Hi! So I'm wondering if anyone know if there is\have been any development for
the Tizzbird Stick N1 (M\G) ?
We have this Android-stick in stock at my store, but I'm not sure if I'm going to get it or not yet. Depends the development, as I'd really like to see the capabilities for it. I believe it's a lowbrand tho. so I might be out of luck.
Anyone know anything?
I searched the forums, and did a google search. Didnt find much.
regards,
Dag M.
Hi there!
I own one of those, and there are a handful of (german-speaking) people activly posting in this forum http://forum.tizzbird-tv.de/ about the Tizzbird N1. - The problem with that forum is that they heavily censor it - as soon as anyone posts info on how to "get in", or if someone asks uncomfortable questions - those posts gets deleted.
They sell it really cheap for 30€ (not all the time, but twice for one day @ redcoon) and although the Wifi-Chip (or the drivers for it) are really crappy, the media player part is really nice.
update: I've did a little research, and here is a little list of relevant links about the tizzbird n1:
==== Marketing Product Pages ====
http://valueplus.co.kr/english/product/product_player_n1.html
http://www.tizzbird.com/eng/index.php?mm_code=719&sm_code=755
http://tizzbird-tv.de/tizzbird/tizzbird-n1.html
==== Official Firmware ====
http://www.tizzbird.com/eng/index.php?mm_code=726&sm_code=727&board_search_head_word=stick+n1
http://download.tizzbird-tv.de/TizzBird_N1G_update_GMS_V3_20_13072719.tzbird
==== German Support Forum (posting info about root-access prohibited) ====
http://forum.tizzbird-tv.de/viewforum.php?f=11
==== GPL-Code for Tizzbird N10, N20 & N30 - but not for N1? ====
http://www.tizzbird.com/eng/index.php?mm_code=752&sm_code=754
==== Kernel Sources ? ====
http://www.cnx-software.com/2012/03...k-n1-android-ics-hdmiusb-dongle-media-player/
http://www.cnx-software.com/2012/07...hips-tcc8925-mini-pcs-cx-01-z900-tizzbird-n1/
https://github.com/cnxsoft/telechips-linux
Yeah, the pretend to be "community friendly and supportive" but once you actually start digging in, they get quite agressive and boot you out.
Anyways, I got a N1 a couple of days myself now (snagged it for 30 bucks at another RedCoon sale ) and I am surprised.
Got it pretty much only to tinker around with it and this thing suits more perfectly for that than I imagined.
Esp. that fact they used a simple SD card as "internal flash storage" - my guess is because a simple SD is cheaper than an actual eMMC flash chip, but it's so cool on so many levels for us.
I already found out how to replace the 4GB SD with a bigger one (have a 16GB in mine ATM).
I'll post some more details about it here later, got a few things I want to test and/or prepare first (thinking of some "easy to use cloning script"), but long story short:
You need to copy the bootloader to the very end (last few blocks) of the SD you want to use.
Once the BL is at the proper place it already boots from the new SD again, to be sure everything is as it's supposed to be one should apply an update via USB (I'm not 100% sure about a possible pointer to the BL that needs to be corrected, which the update does).
After that the partition information has to be edited to make the userdata partition larger and you're done.
thanks for the info HellcatDroid!
It would be great if you could elaborate on how to put the bootloader at the end of the sd-card.
Also I would love to get info how to get root into the stock firmware, that crippled down root-firmware that they allow to exist in the official tizzbird forum doesn't really satisfy my needs
I did it via a hex editor, but it should be doable with a few "dd" commands as well - that's one of the things I still want to try, find the propper dd params to copy the BL over.
If you dumped the original SD into a file using dd, at the very end of the image file you will find the bootloader and the very last block of the SD is a "header" telling the bootrom of the N1 a few things about it, so it can properly locate and load it.
So what you got to do is to copy those last ~230k from the image to the end of the new SD card.
As said, I'll try to write a small shell script that does it.
The rooting is even more easy (Stonecold would kill me if he'd read this, lol):
For when running on Linux (no can do on Windows, as Windows doesn't know the ext4 FS):
Since you got the SD in your PC anyways already, just mount partition 2 (e.g. if the SD is sdc on your PC, mount /dev/sdc2).
That is the partition where the Android system is sitting on.
Then just copy over the files needed for root to where they need to go, chown/chmod them properly, unmount and done
I used the "update-supersu.zip" I had for my Nexus7 to grab the required files.
But I'm planning to make a simple rooting script as well.
