New "Mars" device from Likebook?

[Chris Jones]

I read a few posts where someone mentioned this the likebook/boyue t80x (t80d) can be rooted. How do I go about rooting the one I recently acquired?

[Amon_Re]

Originally Posted by shak3800

2. How can i read adobe drm books? The format is ascm

You need Adobe digital editions installed:
https://www.adobe.com/solutions/eboo.../download.html

[micha123]

My Likebook Mars died today. Last night battery was down to ~20%. Next morning I plugged the cable in for charging. When I wanted to remove the ereader from the charger it was frozen in the Starting Up ... screen.

Long pressing the powerbutton did not fix the problem, pressing the reset button did not fix the problem, another USB cable did not fix the problem, connecting the Likebook to the PC did not fix the problem, removing the SD card did not fix the problem.

I am out of options. Did someone else experienced this problem or has any other ideas?

The Likebook is just a year old. For failing so fast it was a little bit pricey. :-(

[Purple Lady]

How long did you press the reset button? Try holding it for 30 seconds, and then hold it for another 30 seconds if the first time doesn't work.

Sent from my LG-US998 using Tapatalk

[micha123]

Unfortunatelly no, didn't work.

I opened the reader for unplugging the accu, hoping and so an, hoping this might help. It didn't.

Multimeter measured 3.8V, so it should be O.K., doesn't look bloated. Test points all over the board are showing some voltage.

As you can see from the pictures form the inside of the LB Mars (don't know, if there are already some pictures around in the www), the LB Mars has a very informative board layout including a debugging port.

Power switch and reset switch should be O.K. aswell, you can measure they are switching.

A little bit strange is, attached everything of there remains some mV at the test points. Voltage is draining during measuring. Measured later again there is slightly a higher mV as if there is somewhere a buffer.

But a brick is a brick. This was my 4th ebook readers and my first one which died not because of a broken display.

[Morioh]

Did you perhaps charge it with a fast charger?
I don't know what else could be the problem.
It would be pretty terrible if the build quality is bad enough for the tablet to die after a year of usage.

[fduniho]

Originally Posted by degustibus

Not as versatile as Fire 7/8, not as quick as old Kindle 5. I got it for the larger screen, for outside reading --and it works pretty well for that. But it's slow and jerky, page turn is jerky -- just no comparison with respect to performance. It's an overpriced reader, usable but I'd not recommend it with high marks. As I said, Mars mediocre. 3/10 as a reader, 1/10 tablet function.

The main advantage of the Mars over the Fire is that it uses e-ink instead of an LCD screen. This makes it better for reading, though it also makes it less useful for watching videos or playing games.

Dedicated Kindles do have some advantages over the Mars, particularly with respect to page turning in Kindle books, but this is the fault of the Kindle app, not the Mars itself. The Kindle app, which was designed for LCD devices like the Fire, includes animated page turns, which are slow and jerky on an e-ink screen. But if you read books with Moon+ Reader on the Mars, you can get seamless, instantaneous page turns.

Its screen size is good for reading. It's less cramped than a six-inch reader, and it's not so large that my eyes wander and make me lose my place. Also, its aspect ratio is more book-like than movie-like. It has the advantage of being cheaper than other ones of the same size that you could buy. If you just want an ereader and don't need it for note-taking, it will work fine for that. Unlike some of its competitors, it has an audio port and a micro SD card slot. Onyx devices are supposed to have better software, but they are more expensive, and they lack some of the hardware advantages of the Mars.

[micha123]

It was the same Samsung 1,55A charger I used before. But I tried out outher chargers and USB cables to make sure.

If I unplug the accu and only plug the USB cable in, I don't measure any voltage near the accu port. The USB port itself seems to be O.K., because I can measure 5V at the first SMD the VCC wire leads to.

Having a look at the pictures I provided can somebody help me to identify fuses so that i can check their passage/beep them through?

[Waldy]

Originally Posted by micha123

If I unplug the accu and only plug the USB cable in, I don't measure any voltage near the accu port.

So it should be.

[Pumpernickel]

So far I am enjoying this device but I am having trouble finding an application that will allow me to read comics (namely, CBZ or CBR files) with a good experience. Any recommendations?

I also like to read PDFs that come from Openlibrary, so image scans rather than text-based PDFs. Any app recommendations for this?

Thanks.

[Amon_Re]

Originally Posted by micha123

Having a look at the pictures I provided can somebody help me to identify fuses so that i can check their passage/beep them through?

Is the board single sided? There are probably some components on the back side. I'm not seeing much at that image size, look for components marked 'F'.

No obvious corrosion, nothing looks blown but I'd suggest going over it with a magnifying glass (or microscope) and see if you can spot anything iffy

[micha123]

Here a picture from the back side. SMD parts become even tinier. I tried to scan it. But I had to realize my LED Office scanner has no deepfield sharpness...

But I found another solution. Fortunately, a Likebook Mars with a broken screen was auctioned on ebay on Thursday. I could bid the item very cheaply and the package was delivered today.

I replaced the boards and got a working unit again. Yippee!

To make sure I tried to enter recovery mode and bootloader mode. No problem. For drivers I used 'rkDumper_105_obc67 + debug.zip'.

The new board has a newer revision 1.5 dated 20180907, but looks the same.

[Morioh]

I guess the latest devices that are sold will have the new revision.
Probably your problem you encountered is revised .
So they wont also suffer like you. Or perhaps the thing that was corrected is something completely different.

[micha123]

Comparing the revisions 1.4 and 1.5 I can at least notice one difference. The 1.4er board switched on/off background light in visibly one step to prefered orange scheme. The 1.5er board performs a intermediate step of about 1 second blue scheme for switching on/off the orange coloured background light.

[Chilipops]

Originally Posted by micha123

It was the same Samsung 1,55A charger I used before. But I tried out outher chargers and USB cables to make sure.

You probably want to charge your Mars with only a 1.0A charger. In my original packaging there was a note card indicating NOT to use USB chargers with more than a 1.0A rating. Somewhere (maybe in this thread) I have also read posts where people bricked their Mars reader when using USB chargers that are capable of more than 1.0A.