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Hi Everybody,
so i was looking at the teardown for our little baby, when i came across this:
Toshiba THGBM5G6A2JBAIR 8GB Flash
So i went online and do a little search. It turns out that Toshiba builds other sizes of this particular chip.
Looking at the specsheet, it seems that every single spec is the same (can't post the link yet)
So i was wondering if we can replace this damn chip (since i'm stuck with an 8gb version of the Nex 4 (Yeah..since they don't sell in Italy...i had to find a compromise) I know it would take a lot of soldering works, but the real problem is: How to install the OS and stuff?
So i'm planning to ger one of this chips, or a broken phone with one of this (from 16 to idk) and try to do some research, in order to get if i can do this substitution.
So..anyone tryed this before that can help me out with some advices?
Thanks everyone and for the mods...if this is not the right place to post this, i'm sorry...:angel::angel::angel:
p.s.
Sorry for my bad English
Don't attempt to replace the chip with a soldering iron. You need someone with a dedicated SMT rework station that can handle BGA devices. (this chip is a VFBGA according to the datasheet).
Even then, it may not boot at the end of it... Be prepared to have a bricked phone... On the other hand, if it works, you may be able to make a buisness out of selling 32GB Nexus 7's until Google/LG makes them....
Basically, it's not something an end user could do.
Ok, so since is a BGA device, reballing and reflowing should do the trick.
I know that is something that an end user shouldn't do...but give it a try should be nice...of course i would not go straight for the replacement on the n4, i will start with something else before.
Installing it is one thing, it's getting the important stuff on there that is the problem.
It's not a case of just fastboot flash, since there are more partitions than that.
Plus you need fastboot to be there in the first place, JTAG would probably cover that, but the rest? God knows.
Yeah..that's my problem afterall...i mean..put the chip on that is kinda fine..i mean i do this on notebooks so i'm used to reballing and stuff.
But the OS thing is going to drive me mad...meh..need to figure out how to do that!
Just don't do it. You're gonna regret it. Laptops is one thing but a cellular device is another. Chips are way smaller and complicated. It's not as easy as you may think.
But it's your phone, you can do whatever you like to it.
This is retarded. You realize those connectors are so small it requires machines worth millions of dollars to attach and connect. Might as well use some Elmer's glue or a hot glue gun if you're gonna do it yourself, or hey maybe even some ear wax, you'll get the same result.
Ok, nevermind.
I'll do some tests with my machine and some old crappy phone...u never know what is going to happen..lol
Tnx anyway guys!!
Everyone else here is an unambitious ass
DragGuardiano said:
Ok, nevermind.
I'll do some tests with my machine and some old crappy phone...u never know what is going to happen..lol
Tnx anyway guys!!
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Dude you shouldn't let people detour you, soldering chips is not that hard and the size of the chip doesn't really make a difference for BGA most of these guys probably have never soldered a BGA chip in their life so how would they know how hard it is. I would suggest that you practice on some old pcs or an old game system that you dont care about. the hard part about this would be getting your hands on the new chip (and weather or not it is pre-balled because re-balling is a *****), from what I can tell toshiba only will sell the chip in a minimum quantity of 5 chips per order so if all goes well you may be able to charge people to upgrade their nexus 4s.
People are to scared now-a-days to get their hands dirty and take risks to get what they want and I commend anyone willing to put in the time, learn a new skill, and get what they want even though no one will just give it to them.
I hope you decide to do this anyway.
PS. The bootloader/recovery should be a separate memory module all together and should still exist when the chip is replaced, so if I had to guess i would say that you could just flash a new rom assuming your bootloder is unlocked and the chip comes pre-formatted.
Everything is held on the eMMC chip, nothing is separate.
I tried to get some help in the Q&A section, but it appears this is more technical/hardware seeking question than just generic "which phone" thread.
I have been suggested Samsung Galaxy Spica/i5700 by boofman (thank you), but the device is cost prohibitive.
I would very much appreciate anyone's suggestion.