So if all goes as planned it'll come down to
- insert original SD
- run script 1
- insert new SD
- run script 2
- to root run script 3
brilliant! I would love to see those scripts
way easier than start tinkering with that stuff myself
One thing I wonder about - over at the official forum you said that a simple dd copy didn't work - is that if the target sd-card is bigger or also for an sd-card of equals size? because with equal size simple dd copy of the sd-card should still work, even if some things need so be exactly at the end.
Yup, just a dd didn't work because the new SD card was larger and the bootloader ended up being somewhere in the middle of the card instead of at the end.
While your thought of "dd to equal size cards" is totally correct, it might still fail due to the fact every card is not 100% exact same size counting down to last byte.
There ususally is a tiny size difference (a few bytes to kbytes) between cards, even if they are supposed to be same, so the bootloader might end up truncated or not exactely at the end.
If, however, the size of the cards is 100% the same, down to the last byte, then yes, a simple dd clone would work.
HellcatDroid said:
... There ususally is a tiny size difference (a few bytes to kbytes) between cards, even if they are supposed to be same, so the bootloader might end up truncated or not exactely at the end. ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh! Didn't know that. I thought same marketing size means not the same size they write on the box, but at least the same size between those that are marketed with the same GB numbers on their stickers.
OK, here we go, I slapped together a few scripts for prepping a new (and larger) SD card to work in the N1 and while having the SD in the PC to aplly some root.
* hints at attachment of this post
The scripts might still have problems and not work on any Linux out there, but it's a start.
If there's more people interested and joining in on this I might continue but for now I got what I wanted - more storage and root.
Hi
I think I destroyed my MiniSC cand! The N1 is dead. I tried to insert the card in a linux and gparted did not see anything. What can I do?
thank you for your help
somade said:
Hi
I think I destroyed my MiniSC cand! The N1 is dead. I tried to insert the card in a linux and gparted did not see anything. What can I do?
thank you for your help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Could you post how you got there? what did you do to the sd-card that destroyed it?
Hi.
If you got a dump from a working state of the SD you can just dd it back onto the card.
If you don't, it can still be recovered but might need bit more work.
Two options:
find someone who gives you a dump of their card and use the write-card script from my above post to write it to your SD.
Problem with this: a working dump contains copyrighted code, like the bootloader, it technically it's "not OK" to share it
we come up with another script that only contains an "empty" image (i.e. only partitioning information) and that takes the bootloader and recovery from the official update and gets the card into a state that it boots into recovery and lets you install a working system using the official update from USB (option in the recovery menu)
Option 2 would be nicer, IMO.
I'll try to make up said script
Thank you for your immediate answer!.
Actually I dont know what has happened, maybe the sharp instrument I used to remove the plastic cover scratch it...But now when I put it in a card reader the led of the reader switch off and the card is heated!!!. And also when I put it in the N1 the blue led turns off!.
So I bought a new empty micro Sd .
Waiting for your script to partition the new card and then boot in recovery mode and install a firmware....
Because I am not expert to linux please give me a lot of details how to do this.
Thanks again!
HellcatDroid said:
we come up with another script that only contains an "empty" image (i.e. only partitioning information) and that takes the bootloader and recovery from the official update and gets the card into a state that it boots into recovery and lets you install a working system using the official update from USB (option in the recovery menu
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you think the bootloader is even part of the offical updates? wouldn't it be "best practice" to leave the bootloader partition alone as long as possible (and normally firmware updates don't need to change the bootloader)
update: something else I've just found, those might be kernel sources for our Tizzbird N1:
http://www.cnx-software.com/2012/07...hips-tcc8925-mini-pcs-cx-01-z900-tizzbird-n1/
-->
https://github.com/cnxsoft/telechips-linux
Yep, the bootloader is in the update - at least in the 3.20 one.
And yes, usually the bootloader shouldn't be touched because that's usually the one thing that can "perma-brick" Android devices.
However, sometimes the manufacturer updates it (fixing bugs, adding functionality) - on my Nexus7 they updated the bootloader on pretty much every update and also Samsung updates their bootloaders every now and then (and every single update flashes the current one).
Last, not least, on the N1 the bootloader isn't on a partition but at unpartitioned space at the very last blocks of the SD (=> reason for a simple dd to a larger card not booting).
Ohyay at the possible kernel sources!
It'd be so cool if that's really sources able to build a kernel for the N1 with - I think we might be able to even get custom recovery (CWM and the likes) on the N1 if those sources work
OK, while trying to recreate a working SD card w/o using a dump of a working one I found out a few more things - some of them still need figuring out if we wanna do it properly.
