Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
{Quoting from #11 in this thread.}
And as far as I can tell, I have now successfully rooted the device.
This was somewhat more complex than might have been. The first required step was to install the Google Android USB driver to be able to establish communication with the tablet from Windows. On the tablet end, that required turning on USB debugging, which was non-intuitive. To do it, you had to go to Settings/About Tablet, scroll down to Build Number, and tap it multiple times. you would get progress messages, and finally be told you were a Developer, which puts a Developer Options menu choice in Settings where you can turn on USB Debugging mode.
Getting the Google USB driver installed was another matter. Getting the driver requires downloading 520MB of Google Android SDK, installing it, and running the SDK Manager to get the driver. Once you have the driver, you can connect the table to Windows via the supplied USB cable, and have Windows install the driver. The problem is that operation failed from the XP machine I originally tried from. XP complained it couldn't find the software, even though driver, inf file and supporting files were in the location I pointed to.
As I suspected, this was a Windows issue. I downloaded the 64 bit version of the Android SDK and put it on the SO's 64bit Win7 laptop. The driver successfully installed there.
<snip>
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Dennis
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Thanks for your great guidance, Dennis. I bought the 4.4 KitKat A746HD for $30, and had some trouble finding the ADB driver. So here is a drill down on that. I imagine it is similar to the A727 you wrote about, and I see you now have the A746 as well. Your comment "The driver successfully installed there." was not so easy for me, so I am filling in some details for others.
I had been hoping to upgrade from KitKat 4.4 to maybe 5.1, as the MicroCenter ad mistakenly said it was running 5.1. But I haven't found suitable firmware for reflashing. Perhaps 5.1 firmware for a later model of an Azpen device could be used, but probably not. They don't seem to make their firmware available, at least not on azpenpc.com. Maybe someone has this somewhere? Azpen pointed me to an upgrade tool at
http://www.mediafire.com/file/cx3ob4...+Allwinner.rar
but I haven't explored this yet.
Now here's my contribution to your thread: installing the USB driver on the Windows 7 side.
I started at
https://developer.android.com/develop/index.html
When I installed Android Studio bundle 2.2.3 (i.e., with SDK) on my Win7 desktop, it put it into
/Users/<myname>/AppData which is normally hidden from view. If you double click the dropdown with the location starting in /Users/<myname>, it will switch to a long string {which you can later copy with CTRL-C for pasting (CTRL-V) into the Device Manager Driver installation box used below}, and you can add "AppData" to force the once hidden directory to appear. Drilling down below that, the driver that the device manager wants finally shows up in
<Drive>:\Users\<myname>\AppData\Local\Android\sdk\ extras\google\usb_driver
But the first time I tried this, the proper KitKat driver simply wasn't there!
---
SO I HAD TO GO BACK INTO THE STUDIO's
TOOLS-ANDROID- SDK MANAGER
first, and under the tab "SDK Platforms" clicked on Android 4.4 to install the missing package.
Also, in the NEXT tab for SDK Tools, checked the checkbox at the bottom "Show Package Details" and made sure I checked under "Android SDK Build-Tools" the "obsolete" 19.1.0 driver. The Studio doesn't clutter your system up with too many assets you don't need, so you have to explicitly add them. {My long-standing frustration with computers: they do EXACTLY what you tell them to!}
---
Then I went to the desktop icon marked Computer, right-clicked it for Manage and went into the Device Manager pane and right clicked the Other Device (lacking a driver), and
tried to give it the driver address for the <Drive>:\Users\<myname>\AppData\Local\Android\sdk\ extras\google\usb_driver directory that has recently appeared. {See CTRL-C trick mentioned above.}
But that didn't work. I had to use the second option, "Let me pick from a list of device drivers..." and chose Show all devices. Then I could select the button "Have Disk" and at that point I was able to enter the pathname for the desired directory. The file I was looking for was "android_winusb.inf"
When I did this, bingo! it gave me several choices of drivers to install:
Android ADB Interface
Android Bootloader Interface
Android Composite ADB Interface
I chose "Android ADB Interface", which seemed appropriate. Microsoft read me the Riot Act, "Installing this device drive is not recommended..." so I figured I was on the right track! In device Driver, I now have an "Android Device" instead of an "Other devices", and that shows "This device is working properly."
Ta-da!
I had been following the tutorial at
https://developer.android.com/traini...g-project.html
and --success!-- the "Hello World" first app screen showed up on the now USB-connected A746HD.
I copied all the files on the internal chip to my hard drive, for safekeeping.
Again, thanks for starting this thread. Now I'm on to rooting this.
Please note: under Azpen's Settings/Backups and reset, there is an option for Recovery Mode with a note about "system upgrade", but I have yet to explore that, now that I am talking via USB...
And I understand Paul Laughton as written a BASIC for android....
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...fo.basic&hl=en
Read some ancient history at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_DOS and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_BASIC
and look for Paul's name there. <Sigh!> Hardware was SO much simpler back then.....
Daniel