A little over a year ago I picked up an android mini PC, otherwise known as a TV stick. These are really fun devices. Mine is a Dual core 1.6 ghz processor, with 1 gig of ram. Not a bad little machine to run the droid OS on. This has been used pretty much as a streaming content device, and at $50 it's not a bad solution for turning any hdmi ready TV into a smart TV.
Thanks to Sean at gagetreactor for the pic, and a nice overview of this device. What I find really intriguing about these is the power use. This works on 3.5 volts at a fixed 6 watts, while here is a nice site that can give you a pretty good idea what your machine at home is using. Most will be over 300 watts, having both 12, and 3.5 volt rails. Put a full version of a desktop OS on this and wow, your full home set up that you can pop in your pocket, runs on usb, this is amazing. Like I said it sat being not much more then a entertainment stick, not a bad use mind you, I just like getting more out of my devices. So I finally got into my head to set it up to dual boot between Android, and Linux. Having played with the Android OS for awhile now, I have come to see that most people can do everything they do with a computer right through it. Even running small businesses, and use only android. Many still cling to the traditional desktop look and interface, and there are many things on the tech side I would have problems doing through Android. What I found out was my device had been left in the dust, with the current versions being quad core, with more everything. Amazing people had been hard at work, reverse engineering, and recompiling code to get a flawless working Linux on the arm processors. Check out the folks over at Picuntu keep in mind that site is being hosted on a stick, running Picuntu.
Using several guides, and forums big ups to http://www.freaktab.com/, and https://www.miniand.com/, the forums there are invaluable. Even just flashing the Android OS to the Finless Bob custom rom made the device like new again. There are a few areas that really gave me fits. I want to make this a dual boot machine, and for some reason my stick will not dual boot as it should with the bootloader from the finless 2.1 release. The 1.6 release loader substituted in nicely, and dual boots nicely. A note on the dual booting, the guides all say to use the reboot app, and boot to recovery to access Linux. Every time I do this I can no longer boot back to Android. Sticking to reboot to bootloader solved this problem. In a few of the guides, and a few places on the forums they tell you to make sure you use a class 10 or higher sd card. Many will not get why this can be huge, in experimenting I have been using what I have around. This ended up being an 8 gig card I pulled from an Eris I use for mp3. The problem is this is only a class 4 card, the transfer rates, and even the power up time cause a host of errors all related to data corruption. While I have been able to set up Picuntu .9c rc2.2 and 3. as well as boot to a Ubuntu desktop, the amount of errors make it not practical. So I'm going to try using a usb drive, and see how that goes at least till I can get my hands on a different sd card.
Update: switching out the sd card for the usb drive solved the stability issues. Now to get a decent sd card to try it out on.
Jack
aka
PanseyBard
if your feeling generous
btc: 169rA3pQzk1KGh6HjipDYVcNsaKGJFfRQn
ltc: LUKSpaVnZ6REFs61yG1BnpE5xTzdzje7vE
pts: Pd7xb3Q4idGiGa1iMawVuAYx42WZch1KdG
Using several guides, and forums big ups to http://www.freaktab.com/, and https://www.miniand.com/, the forums there are invaluable. Even just flashing the Android OS to the Finless Bob custom rom made the device like new again. There are a few areas that really gave me fits. I want to make this a dual boot machine, and for some reason my stick will not dual boot as it should with the bootloader from the finless 2.1 release. The 1.6 release loader substituted in nicely, and dual boots nicely. A note on the dual booting, the guides all say to use the reboot app, and boot to recovery to access Linux. Every time I do this I can no longer boot back to Android. Sticking to reboot to bootloader solved this problem. In a few of the guides, and a few places on the forums they tell you to make sure you use a class 10 or higher sd card. Many will not get why this can be huge, in experimenting I have been using what I have around. This ended up being an 8 gig card I pulled from an Eris I use for mp3. The problem is this is only a class 4 card, the transfer rates, and even the power up time cause a host of errors all related to data corruption. While I have been able to set up Picuntu .9c rc2.2 and 3. as well as boot to a Ubuntu desktop, the amount of errors make it not practical. So I'm going to try using a usb drive, and see how that goes at least till I can get my hands on a different sd card.
Update: switching out the sd card for the usb drive solved the stability issues. Now to get a decent sd card to try it out on.
Jack
aka
PanseyBard
if your feeling generous
btc: 169rA3pQzk1KGh6HjipDYVcNsaKGJFfRQn
ltc: LUKSpaVnZ6REFs61yG1BnpE5xTzdzje7vE
pts: Pd7xb3Q4idGiGa1iMawVuAYx42WZch1KdG