I am planning a presentation to demonstrate the benefits of JTAG for data recovery on embedded systems. The audience has approx. 12th grade education, but higher than average computer understanding.
I have most of the equipment already, including a uLINK2, Bus Blaster, and Raspberry Pi for the UART-to-USB, and OpenOCD for the software.
What I am missing is the simplest cell phone (or other inexpensive embedded device) to make the demonstration.
I would like to connect to the device and list the devices on the JTAG chain, and recover the data from them.
What cell phone brand and model would work well for this presentation?
I would need to know the JTAG points, have access to the data sheets of the onboard chips, and since it is out of my own pocket, I hope to get the phones on eBay for a low price.
Any suggestions are welcome.
huperetes said:
I tried to get some help in the Q&A section, but it appears this is more technical/hardware seeking question than just generic "which phone" thread.
I have been suggested Samsung Galaxy Spica/i5700 by boofman (thank you), but the device is cost prohibitive.
I would very much appreciate anyone's suggestion.
I am planning a presentation to demonstrate the benefits of JTAG for data recovery on embedded systems. The audience has approx. 12th grade education, but higher than average computer understanding.
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Click to collapse
You'd be surprised what kids know these days.
huperetes said:
I have most of the equipment already, including a uLINK2, Bus Blaster, and Raspberry Pi for the UART-to-USB, and OpenOCD for the software.
What I am missing is the simplest cell phone (or other inexpensive embedded device) to make the demonstration.
I would like to connect to the device and list the devices on the JTAG chain, and recover the data from them.
What cell phone brand and model would work well for this presentation?
I would need to know the JTAG points, have access to the data sheets of the onboard chips, and since it is out of my own pocket, I hope to get the phones on eBay for a low price.
Any suggestions are welcome.
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Click to collapse
Check out gsm-forum, under the hardware repair section.
Googling for jtag pins and your phone model number usually works for me. I'd assume you might have to wait a little bit for brand new devices, unless you feel like scoping the pins to find out which is which or hope their labeled.
These individuals are not kids. :fingers-crossed:
Excellent resource at the other site. Thanks!
But, I think I do not think I made myself clear regarding what I am looking for:crying:. I am not looking for info on how to JTAG a specific phone.
I am looking for 3 or 4 of the same model of cell phone that
I can pick up on eBay or similar for reasonable price (<$30/phone),
the JTAG TAP is known on the motherboard, and
it would be a bonus if the JTAG command set was known (besides the basic requirement).
This would allow me to make test run on one of the phones, then demonstrate the use of JTAG on the others.
The Samsung Galaxy Spica is a good phone, but I do not have the budget at $100+/phone. I need to find something cheaper. It does not need to be fancy telephone, or even smart phone - just have sufficient JTAG documentation.
If anyone has any ideas on what to use for this demo, I am still in need of a good idea.
You can look into any of the older HTC phones for this. I think that would be your best bet. I've done plenty of hardware repair, disassembling, reassambling, flashing, etc... on Android, & non-Android phones, & from my experience, the older HTC phones are the best. Specifically, concentrate on the GSM ones, such as for T-Mobile. Look into HTC myTouch 3G Slide (awesome little thing) , HTC G2 (one of the best keyboard phones ever), myTouch 4g, myTouch 4G Slide (overheating, self-destructing piece of crap), even the HD2 & the HD7. These are all devices that you can get for around $30 or so with a cracked, but still working digitizer, or some other kind of problem. Screens & other parts for them are very cheap as well.
Also, these are all known to RIFF Box. Look it up. You can do JTAG repair with these, & RIFF Box have all the JTAG ports labeled & documented. They might have some of the documentation right on their site, but I'm not totally sure. Anyway, check it out & see. I think this will be exactly what you're looking for.
Excellent! Thank you very much.
I have looked at looked at many commercial products, including RIFF Box. I narrowed the selections down the RIFF and ORT, but they are both very expensive for demonstration purposes.
I do love the fact that one can buy "jigs", "clips" or "adapters" (names change depending on vendors) which removes the soldering requirements for some of the phones. Except, these are still very expensive. :cyclops:
Again, thanks. I will look into these.
