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Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) (alpha)

60K views 49 replies 22 participants last post by  dougla12 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
DISCLAIMER: USE at your own risk and other standard stuff.....

http://www.mediafire.com/?0x3z99792k4pvin

This is a port of Gingerbread AOSP to the PD novel (White, USA). It is a very early alpha quality ROM and more of a proof of concept at this point in time. The base ROM that I used for this work is the 11/19 WPDN ROM.

Things known to work:
1) Audio
2) WIFI - (signal strength, password retention all work)
3) SD card mounting/unmounting - Only the external SD card is mounted.
4) Sleep works (uses the same hack that I used for the Froyo ROM to prevent hangs). Expect
to see a huge battery drain.

NOT WORKING:
1) Boot time animation is not working. So you will see a black screen. The first boot will
stay black for around 5 minutes. This is due to quirky graphics driver.
2) Graphics is very quirky due to more requirements from Gingerbread and our broken
graphics drivers. Expect to see some white patches every now and then on the screen.
3) Gingerbread keyboard shows up as cramped in the bottom, unusable. Hence, using
an alternate keyboard instead in this ROM.
4) Orientation sensor is not readable. May or may not work in future, as the binary module
that we have does not seem to be compatible with Gingerbread sensor API. So, no
rotation at this time.
5) Display brightness controls do not work yet.
6) Soft buttons are not implemented yet.

WORKAROUNDS:
1) Due to quirky graphics, you may see white patches on the screen every now and then.
Using a screen refresh by pulling down the status bar when possible, seems to get the screen
back in shape.
2) Youtube works when using m.youtube.com, but turn off HQ mode.
3) If you need root, use following commands.
adb remount
adb shell chmod 6777 /system/bin/su
All programs requiring root should just work after that. Need to figure out a way to automate this in a future ROM.

I have not tried google apps or market on this yet. If someone wants to help out, that would be great. Also kindly note that logcat will spew a lot of verbose messages.

Enjoy and kindly drop a line with your feedback if you end up using this ROM.

Thanks.
 
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#6 · (Edited by Moderator)
[quote author=rapmv link=topic=13807.msg109866#msg109866 date=1293784290]
4) Sleep works (uses the same hack that I used for the Froyo ROM to prevent hangs). Expect
to see a huge battery drain.
2) Graphics is very quirky due to more requirements from Gingerbread and our broken
graphics drivers. Expect to see some white patches every now and then on the screen.
[/quote]

modeuce seems to be working on improved video drivers to support accelerated 2d/3d graphics.

http://www.slatedroid.com/index.php?topic=13728.msg109173#msg109173

Maybe you guys could join forces for accelerated 2D/3D with no sleep issues.

Keep up the good work!
 
#7 ·
[quote author=Mp4 link=topic=13807.msg110296#msg110296 date=1293855580]
Damn now I have to buy a pan. I hate you all now

Sent from my Eris using Tapatalk
[/quote]

Resistance is Futile.
 
#10 ·
[quote author=gnarlyc link=topic=13807.msg110754#msg110754 date=1293936020]
I finally got around to flashing this. Thanks! Good work.

Is this a port or from source?
[/quote]

Thanks for trying. ROM is compiled from source with custom modifications to fit the WPDN. One day, when things are in good shape, I will get to uploading the changes to a server.

Thanks.
 
#11 ·
I thought the latest kernel to run 2.3. Amazing anything is working. I am trying to compile 2.2 from source for another device. Any chance you can give a step by step guide to what you did from the beginning to help us with no Android compiling experience get it working. I tried to compile CM 6.1 as downloaded from the repo for a generic machine as a test and got a slew of errors. I cannot find any info that is straightforward and step by step how to configure and compile an Android build.

Good work here.
 
#12 ·
[quote author=jackbox link=topic=13807.msg110788#msg110788 date=1293939399]
I thought the latest kernel to run 2.3. Amazing anything is working. I am trying to compile 2.2 from source for another device. Any chance you can give a step by step guide to what you did from the beginning to help us with no Android compiling experience get it working. I tried to compile CM 6.1 as downloaded from the repo for a generic machine as a test and got a slew of errors. I cannot find any info that is straightforward and step by step how to configure and compile an Android build.

Good work here.
[/quote]

A small clarification to your comment...Something is working but not everything

I just used the standard AOSP repository to compile my ROM with required changes. 2.3 has a crazy limitation that it needs a 64-bit machine. I have a 32-bit machine. So, had to borrow time on a friend's machine to do the compiling. There are instructions on source.android.com on how to build AOSP from scratch. For example, the build setup instructions is at

http://source.android.com/porting/build_system.html

I have not tried CM repository yet. One reason being CM based ROM may not really shine well on a older kernel. However, if time permits, will try to do it sometime. I would love to have CM6 on WPDN. Is there anyone else other than me that would like a partial CM6 ? (I cannot guarantee any behavior since I have not even checked out the repository
)

Thanks.
 
#14 ·
@rapmv

I have been working on CM6 off and on for several weeks now - http://www.slatedroid.com/index.php?topic=12817.0 The script that I use makes it easy to do, but something is not quite right yet. I'm looking at my vendor tree again now. CM6 would be awesome. It works fine on a 2.6.29 kernel, btw. There are plenty of CM6 builds for the Eris, and we do not have a newer kernel. However, there has been some backporting of newer code done, since HTC is kind enough to follow the law and release the code.

When I compiled AOSP in the past, I used Android Builder - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=707414 AB will pull down and compile Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, or Froyo AOSP with no vendor tree (generic). I have a super secret GB version too, but I'm just now building my 64-bit VM...

