Prebuilt Images :

Location of latest MeLE A1000/A2000 official android firmware : http://www.mele.cn/en/web/down_list.aspx?cid=GJS
Mirror: http://www.j1nx.nl/downloads/Mele_HTPC_Android_4.0_V1.rar

Location of ICS beta build from MeLE : https://www.wuala.com/zercosz/Mele%20A2000/Firmware/?key=ThisIsFC2012

Info :

On irc channel, you can talk to Turl and ZaEarl and which have built ICS for other A10 tablets using the current kernel and based on work from Quarx2k - Check the archives: http://ibot.rikers.org/%23arm-netbook/ (30 May is a good start to get an idea of the current status).

There is not current user build of Android for the Mele. Contrary to what Luke said, there are people interested in inferior OSes (on existing devices :) ) and you are more than welcome to build ICS for the Mele and document it on the Wiki.

In particular, trying to reproduce Linaro optimized build ( http://www.cnx-software.com/2012/06/03/linaro-android-puts-stock-android-to-shame-on-ti-pandaboard-omap4430/#comment-8549 ) could be interesting to all the Mele users.

Other Resources :

Git is https://github.com/allwinner-dev-team but also check original

Quark2k https://github.com/Quarx2k/android_device_a10

Quarx2k CM9 nightly build for NOVO7 : http://quarx2k.ru/cm9-nightly-novo7(aurora)/

ClockworkMod Recovery 5 for A10 and other info : http://androtab.info/cyanogenmod/allwinner/

Christian Troy's git for CM9 : https://github.com/christiantroy

naobsd's git for CM9 : https://github.com/naobsd

Android 4.0.3 (AOSP + kernel) source for A10 : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=25978796&postcount=121 ; or from here : https://github.com/allwinner-ics

Tutorial on how to build Android 2.3.7 for A10 devices : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1490886

More tools for Android on A10 ( kitchen for building or extracting images ) : http://android.sztupy.hu/dl/a10/

dd-able image for the leaked ics:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85955007/mele/xaa http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85955007/mele/xab http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85955007/mele/xac http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85955007/mele/xad http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85955007/mele/xae

?Allwinner tablet experiments

For the most recent Mele Android firmware, it is best to check their forums: http://bbs.mele.cn/. These are in Chinese so you may need to use some sort of translation.

Thierry Merle has some has recent firmware with a few hacks such as switching them to English on his blog: http://tmerle.blogspot.de/

Android ICS

The mele a1000/a2000 android ics is available now, this page describe how to upgrade the mele a1000/a2000 to the ics.

Operation on PC

1 Window

1.1 the phoenix card way.

1.2 the image writer way.

For those who have problem with Phoenix Card tool can try the image writer on Windows using a copy of an sdcard image prepared with phoenixcard

2 Linux

There is no Phoenixcard tool for Linux. Instead you have to use the dd able sdcard image

3 Checking format/erase flash option

When upgrading an A10 device using the USB/Livesuit method you can force the nand flash fomat asking yes to the popup question that appears

To get similar functionality when upgrading the firmware using the SD Card alternative we must to do some changes in a boot.ini file hidden in the firmware image.

To reach that boot.ini we need to access to the hidden boot filesystem FAT partition located at offset = 0x15000000 ( 21 MB)

So, doing something like

           mount -t vfat -o loop,offset=0x1500000 XXXXX  /mnt/tmp       

where XXXXX can be your raw SD card device (/dev/sdb, /dev/sdf ... ] ) or a not compressed dd-able image file ( i.e. homlet_4.0_v1.0_20120609.img )

On the mount point (/mnt/tmp in this example) we should have something like

       -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  52108 ene  1  1980 boot.axf
       -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    121 ene  1  1980 boot.ini
       -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 181168 ene  1  1980 drv_de.drv
       -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 344813 ene  1  1980 font24.sft
       -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 357443 ene  1  1980 font32.sft
       drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   2048 ene  1  1980 linux
       -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    512 ene  1  1980 magic.bin
       drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   2048 ene  1  1980 os_show
       -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  41436 ene  1  1980 script0.bin
       -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  41436 ene  1  1980 script.bin
       drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   2048 ene  1  1980 sprite
       -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 197340 ene  1  1980 sprite.axf
       -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root     72 ene  1  1980 sprite.ini

Editing the boot.ini file you have something like

        [system]
        start_os_name = linux
        timeout       = -1
        display_device= 0
        display_mode  = 0
        erase_flash = 1               ### <---- This is THE option we are talking about

        [linux]

Adding or removing the erase_flash = 1 option controls if the nand flash will be formatted (erased completely) or not before the upgrading the new firmware.

When the erase_flash = 1 option is present all data on the nand flash is erased, lost and all the flash partition are rebuilt.
When this option is NOT present only the data partitions included on the firmware image will be overwritted. Normally this partitions are system, recovery and cache. The user data partition and the "internal" sdcard partition will be remain untouched.

Operation on device

  • Power off the a1000/2000
  • Insert the SD card to the device
  • Power on the device, the red led is on, the blue led starts blinking
  • Wait the blue led stops blinking, power off the device
  • Unplug the SD card (important or you will start upgrading again!!)
  • Power on the device, you will get ICS

Changing the language can be done by navigating in the settings menu to the icon with the letter A, enter that menu by pressing OK, then move to the top item at the right menu and press OK again to get the list.

Pictures

For those wanting to see some pictures of Mele A1000 running ICS (in french), you can go to http://www.manageek.fr/zeblog/matos/mele-a1000/