[Solo-dev]

So, having seen this post SlateDroid - The BIGGEST Android Tablet Forum on the Web! - Are the Cruz reader and Pandigital one and the same? since the firmware seems the same, but just the Android OS is different, is there a way to extract the firmware from the Cruz and then flash it to the PDN?Or go to the Cruz's website (if there is one), find the firmware recovery (if there is one...again), and do the update on a card.is this possible?

 

[roebeet]

I suspected that they might be similar, but that article makes it even more clear that it might be the same.Here's the problem - first, we'd need t know if the software works any better than the PDN (remember, the Cruz Reader is supposed to be 2.0, also). Even if it did work better, we could easily port the system.img over once we had our hands on one. But, porting the ramdisk and kernel is another story.

 

[clockworx]

The main excitement I see is that they've apparently gotten their graphics drivers working correctly. That shouldn't require much ramdisk tweaking, as I believe it is done at the android level in /system/lib

 

[roebeet]

If we're lucky, the kernel is very similar and a /system port "just works". You talking about the prototype video? I'm trying to remember if they demoed video playback.

 

[clockworx]

Trying not to dupe posts all over, but here's a link.http://www.slatedroid.com/pandigita...updated-looks-like-contender-6.html#post46793

 

[Solo-dev]

I didnt know if PDN and Cruz are both Android 2.x. are they both from 2.x??

 

[clockworx]

They are both 2.0. Did you read the link you posted in the OP?

 

[roebeet]

Newer video (you got me curious, now):YouTube - $199 Cruz Reader from Velocity Micro (go to around 1:10) I also looked at the video playback on the older video - I don't know if they optimized the playback, and I'm betting they didn't. First, the older post was a 2:35 widescreen format, which would play smoothly even on my PDN. The newer post is a 16:9 format, which looks a little choppy to me (and notice how quickly they faded away). I'm betting that the video playback is exactly the same as the PDN.

 

[lawman]

We still need to know the VMC chipset too. If the hardware is the SAME, there's no real reason we can't swap fw. If they're not... then we can only hope to learn from the VMC and it's source, if released.

 

[SpinControl]

This just shows that a lot of things are possible for the PDN. If they'd just optimize the hardware. The video playback looked fine. Internet looked fine. Opening the book app and turning pages looked swift as well.

 

[cutterjohn]

It looks to me like velocity micro's sole contribution(other than probably ordering LOTS of units) was probably to spring for the commercial ARM DDK such that the firmware could really make use of the integrated mali-200 instead of it basically just suckign down framebuffer RAM and doing simple 2D... (Looks like its sucking down 96M on the GT... (kinda crazy for 800x480) but not really doing much else...)(The "free" drivers just give BASIC access to the mali-200, no 3D accel... which I am sure is where everyone w/an ARM11 + mali are at right now until this cruz reader... just hope that it leaks, as you'd think that ARM'd be happy to give away the DDK as they SHOULD be interested in licensing CPU (and other component) designs so that should only help them push their own licensing of hw... hasn't hurt ATI, but their proprietary linux drivers are cataclysmic...

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