3ndymion218 said:
You can look into any of the older HTC phones for this. I think that would be your best bet. I've done plenty of hardware repair, disassembling, reassambling, flashing, etc... on Android, & non-Android phones, & from my experience, the older HTC phones are the best. Specifically, concentrate on the GSM ones, such as for T-Mobile. Look into HTC myTouch 3G Slide (awesome little thing) , HTC G2 (one of the best keyboard phones ever), myTouch 4g, myTouch 4G Slide (overheating, self-destructing piece of crap), even the HD2 & the HD7. These are all devices that you can get for around $30 or so with a cracked, but still working digitizer, or some other kind of problem. Screens & other parts for them are very cheap as well.
Also, these are all known to RIFF Box. Look it up. You can do JTAG repair with these, & RIFF Box have all the JTAG ports labeled & documented. They might have some of the documentation right on their site, but I'm not totally sure. Anyway, check it out & see. I think this will be exactly what you're looking for.
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I'd go with Galaxy S 1 as it's really cool to work on and relatively well documented and demonstration on such stuff always looks well. But if you want something low-budget. I've seen JTAG pads on Nokia E50'ish stuff. Or try with some Samsung S3000's, these are pretty cheap. But I don't know how's JTAG there.
as @3ndymion218 told you , search old HTc .. also some Samsung that I think cheap could help too .
Samsung F480 , F490 , U700 , U900 etc ... some news Corby model also .. I think cheap .
I could help if you were near to me . I have 3 phones that I could offer you ...
Thank you for the further info.
Definitely will try to track down the HTC and Nokia information.
Samsung is a bit pricy as you said, but maybe down the road.
Again, thank you all!
what is stopping development on newer phones. is it possible to root this phone at all? i am willing to help in any way possible to make it happen. i have a few years programming experience and would love to learn. is there anyone who could help me understand what needs done?
The trouble is with some carriers or manufacturers, carriers make it harder/impossible to unlock bootloader, and manufacturers, well, mtk is problem for itself but take example of k8 from 2016 there is algorithm that checks if it was tampered with kernel or system and phone simply refuse to boot. Also in most cases there is a way to root the phone but if phone is not so popular (most of mid-range LG phones) people who have skills doesn't bother with them and also because they have to own device to root properly it or to make custom ROM.
I will furnish a known developer with this model phone if needed. I can buy them for 40 bucks. Its a nice phone. Quad core and 16gb. Has qualcomm gpu. Phone doesnt lag unless an app is crashing ect
Hey guys, hope this is the right place to post this. Is there a difference between the 2016 Tab A 10.1 Wifi and the current version? One seems to be 16GB and one is 32GB - is that the only difference? Thanks very much in advance
You're right, that's the only difference. It's the same device, they just added an extra storage option and changed the model number. Even the firmware is the same, though the build number might not be. If you get the 580 (old model) off Amazon instead of getting a 585 (new model), you'd save about $40 after accounting for the bigger SD card you'd have to buy to deal with only having 16GB of internal storage. The different model number could prove to be more significant than it might appear, though: since Samsung uses a different model number for the new ones, this could make it possible to end software updates and give the 585 Oreo, but not the 580, despite them being almost exactly the same. Basically they might be planning to sell the same device for 4 years, but force people to buy a new one 2 years in if they want to get Oreo, by making a tiny token change (the storage) that they can use to change up the model number. Like mattress companies do to keep you from price-comparing between stores. Only time will tell, but I'm not sure the savings are big enough to be worth taking that risk for. Keep in mind, this is pure conspiracy theory territory, so take it how you will.