@jackbox - I pulled various code and scripts from different sites/tutorials to put AB and EasyDev together. If you look at the code for them, you can see how to sync & compile AOSP and CM6.
 
#18 ·
[quote author=modeuce link=topic=13807.msg111399#msg111399 date=1294034435]
Great job rapmv! Anyone wanna try some updated drivers to see if they can fix the graphics problem?[/quote]
I tried the updated drivers today morning. Quadrant gave a blank screen and had to reboot. After the boot, device has only blank screen. I am going to reflash and repeat and try once more.

Quadrant was not running beyond one graphic screen with 2.3 anyways. It did not complete the test with 2.3. Once I retry, I will post the feedback again. I might have done some thing wrong.
Trial with 2.3
Kudos to rapmv for the new working 2.3. As he has mentioned rotation does not work, graphics is really quirky. Especially selection buttons like OK, Cancel don't show up majority of the times and had to guess. But build is quite responsive and working.
Linpack score is ~ 5.12Mflops
Quadrant- Stops after "fall color leaves" simulation
Kindle- works
Nook - did not see login screen, don't know due to graphics or Nook issue
Borders- got login screen- should work.

I installed market (Courtesy of Blazingwolf from 2.2). I was able to login. But apps did not show up. It was waiting grabbing list with the "wait circle- cant say hour glass any more right
" for long time.
Will repeat the process later in the evening and see what else works.
 
#19 ·
[quote author=modeuce link=topic=13807.msg111399#msg111399 date=1294034435]
Great job rapmv! Anyone wanna try some updated drivers to see if they can fix the graphics problem? I'm off to bed. http://www.slatedroid.com/index.php?topic=13728.0
[/quote]

Hi Modeuce,

Thanks, will try it later and see how it goes. The approach you took is interesting. I had tried to use the same drivers earlier, but tried to replace all the drivers instead of just the OpenGL drivers. Did you do any modifications to the driver ? Do you have diffs against the svn code base, it might be easier, or else, I can just manually diff them to figure out.

Thanks.
 
#20 ·
I too had tried copying over all the updated files (egl, hw, and lib) but found that they made the system unstable. There was no need to mod any of the egl files but if we could mod the lib and hw files I'm sure we could squeeze more out of the graphics. Sorry I can't supply you the diffs against the svn code base. The whole driver package as I found it is here. http://www.megaupload.com/?d=0BHQ3R54 Let me know how I can help.
 
#21 · (Edited by Moderator)
[quote author=modeuce link=topic=13807.msg111772#msg111772 date=1294088574]
I too had tried copying over all the updated files (egl, hw, and lib) but found that they made the system unstable. There was no need to mod any of the egl files but if we could mod the lib and hw files I'm sure we could squeeze more out of the graphics. Sorry I can't supply you the diffs against the svn code base. The whole driver package as I found it is here. http://www.megaupload.com/?d=0BHQ3R54 Let me know how I can help.
[/quote]

No problem.I will try to see what I can. Btw. doing a full port is not easy as it requires support of kernel modules. tom3q has modified kernel drivers to support buffer management of different size chunks, whereas the kernel module we have seems to always give out 2M chunks only and there is a userspace memory manager which manages the 2M chunks. I might give the port a shot sometime when I have time though, just for kicks


Thanks.
 
#23 ·
[quote author=blazingwolf link=topic=13807.msg111916#msg111916 date=1294112584]
@rapmv,
Did you get any where with boot strapping the recovery? If we could do that then the kernel could be replaced with no issue.
[/quote]

No, that went nowhere
However, during the process,I did find out that the android on this device is complete hack. They have just hacked it so that the recovery works. It is implemented as a ramdisk rather than as a full-fledged android recovery image.

Thanks.
 
#24 ·
@modeuce,

I tried to compile the drivers from the svn source, the resulting file was libGLES_fimg.so instead of libGLESv2_fimg.so that you mentioned. However, I still tried to push it to the device. It crashes because it is not compatible with the kernel module loaded. My guess is that the driver you picked was DE_NISKA's modifications to the original samsung driver.

Thanks.
 
#25 ·
[quote author=rapmv link=topic=13807.msg111938#msg111938 date=1294116149]
No, that went nowhere
However, during the process,I did find out that the android on this device is complete hack. They have just hacked it so that the recovery works. It is implemented as a ramdisk rather than as a full-fledged android recovery image.

Thanks.
[/quote]

That bites. I had a feeling something like that had happened since you need the kernel for the recovery to function. This is probably the reason they never released any source too. Didn't want us to see what kind of shoddy work they are doing.

Thanks for looking in to it.
 
#26 ·
[quote author=gnarlyc link=topic=13807.msg110939#msg110939 date=1293974947]
@rapmv

I have been working on CM6 off and on for several weeks now - http://www.slatedroid.com/index.php?topic=12817.0 The script that I use makes it easy to do, but something is not quite right yet. I'm looking at my vendor tree again now. CM6 would be awesome. It works fine on a 2.6.29 kernel, btw. There are plenty of CM6 builds for the Eris, and we do not have a newer kernel. However, there has been some backporting of newer code done, since HTC is kind enough to follow the law and release the code.

[/quote]

Hi gnarlyc,

I sent you a PM regarding CM6 last night. I have a working version of CM6.2 for WPDN that I would like to share, but if you already have it working and also since you started working on it earlier than me, I would not want to spoil it for you. Kindly let me know.

Thanks.
 
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