[PsyKo JeZus]

I would like to flash my Dropad A8. It appears that everything is stored on the 4GB microSDHC card inside. I have taken apart the device with no scratches or cracks of the delicate housing

. I was wondering if it is wise to just replace the microSDHC prior to flashing a new ROM? I don't want to wipe out whats there and have a way to avoid bricking the device. Also before flashing does anyone know of a SURE FIRE way to verify what I have is indeed a Dropad? I have had other chinese models that claimed to be that turned out not to. The box it came in says Dropad except on the back of the unit it says Agasio, when it starts it says Agasio. In the manual it says Dropad A8. I am going to compare the IC labels with the ones I have seen in the disassembly video. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated before I embark on my journey to flash this tablet or brick it....

 

[namko]

If you can confirm it has no NAND, then I guess it's not possible to flash with an empty internal SD (because to flash a ROM, a working bootloader must be present in the first place). You can, however, manually flash it if you have Linux. Windows, I don't really have an idea of what can be done.

EDIT:
If you find that it has NAND then my advice would be to not flash, because AFAIK Dropads do not have NAND. So it might be a different model after all.

 

[itfchaos]

If you have a true Dropad A8 then you should be able to just replace the current SD card with another one you want. Then put the device back together (may want to leave the sticky backing off until you are done flashing in case you have to get back into the device again). After you put in a new sd card and put the device back together (minus sticking backing), use another sd card to flash the rom to the device in the external slot. Once flashed and you verify that everything is working and android reports the free disk space you have as being what you think it should be then you can finally put that sticky backing on the back of your device and you are set

I just updated my herotab C8 to a 16GB internal card, and didn't have any issues at all.

 

[namko]

If you have a true Dropad A8 then you should be able to just replace the current SD card with another one you want. Then put the device back together (may want to leave the sticky backing off until you are done flashing in case you have to get back into the device again). After you put in a new sd card and put the device back together (minus sticking backing), use another sd card to flash the rom to the device in the external slot. Once flashed and you verify that everything is working and android reports the free disk space you have as being what you think it should be then you can finally put that sticky backing on the back of your device and you are set

I just updated my herotab C8 to a 16GB internal card, and didn't have any issues at all.

Assuming that Dropad doesn't have NAND (in my knowledge it doesnt) I do not understand how that can work. There is no NAND to load the bootloader from and there is no bootloader on the new blank SD card that was inserted. The reason this would work with Herotab is that Herotab does have NAND from which the bootloader executes the update script.

Or it could be I'm totally confused. OP, you're welcome to try and share the results.

 

[itfchaos]

I'm assuming your tablet is identical to the herotab C8, so I was assuming it had NAND, sorry I typed it wrong before. If it doesn't have NAND then there is a different way of doing it I am sure (see example of restoring bricked devices with no NAND on this forum under the recovery area). I'm sure there is a way but I don't know all the steps involved because I never done it. Also from my understanding there are two revisions of the Dropad A8, one with NAND, and one without, so that complicates things even more. Sorry for not being of much help.

 

[namko]

It actually is pretty much the steps you follow to unbrick your tab (again, assuming no NAND).
First you write the bootloader into your new internal SD (see the unbrick thread).
After that, you can plug in the card, and load the FW on the external SD (I believe that it will work, but it's a guess).

 

[PsyKo JeZus]

What I wound up doing was removing the internal SD and replacing with a 16gb Sandisk Class 6 microSDHC Mobile Ultra. Started the device. Came to a black screen. Turned the device off and inserted a external microSDHC containing the firmware I wanted to flash. Started the device holding power+menu and voila the device flashed. Now if I swap the internal SD I am able to swap the ROM that is running. My assumption is the Dropad (or at least mine) *does* have a NAND.

I'm happy running Genesis 3.0 R2 now.

 

[Ericker]

I replaced my 8 gig internal SD card with a 16 gig card before I flashed to tsunami 1.9. My device is labeled as MID703 per the instruction manual. Everything went well and the os had no issues recognizing the 16 gig internal or my 32 gig tf card.

 

[c_ferrando]

I replaced my 8 gig internal SD card with a 16 gig card before I flashed to tsunami 1.9. My device is labeled as MID703 per the instruction manual. Everything went well and the os had no issues recognizing the 16 gig internal or my 32 gig tf card.

Well, I have a MID703, I will try this
Thanks for info

 

[Kenom]

Mkay, so your saying that you DID replace the internal SD on your Herotab with a 16gb SD and it worked fine?

Reason I'm asking is, I've got a dropad A8 that I got from Dealextreme and it's now showing as a Herotab in the firmware. My unit DOES have NAND, also has an internal slot as well and is labeled on the back as Dropad. I'm looking at removing the internal after reformatting it following the method used in unbricking your device (I had to do this sadly when I upgraded to a firmware that was incompatible) making sure that the disk is formatted with the exact same image the 4Gb internal SD card was formatted with via the unbricking method and then copying the entire structure of the 4gb onto my 16gb drive and using it to replace the internal one, and then using a 32gb external as the primary external storage.

I'm not really all that sure why I needed to format the disk in a specific way or if it was reformatted when I had to unbrick it and finally got the firmware to update again. I'm not sure even where the firmware resides when written to the tablet. I'm trying to learn this so that I can have lots of space on the tablet for the many many many gigs of video files I want to put on the device. (I use this for the kids to watch movies as we travel)

Hopefully ya'll can help me understand this.

Oh by the way, the purpose I'm thinking of formatting the card in this fashion so that everything can be copied from the existing internal card without losing any files/settings that already exist on the unit. I suppose I COULD do a backup and restore it once the unit has been flashed again... but if I can do it the first way instead of restoring from a backup, I think I'd like to as it just seems easier than going through the whole process of reformatting the card, reflashing a perfectly good unit with the new 16gb card inside and then restoring the contents of the unit with the backup. Maybe I'm thinking wrong.. Like it's a p.c.

Y'know clone the primary HDD with a bigger one, and replace it with the new HDD as the primary..? Since this is a tablet, it would have to be formatted in the specific way needed for the tablet (file structure etc.) like when unbricking an you have to format and restore a virtual hard disk on physical drive through winimage.

 

[tigana]

good job