Debian/Ubuntu on Onyx Boox M96

[daniele_dll]

Ciao a tutti,

this is my first post here

I am going to buy an Onyx Boox M96 to install linux on it, i was looking a device with an eink display, iMX6S, wifi and low power bluetooth and after a lot of searches, finally I found it!

Before starting from the scratch to build the debian/ubuntu kernel and filesystem, has anyone tried to install linux on that ereader?

Thank you!

[skobie78]

Are you aware of Obuntu for the M92? Probably a good starting point for your project.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=217438

[daniele_dll]

Originally Posted by skobie78

Are you aware of Obuntu for the M92? Probably a good starting point for your project.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=217438

Yes but the Onyx Boox M92 use android and don't use the same hardware so it is very difficult to use something from that distribution (Freescale i.MX508 vs Freescale i.MX6 Solo)

[groundhogxc]

Hi Daniele,

I am afraid I cannot really help due to lack of in-depth knowledge, but I would be very interested if you make any progress: I have the T68, and I believe the hardware is reasonably similar (same SoC used).

I am sure you are already aware of the Freescale unix distribution for the IMX6s (and all their other developer support info)? Not sure if it is a good starting point, but it could serve as a good reference for info...

[daniele_dll]

Yes, freescale supports linux quite well on their platforms, in the past I had an Udoo, a board with imx6 quad.

I will try with Ubuntu for devices, they have a dual boot app that let you to select android or Ubuntu and this would let me to avoid to kill the ebook reader while experimenting.

Here there is the list of supported (or partially supported) devices:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices

May be there is a device with similar hardware, mainly I am worried about the wifi, the SD controller and the touch screen, the cpu is an armv7 with hard fp support so it will run almost every distribution and I can obtain gpu 2d hardware acceleration with some stuff from imx6 kernel sources distribution)

This weekend I will do some tests!

[daniele_dll]

I was able to extract the kernel configuration from the running android system and, after searching around, i found the same kernel version 3.0.35 (but obiviously without onyx patches).

I recompiled the kernel 1 milion of times but I am not able to see the console on the framebuffer (device mxcepdcfb), probably because I don't have the right device tree.

However i discovered that when the kernel panics I can access the internal iMX6 rom to replace uboot (but I will not do the test because this can fully brick the e-book reader)

I asked to onyx boox for kernel sources, device tree and some other informations, hope that they give a positive answer

[Randy11]

I hope so !

Thanks for your efforts.

[groundhogxc]

Originally Posted by daniele_dll

I recompiled the kernel 1 milion of times but I am not able to see the console on the framebuffer (device mxcepdcfb), probably because I don't have the right device tree.

So how do you do see the console?

On the Onyx T68 there is a serial port on the mainboard which is configured to the boot console. Probably your device has this, too. Is that what you are using?

Originally Posted by daniele_dll

However i discovered that when the kernel panics I can access the internal iMX6 rom to replace uboot (but I will not do the test because this can fully brick the e-book reader)

What happens after the kernel panic? You end up in some kind of bootloader?

[daniele_dll]

I didn't opened the ebook reader yet but I am quite sure that there are 2/4 pins for ttl, the kernel command line shows the imx6 serial port enabled for logging.
After the kernel panic, having the ebook reader connected via usb, a device shows up and after looking around it seems to be an imx6 recovery device that let you to flash the internal memory, but I didn't tried it.

Right now, I stopped to do tests, no time because of work, but I hope they will release the kernel sources, it is under gpl!

[daniele_dll]

Finally i opened it, there are few pins on the bottom-right side of the board (J25) but i am not sure that they are the TTL, there are too many pins (6, TTL needs 2 + VCC + GND)

I need to remove the board to search on the other side

edit:
forgot to add the image
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-j...213_121724.jpg

[groundhogxc]

Hi,
the T68 has exactly the same header J25, and I can confirm it is a serial port which shows the boot messages.

I do not find my old notes unfortunately, so I can not tell you the pin out any more; but I was able to find a 3.3V serial port there, both with RXD and TXD. I did not find out what the other pins are used for.

The port seems to be configured to 115 kbps on my device, and connects to /dev/ttymxc0 on my device.

There is one more /dev/ttymxc port active, which seems to be used for the bluetooth interface in the T68.

[daniele_dll]

Originally Posted by groundhogxc

Hi,
the T68 has exactly the same header J25, and I can confirm it is a serial port which shows the boot messages.

I do not find my old notes unfortunately, so I can not tell you the pin out any more; but I was able to find a 3.3V serial port there, both with RXD and TXD. I did not find out what the other pins are used for.

The port seems to be configured to 115 kbps on my device, and connects to /dev/ttymxc0 on my device.

There is one more /dev/ttymxc port active, which seems to be used for the bluetooth interface in the T68.

Nice, thanks! The next week I will solder the pins on that header and try to figure out something!

[groundhogxc]

Originally Posted by daniele_dll

Nice, thanks! The next week I will solder the pins on that header and try to figure out something!

And, did you have any luck?

Onyx has now published their SDK for Android (on github), maybe there is some useful hardware-support-related info in there for linux purposes for the M96 and T68.

[Randy11]

Originally Posted by groundhogxc

Onyx has now published their SDK for Android (on github), maybe there is some useful hardware-support-related info in there for linux purposes for the M96 and T68.

Could you give the link ?
Thanks.

[tqk]

I think Onyx's github account is https://github.com/onyx-intl/, but I don't immediately see which of their many repositories would be the Android SDK (the promisingly-named PublicOnyxAndroidSDK is empty).