There seem to be TWO bootloaders!
A stage1 bootloader of ~1kB size located at the third and second last block of the SD. If it's missing the N1 can't boot and it looks like ARM code (haven't tried to disassamble it yet), I assume the bootrom loads and executes that piece of code which in turn parses the header (see below) and load/starts the stage2 bootloader (the one also found in the FW update).
The very last block of the SD is a "header block" with some information beeing parsed either by the bootrom or (more likely) the stage1 bootloader.
The headerblock contains (among numerous other unkown data) the size of the ("stage2") bootloader (the one that then actually loads and boots the Linux kernel of the Android OS, this is also the one contained in the FW update) and the usable size of the SD card! (everything works fine though if the SD size is wrong and a proper FW update updates the header during writing of the bootloader and also sets the correct size).
Also, the headerblock has a checksum of which I have no clue on how it is generated.
All that is just educated guesses and might be totally off, but for now it looks like it's not too far off.
So, for now we can assume the following boot sequence:
Boot-ROM
-> loads stage1 bootloader from fixed position "SDsize - 3 blocks" (1 block = 512bytes)
stage1 bootloader at fixed position on SD
-> checks checksum of headerblock (?), gets size of stage2 bootloader from headerblock, locates stage2 bootloader based on it's size and loads/executes it
stage2 bootloader on variable position on SD
-> base initialisation of hardware
-> checks for recovery trigger (the red button on the remote control) and boots kernel from partition 6 if trigger present
-> boots kernel from partition 1 if recovery was not triggered
-> enters fastboot mode when booting the kernel fails
Kernel
-> loads base drivers and boots up the system
you're brilliant Hellcat!
And did you also find both bootloader stages inside the firmware updates?
Another question that came to my mind while reading your post (fastboot..)
Is there a way to use the Tizzbird as USB-slave? So to make use of adb and fastboot and such stuff? Okey adb could also be used via network I guess..
somade said:
Hi
I think I destroyed my MiniSC cand! The N1 is dead. I tried to insert the card in a linux and gparted did not see anything. What can I do?
thank you for your help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Somade, do you have a linux running on your pc? If no, download and get a knoppix running. and then contact me via pm. I have the original n1 image so no problem to recover the n1.
sebastian.heyn said:
Somade, do you have a linux running on your pc? If no, download and get a knoppix running. and then contact me via pm. I have the original n1 image so no problem to recover the n1.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Welcome to our rouge and non-censored Tizzbird N1 forum Sebastian!
I wonder if you found us here, if the German Tizzbird support also already knows about us
update: I just remembered, I've sent you the link as PM over in the official forums, thats how you landed here.
Sharing your sd-card image might be a copyright violation, and if you're profile name is strongly linked to you're real identity you should definitly be cautious with such things on public forums...
kaefert said:
And did you also find both bootloader stages inside the firmware updates?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope, unfortunately the stage1 bootloader is not in the update :-/
kaefert said:
Is there a way to use the Tizzbird as USB-slave? So to make use of adb and fastboot and such stuff? Okey adb could also be used via network I guess..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, it works, even officially XD
Go to the TizzBird settings -> "System Settings" -> "Advanced Settings"
It has an option "OTG Mode" there, set it to "Debug".
If you have your N1 connected to your PC via the micro-USB port (and hence your PC powering the N1!) you can use ADB and fastboot just as usual
I have not yet tried if that option is persistant, i.e. it survives a power loss.
When booting the kernel fails it should fall back to fastboot mode, so flashing a new kernel w/o pulling the SD should be possible - need to test this a bit more, though.
What works is, if you're rooted and and you fire the command "reboot bootloader" from a root shell, that gets you into fastboot mode no matter what (given you applied above mentioned setting first).
But needing a running system to get into fastboot mode kinda defeats the purpose of it - this aint Ouya which is a total fail when it comes to fastboot XD
---------- Post added at 09:26 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:05 AM ----------
kaefert said:
I wonder if you found us here, if the German Tizzbird support also already knows about us
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Eventually they will, I'd say.
And I'd love to see their faces when they do XD
Short story. Bought a local cheap china tablet based on MTK6852 chipset with 8GB internal storage, running KitKat 4.4.2, but only 500MB available for apps. Being a complete android noob, but a savvy computer guy, started investigating and playing with link2sd, which did not work. Eventually found out I can simply edit EBR1 and EBR2 and that will increase internal storage to ~4G which would be great. Again, being an android noob, I installed droid tools for MKT, did a scatter backup and a whole system backup.
then, just when I was about to manually edit EBR files, I discovered this app: youtube video id: V9aFPNcwajw (sorry as I a new poster I am unable to post outer links) Being super happy about it and forgot to read comments I just went to run it. It failed. Later I discovered its only for MTK6577 devices and it most likely messed up my EBR.