If you're looking to root or customize, that's a bit more uncertain. I'm not sure how you'd fare in trying to use a T580/P580 ROM and recovery on a T585/P585 device, because despite their being identical, some of the drivers and proprietary apps might have model numbers and firmware build numbers (which are probably also different) hardcoded in. Even though there are zero actual changes in the hardware or software other than more storage, tiny things like that could still make trouble. Not that there are any non-Touchwiz-based ROMs for these anyway, so if you're looking to root and install Xposed and an ad blocker, you should always do it yourself step-by-step rather than take the security risk of flashing what is effectively someone else's post-root Nandroid backup, even if you know it would work. You have to go through 90% of that process before flashing a ROM anyway. As far as I know, there's a 585 TWRP.
Seanthedroid said:
You're right, that's the only difference. It's the same device, they just added an extra storage option and changed the model number. Even the firmware is the same, though the build number might not be. If you get the 580 (old model) off Amazon instead of getting a 585 (new model), you'd save about $40 after accounting for the bigger SD card you'd have to buy to deal with only having 16GB of internal storage. The different model number could prove to be more significant than it might appear, though: since Samsung uses a different model number for the new ones, this could make it possible to end software updates and give the 585 Oreo, but not the 580, despite them being almost exactly the same. Basically they might be planning to sell the same device for 4 years, but force people to buy a new one 2 years in if they want to get Oreo, by making a tiny token change (the storage) that they can use to change up the model number. Like mattress companies do to keep you from price-comparing between stores. Only time will tell, but I'm not sure the savings are big enough to be worth taking that risk for. Keep in mind, this is pure conspiracy theory territory, so take it how you will.
If you're looking to root or customize, that's a bit more uncertain. I'm not sure how you'd fare in trying to use a T580/P580 ROM and recovery on a T585/P585 device, because despite their being identical, some of the drivers and proprietary apps might have model numbers and firmware build numbers (which are probably also different) hardcoded in. Even though there are zero actual changes in the hardware or software other than more storage, tiny things like that could still make trouble. Not that there are any non-Touchwiz-based ROMs for these anyway, so if you're looking to root and install Xposed and an ad blocker, you should always do it yourself step-by-step rather than take the security risk of flashing what is effectively someone else's post-root Nandroid backup, even if you know it would work. You have to go through 90% of that process before flashing a ROM anyway. As far as I know, there's a 585 TWRP.
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Click to collapse
The T580 and T585 were released at the same time.
The T580 is a wifi only model and the T585 is the LTE model.
There seems to be 16gb and 32gb models available.
Samsung have not yet released the new Tab A.
Found this apparently interesting TV box more or less recently. It's sold at a very attractive price, and can be bought in configurations with up to 8 GiB of RAM and 128 GB of storage, so I guess that it must come with a 64-bit operating system or firmware. And well, according to “REVIEW: X88 PRO 20 a low-cost Android TV-Box with SoC Rockchip RK3566 @ AndroidpcTV”, the TV box's firmware supports the arm64_v8a ABI, so 64-bit yes.
About this box I only found the thread “X88 pro 20 RK3566” opened close to a year ago, but it contains just a confusing question and no further information.
So, may some of you provide feedback about this TV box? It looks appealing, but of course I need to be able to root it; this is the single most important factor. Once rooted, any limitations in the stock ROM can be fixed and it also is fully customizable; just hope it is stable, of course.
Can someone provide information on rooting this box? Custom firmwares?
Thank you.
Barkuti said:
Found this apparently interesting TV box more or less recently. It's sold at a very attractive price, and can be bought in configurations with up to 8 GiB of RAM and 128 GB of storage, so I guess that it must come with a 64-bit operating system or firmware. And well, according to “REVIEW: X88 PRO 20 a low-cost Android TV-Box with SoC Rockchip RK3566 @ AndroidpcTV”, the TV box's firmware supports the arm64_v8a ABI, so 64-bit yes.
About this box I only found the thread “X88 pro 20 RK3566” opened close to a year ago, but it contains just a confusing question and no further information.
So, may some of you provide feedback about this TV box? It looks appealing, but of course I need to be able to root it; this is the single most important factor. Once rooted, any limitations in the stock ROM can be fixed and it also is fully customizable; just hope it is stable, of course.
Can someone provide information on rooting this box? Custom firmwares?
Thank you.
