I think many could be interesred and may profit from that too.
 
Thanks and Regards.





 

[Jason W]

Hi frimical.  I admit that I am new to the Allwinner A10 but I will look into the touchscreen and acceleration that you mentioned.  Maybe there is a package I can compile and put in the prebuilt section if there is not a Debian one that will provide those features.  I am looking into it and will report back if I find out anything.

[frimical]

Oh, hello jason and thank you for your reply.  (I just noticed that my previous reply to yours didn't reach its destination since then! )

So meanwhile I tried  to see from my side what can I do to make this tablet work correctly. I believe that it would be benificial to Tinycore to have it on tablets also, especially that these type of tablets, eventhough they'er getting a little bit outdated, but  on the other hand far cheaper, and very useful as a usual desktop.

Just a thought by the way, I noticed that the principle of 'sce' extension is a good idea , but still I prefer 'tcz' way. It is lighter and flexible in many ways. ( I'm using a 16 GB sd card, it is getting full quickly...). 

Waiting for your reply,
Best regards.

[Jason W]

Hi frimical,
I did look around to see what it would entail to get dCore working on an a10 tablet, but as with any case of lacking the hardware to test with there is not much I can do myself in that matter.

As for the size difference of tcz versus sce, if you use the list file option with the sce then the resulting sce would be the same size as what the sum of the underlying tcz ones would be.  Also if you want to add more sce's and not have duplicate packages in them, then use the dependency option that will use an existing sce as a dependency for your current import session and no files will be duplicated across them. 

I wish I could be of more help in the tablet area.