Now I am stucked; I cen get into recovery mode, but factory reset does not work, leading into "mount /data error force format /data" error (my guess is because my EBR is messed up recovery cannot find /data folder?). SP flash tools worked and I have downloaded a couple of different EBR files, but none worked.
The biggest problem: my recovery seems to be incorrect, no idea why thou. All I see is: firmware.info mount.info, phone.info, scatter.txt file and a big "system" folder. Now to do a SP flash tools ready file I would have to select "prepare blocks for flash" in the MTK droid tools, but that requires "files.md5" file, which I dont have (again, no idea why not as I've done a complete backup from same droid tools, unless I forgot to thick something?)
Also the company that makes this tables, actually brands them, refuses to send me any files and wants me to bring in the tablet.
Is there anything else I can do on my own or its time for repair service? My guess is I cant do much without EBR files, but have no idea where to find the correct ones as this is a small country based company and I have yet not found under what other brands it is sold.
Hello! First post here!
Just got a new STF-L09 on the amazon cyber Monday sale (had an iphone before) and in my excitement to start messing with it, I managed to brick it.
I was following this guide: https://forum.xda-developers.com/honor-9/development/beta-twrp-3-1-1-0-t3654355 and did a full format through TWRP to try and get rid of the encryption in order to root it. Now my device is in a bootloop. I've been looking through older posts here on XDA, boycracked and a few other places but there seems to be quite a bit of contradictory information and I don't want to make anything worse.
What I have:
- An unlocked bootloader
- Working TWRP 3.1.1
- ADB and fastboot (over USB from my laptop running linux)
- A microSD card
- Ability to boot to force update process
What doesn't work:
- my TWRP backup (I didn't realize the one I tried to make failed/got deleted).
- the stock eRecovery tool. Even on stable wifi it cannot retrieve package information from server. I'm assuming this is because Huawei hasn't made the recovery firmware available over this channel for this model.
I'm now trying to do a force update using a stock ROM and my external SD, but I'm having trouble for two reasons:
1. I'm not exactly sure what my initial firmware was, so I'm not sure which ROM to pick.
2. I can't successfully transfer the contents of the update.zip I'm trying to use into a dload folder on the root of my sd. I'm assuming this is because the sd card is formatted to vfat and the UPDATE.APP file is larger than 4GB and therefore not supported on vfat.
Can anybody tell me:
A. How to find out what my initial firmware designation would have been? Phone was recently purchased for UK market, blue colour, 64GB internal memory. Came with EMUI 5.1. I have S/Ns and so on if that helps.
B. How to perform force update with microSD in my situation? Can I format the card to NTFS or another format that supports >4GB filesizes? Am I using the wrong ROM (This is the one I'm trying to use: http://androidhost.ru/v5 )? What files exactly should go into /dload/ at the root of the sd?
C. Is there another procedure I should try in my case? I am able to use fastboot, and I understand it would be possible to flash files onto the device using that, but I'm just getting started with Android and I'm not really sure about the functions of the various images/partitions (eg. data, cust, boot etc.). Is there any hope of the eRecovery tool coming online?
I know some of you have had some success coming from similar situations. I'd really appreciate any help you guys could give. Happy to throw some dosh to anyone who can help put me back in business!
Fixed my own problem 5 minutes later with help from this thread:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/honor-9/help/help-to-restore-l09-bootloop-t3651641
Wrote up my procedure there. But thanks anyways guys!
:victory:
Hi all, I am new to the forums and I think that I need some help with a custom android project.
[Background]
I have bought a Meraki MC74, This phone is a VOIP office desk phone that has a nice 7 inch LCD screen that make for a ballin' custom intercom phone/general android device.
Cisco Meraki has dropped support for this phone, so even if I wanted to pay for a subscription, I couldn't. So custom android it is
[So what I know]
I know that the OEM OS is android 4.X.X with a custom Cisco Meraki dialer to do Meraki's cloud mumbojumbo. I was able to use ADB and Fastboot to flash ClockworkMod, and a custom version of Android 4.1.2 to get the device somewhat working. (it had lots of bugs and problems; but it was running android free of the Cisco Dialer!)
