Friday, January 13, 2012

Debian Wheezy on WM8505



Installing Debian-Wheezy on microSD card is just simply extracting the two gzip archives into two separate partitions (see below).

$ sudo tar xzpvf wm8505-debian-wheezy-lxde.tar.gz -C /media/extpart/ ; sync
$ sudo tar xzpvf wm8505-kernel-3.0-fatpart.tar.gz -C /media/fatpart/ ; sync


At least 1GB card is needed for the installation, 2GB recommended. The first partition should be a FAT32 (or FAT16) where the "script" folder, containing the "scriptcmd" and "uImage" (linux kernel image) files, is located.The second partition should be an ext2 (or ext4) partition where the root file system will be extracted. Visit these sites for more references: projectgus.com, devio.us , cheap-hack.com.


username: root
password: root

* initial installation using debootstrap
* with minimal LXDE, dillo, build-essential, python, minicom, etc.
* wi-fi / ethernet working ; touchscreen NOT working

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side note:

Recovering "wload" and "u-boot"  without a flash programmer.
However, this procedure needs an already working SPI Flash chip.
( I got mine from another unit. )

I soldered them both in a piggy-back connection, except for their #CS pins (pin 1 = chip select). I also soldered a wire on the pin-1 pad on the board and covered it with a kapton tape as an insulation. The other end of the wire is initially connected to the #CS pin of the working chip. The working chip will be only needed for the first boot until we got to u-boot console prompt (needs serial/uart connector).

After getting to the console(i.e press Enter key on the serial console while booting), transfer the #CS wire to the chip that needs to be reprogrammed (use SPDT switch, if needed).
Then, execute these commands (assuming that "wload.bin" and "u-boot.bin" binaries are already saved in the FAT partition of the SD card)

mmcinit

fatload mmc 0 0 wload.bin
erase ffff0000 +10000
cp.b 0 ffff0000 10000

fatload mmc 0 0 u-boot.bin
erase fff80000 +50000
cp.b 0 fff80000 50000

...  here's the serial log for this process.

Posted by 'yus at 11:05 AM
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4 comments:

  1. Hello, where did you buy your wm8505 tablet board?

    Can this also run android?

    Thanks for any pointers.

    ReplyDelete

  2. I couldn't boot my kernel image without an initrd file. I tried many uboot combinations without success. I write uboot messages to cmd file and I see them but booting doesnt start. It just hangs.

    I only didnt try rootwait. I'll try that and see what happens. What can be the problem do you think?

    BTW, very nice blog. I bookmarked it;)

    ReplyDelete

  3. @pic.micro23,
    I bought it locally (second hand).
    It was previously running on Android 1.6 OS.
    If you are still planning to buy one of these cheap tablets, consider those w/ WM8650, instead of WM8505.

    @Memorius,
    "rootwait" parameter is indeed needed.
    original uboot parameter, iirc, is using "rootdelay=x" instead. I think it's better to use "rootwait"

    ReplyDelete

  4. It was about rootwait, I got it, silly me :)

    Can you please give me the link of your kernel source? I've got a problem about wireless drivers I guess I need to recompile.

    ReplyDelete

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