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Click to collapse
I have one, and the only method for rooting is installing another rom, I think the rom with root is the "hk1-rbox-r2-RK3566_DC_R2_HK5235F_11_20210705.1409", but the T95 Plus and H96 Max rom also works (but it doesn't have root), other thing you can do is flash a linux debian using the tutorial described in the forum t95plus.com, but sadly my x88 pro 20 is defective, every app I open (while using android) crashes after some time, and while in linux firefox keeps crashing, I don't know what's the issue, and since so few people have this box I can't find anyone else having this problem
Thanks for contributing, GamingSoldier. My interest in this box sort of vanished, mainly because I was just finding a good TV box solution to pair with an old good TV which I have lying around for someone else, and that someone else decided to buy a new inexpensive set… Of course, suffice to say these people must not be aware of the very limited Android system they are getting, or of how much better it could be.
Anyway, I digged on the subject of rooting without a custom recovery, and found the following very helpful video and article:
Extract Boot.Img Directly From Device Without Downloading Firmware @ DroidWin
This pretty much enables rooting of any device with minimum hassle.
Besides this, I'd love to know if the ROM of this device is stable and works well. I understand you are probably not going to say much in this respect, GamingSoldier; unless you get a new one, that is.
Barkuti said:
Thanks for contributing, GamingSoldier. My interest in this box sort of vanished, mainly because I was just finding a good TV box solution to pair with an old good TV which I have lying around for someone else, and that someone else decided to buy a new inexpensive set… Of course, suffice to say these people must not be aware of the very limited Android system they are getting, or of how much better it could be.
Anyway, I digged on the subject of rooting without a custom recovery, and found the following very helpful video and article:
Extract Boot.Img Directly From Device Without Downloading Firmware @ DroidWin
This pretty much enables rooting of any device with minimum hassle.
Besides this, I'd love to know if the ROM of this device is stable and works well. I understand you are probably not going to say much in this respect, GamingSoldier; unless you get a new one, that is.
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Click to collapse
I don't know if the rom is stable, because my x88 has a hardware issue that keeps making apps crash, and it's not the software because I tested multiple ROMS and all of them cause this issue, about the magisk, I already know the app, but the magisk is unable to patch the rockchip boot.img
Well GamingSoldier, it's clear that you would need to get a new RK3566 X88 Pro 20 for testing its ROM, or at least fix the problem your box has if you are able. Speaking of which, did you open the box to check inside already? Because the problem could be something simple to fix like improper SoC cooling or some electronic component. After all, if the box doesn't works there's nothing to lose in doing so except a little bit of time and effort.
Concerning Magisk not being able to patch the RK3566 boot.img (sure?), I was going to say that you could say something in this respect in the Magisk thread, although I see it was closed long ago. So, the best thing to do is to inquire topjohnwu directly about Magisk's support for Rockchip SoCs, I guess. There's also topjohnwu's GitHub page with further information and etcetera.
And now that we're here I am not going to say that these boxes probably suck in certain ways, although I could. A working hardware matters, and proper working software matters too.
A tad off topic, very recently I've been checking the Orange Pi 5 Plus, for whatever reason. It uses a far more powerful and fully fledged Rockchip RK3588 SoC, and I see it somewhat below $200 (or even a hair below $180!) in 16 GiB of RAM configuration and including USB-C power supply. It clearly is something in another league, and very recently got new Android 12 images for SD card boot and fast 2280 M.2 NVMe storage boot; and it has accessible source code, which is very important developer wise.
It's a lot more money to spend at, but it also is a real Android computer which you can attach to TVs or monitors…
First thing I did after the apps started closing was to open the box and I added a bigger heatsink, I also tried increase the SOC voltage to see if it was a low voltage issue, and if I'm not mistaken I also tested the ram while I was using linux, and still, a paper weight...
After I discovered this issue and was unable to fix it I started to flash any RK3566 or RK3568 rom in to my x88 pro 20, most of them appear the logo screen, but are stuck in that image, I don't know much about these rom's, but might be just one thing or two preventing me from booting into the system