A13 tablet

Allwinner A13 Chinese Tablet

90% of info will come from: https://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page

Hardware

• Board model: TW_A0910_16B_V1.1_0830 (silkscreened). The id tag is searchable as "TW_A0910"
• Manufacturing: 2013 08 30 (silkscreened)
• Screen size: 9" , 800x480
• touch controller: gslx680 - https://github.com/jabjoe/sunxi-gslx680
  • Extracted kernel module (.ko), and firmware(.fw)[really just a register values for settings] from driver: https://jii.moe/4kLOCPMVl.tar.gz / sha256sum: 29d2218ba11ef76dc51c5f949a2c53e7f2ce1677b28782178d30ba1fab1c027e
• wifi: Realtek RTL8188 - has been in linux kernel forever at this point
• Power management: AXP209 - drivers should already be in linux-arm-kernel / datenblatt: https://linux-sunxi.org/AXP209
• Flash: Hynix
• RAM: 256X16 DDR3 Generic (4GB)

Flashing

• FEL mode procedure
  • Detach all wiring.
  • Hold volume and power for about 3 secs. Screen will remain black, but green light should turn on.
  • Connecting USB and running lsusb should give you a device with an ID of 1f3a:efe8
  • Build sunxi-tools and "$ ./sunxi-fel ver" should return a string like: AWUSBFEX soc=00001625(A13) 00000001 ver=0001 44 08 scratchpad=00007e00 00000000 00000000
• No obviously exposed UART/JTAG - might be tied to uSD slot
• Entering FEL is part of the boot process (handled by the masked BROM): https://linux-sunxi.org/Boot_Process
  • https://linux-sunxi.org/FEL/USBBoot
  • The BROM, proper: https://linux-sunxi.org/BROM
• LiveSuit factory flashing software (Linux, OSX, Win) for Allwinner: http://linux-sunxi.org/LiveSuit
• 'PhoenixSuit' (may be Windows only): https://github.com/linux-sunxi/sunxi-livesuite

Bootloader & Onboard Flash

• A13 is now mainlined on U-boot
• Caveat is that to run completely from the NAND Flash (MTD device), you need some patches
  • MTD device driver as well for using the onboard flash directly
• VERY IMPORTANT info over here on how to do that: https://linux-sunxi.org/Installing_to_NAND
  • nand-part is used to build the descriptor. Remember to keep partitions for the chain loaders.

Kernel

• Reusing older sources: https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_Kernel [most likely not necessary to reuse, because of Mali400 being pretty opensource now]

Debian on A13 (sun5i)

• Much info https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Allwinner