Azpen A729 fastboot interface - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

For those of you who have inter-connectivity through ADB with your Azpen A729 , but have lamented that fastboot seems not to work with this device, listen up. Please note, however that I will not be responsible for what you may do to your Azpen tablet whilst at the fastboot command line. From there you're on your own.
It's all quite easy. This Azpen tablet presents itself with USB vendor id 1f3a to your PC. Surely you're aware of this already as you've been communicating with your tablet through the ADB shell and have included something similar to SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="1f3a", MODE="0666" in your udev rules. Oh yeah, remember that... {idVendor}=="1f3a"? It all comes back to you now. All you need to do with fastboot is to explicitly identify the USB vendor id as 0x1f3a on the command line. Let's give it a try:
First put the Azpen A729 in bootloader mode:
Code:
# adb root
# adb reboot bootloader
Have a sip of coffee.
Now invoke fastboot with the following:
Code:
# fastboot -i 0x1f3a devices
Android Fastboot fastboot
Notice now that your tablet responds as an Android device in fastboot mode and all fastboot command-line arguments are available to you. Please be careful. May I suggest this one:
Code:
# fastboot -i 0x1f3a continue
resuming boot...
OKAY [ 0.009s]
finished. total time: 0.009s
That simply continues the boot process and you're back to normal on your tablet.
Once again, please be careful. Be safe. You've been empowered.
- PoFolk

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How do you unlock the Azpen A729 bootloader?
Again, this is quite simple. You must do absolutely nothing. The Azpen A729 tablet ships with the bootloader unlocked and with the super user (su) binary enabled. Here is the fastboot response from my unrooted, stock Azpen A729:
Code:
# fastboot -i 0x1f3a oem unlock
...
FAILED (remote: system is not locked)
finished. total time: 0.016s
Now if you are adventurous, skeptical, curious, or all of the above and need further "proof" that your Azpen is already unlocked, you could very easy toggle its bootloader status with the following command. HOWEVER, I suggest that you firstly backup your user data as you'll want to unlock it again and in the process of toggling between lock and unlock the user data will be wiped. Still want to do it? Here ya go:
Code:
# fastboot -i 0x1f3a oem lock
...
OKAY [ 0.016s]
finished. total time: 0.016s
Now your Azpen is locked. To unlock it again simply execute:
Code:
# fastboot -i 0x1f3a oem unlock
...
OKAY [ 10.707s]
finished. total time: 10.707s
Notice that it took a little more than 10 seconds to unlock. Why? Your user data was being wiped, but not-to-worry. You backed it up before running this experiment.
Once again, be careful. Be safe. You've been empowered.
- PoFolk

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Have you tried flashing a backup of your system img yet?