I was able to do this with the help of fellow xdadevelopers forum user "andrewmospak" (If you're reading this; I'm the dude from Ebay. And of course, thanks bro for the help so far!)
The storage is on a 4 GB Kingston EMMC.
[What I wanted for an end goal]
I wanted to have an interesting discontinued Meraki Desk phone that runs android and get all the functions of the phone working within android.
I also wanted to expand the storage from 4GB to 32GB. ( involving de-soldering existing EMMC and solder in the bigger EMMC.)
[What caused me to write this]
I would be fine if I wanted to stop there, but I wanted to try to install a GSI of android 9 in place of 4.1.2.
Again, this wouldn't be a big deal but I had to go and screw this up. I tried to resize some of the partitions (namely system to accommodate the bigger image of the android 9 GSI)but I accidentally completely killed the system,cache, and recovery partitions.
So, as one of the first steps of trouble shooting, I went to the hardest solution. The de-soldering of the EMMC.
I reached out to Andrewmospak again and asked for a full system emmc dump to try to flash his working file system to a spare 4GB EMMC to see an example of the file system of a working android EMMC. I received the image and flashed it to a spare Toshiba chip and soldered that to the phone, but I was unable to get the phone to boot into android right away, only able to load up fastboot.
Interestingly, I know that the EMMC is working because fastboot reports the S/N as the S/N of Andrewmospak's device and not the one written on my device.
[What I don't know]
Should some of the partitions on the EMMC not be recognized by Gparted in Debian? Like the User/System and others are partitioned ext4 while others are just not recognized.
Why when trying to flash partitions using Fastboot, wont fastboot recognise a recovery partition. It would just say that the partition just doesn't exist. same story with boot.
[What needs help]
I would like to know why fastboot wont see flashable volumes when using the EMMC dump flashed to another spare Toshiba EMMC, it is clearly there.
I would like to know how to reconstruct a volume to fix missing ones, and the number of partitions android needs to run.
Would I be able to flash an image of my working device to a 32gb emmc and just expand the system and user partitions into that extra space?
I will appreciate all help given to assist me and others that want a working device instead of a paperweight. ogChamp::fingers-crossed:
MOD ACTION:
Thread closed as duplicate. Follow the original HERE
Is it possible to restore an android phone back to its original factory state if all of its internal EMMC flash memory has become corrupted?
Firstly, I apologise for the verbose way in which I’ve phrased the question. However, there are literally hundreds of guides on the web that misleadingly claim to show how to backup and restore everything on a phone, but which actually do nothing of the sort. So I felt it best to try and be as precise as possible.
When I buy a new PC, the first thing I generally do is to boot into a Linux live USB distribution and save an image of the entire hard disk. This enables me to restore the PC back to its factory state if something goes horribly wrong.
[As an aside, this is a massive pain in the ass to do and shouldn’t really be necessary. But since PC manufacturers stopped providing separate OS install disks with their computers (presumably this is a deliberate Microsoft policy), a disk image has become the only 100% reliable way of restoring a PC back to its factory state when something goes wrong.]
Anyway, I would like to do something similar with my Android phone (which is a Motorola Moto G4). But what is a relatively simple (if time consuming) task in the PC world is proving to be surprisingly difficult in the Android world. What I’ve done to my phone so far is the following:
I unlocked the bootloader, and installed TWRP.
I then booted into TWRP and created a ‘nandroid’ backup.
I assumed this would be enough to enable me to restore it back to a factory state. But I’ve since done some more research, and it turns out that TWRP does not actually allow you to backup all the partitions on the internal flash memory. And at least one of the excluded partitions stores important stuff like the phone’s IMEI number! So whilst a nandroid backup is useful, it is definitely not a backup of the entire phone.
I’ve noticed that there are some guides on how to copy the entire EMMC flash drive (mmcblk0) to an image file. This process seems somewhat similar to how I would take a disk image on a PC. However, no one explains how to flash the image file back to mmcblk0 if the phone gets bricked.
It also throws up some other question that I can’t find definitive answers to. For example, where is the bootloader actually stored? Is it somewhere on mmcblk0, or is it stored on an entirely separate (and hopefully read-only) flash chip in the same way that a PC’s BIOS would be? If it’s the former, then how would you boot the phone if the mmcblk0 chip became entirely corrupted? Also, where is the Android Debug Bridge utility stored? Is that also on the mmcblk0 chip, or somewhere else?
It’s frustrating that, despite hours of googling, I can’t find definitive answers to these fundamental questions. I would be grateful if anyone here could point me in the right direction.
Thnaks in advance.