[ROM] [Coby MID1042] Alien Droid (Advanced GUI customization) [11.18.12]

whread

Member
Apr 15, 2013
61
3
To get your correct firmware, you need someone to upload a dump from a 1042 that lsmod shows the 8192 module.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Android Phone

this one?

Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4727] (rev 01) Subsystem: Broadcom Corporation Device

this has the rtl8192 inside
 

vampirefo.

Senior Member
Developer
Nov 8, 2011
3,836
1,394
this one?

Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4727] (rev 01) Subsystem: Broadcom Corporation Device

this has the rtl8192 inside
Your wifi is realtek not broadcom dhd is broadcom..
 

whread

Member
Apr 15, 2013
61
3
Your wifi is realtek not broadcom dhd is broadcom..

again forgive my lack of knowledge - got the realtek part (both from your posts and looking inside the 1042 - found

"Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4727] (rev 01) Subsystem: BroadcomCorporation Device "

inside one of the ROMs that made the WiFi work - thought maybe it would work for both as the library(driver) is listed as a generic driver and lists rtl8192 and brcm80211 among others (ie.
bcm43xx)

No problem - thanks again - will go back to making AlienDroid v2 work w/all features coby put in this version of 1042

*******added:
checked further with the dongles here and found that the library also works with rtl8188CU wireless and Broadcom440x wired adapter

OR maybe there are modules that are loading in and out for these devices and I cannot yet read what I am seeing - that is a definite possibility
OR maybe there is some persistance at work here
OR...

In any event sorry to be a bother, just haven't had any stimulation like this in a long time and it feels good!!!- hope you enjoy your coffee!

*******Further added:

think I got it now Broadcom 80211 is the b/g/n spec for wireless and rtl8188CU / bcm440x are the libraries (drivers) for the chipset - told you I was a stunod!
 
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vampirefo.

Senior Member
Developer
Nov 8, 2011
3,836
1,394
Good luck on the rom.
I will be uploading some roms for 1042 when I time.
 
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vampirefo.

Senior Member
Developer
Nov 8, 2011
3,836
1,394
On your 1042 when you took it apart did you notice if wifi antenna could be moved? I was wondering if we moved it would we get better signal and response from the wifi.
 

whread

Member
Apr 15, 2013
61
3
On your 1042 when you took it apart did you notice if wifi antenna could be moved? I was wondering if we moved it would we get better signal and response from the wifi.

Thanks for your gift of Good Luck!

I put it back together - I recall the antenna being right behind the screen about 2 1/2" to 3" from the back button side and top but will have to verify that might even be able to add wire and put it along an edge there seemed to be lots of room on the top edge between the volume and the speaker - will take it apart later tonight and see it it can be moved - I am outside doing flower things with my wife

Do you love your Lenovo or what? My brother had a lot to do with those particular machines and I'd like to give him feedback + or - even though he is with a different company now - in fact he and i are daydreaming about his co doing a tablet series right now which is part of the reason I jumped on the Coby openbox, did not want to mess my wifes up (was supposed to be my last B'day gift but I bet you are familiar with those things too, I do get to touch it onec in a while)

You have been of unusually great assistane and your silence speaks volumes!
 

whread

Member
Apr 15, 2013
61
3
On your 1042 when you took it apart did you notice if wifi antenna could be moved? I was wondering if we moved it would we get better signal and response from the wifi.

I just looked at the blurry photo I took - the WiFi HW is where i thought it was and the antenna is at the lower edge in the area between the screen and the seam - look at the black wire going from wireless hw at the left hand middle of the tablet (in the orientation of the photo) towards the bottom (photos foreground) and ending at the edge od the screen in the photo - I will take it apart again and take a better photo, was being called to the front yard at the time - even if it cannot be moved there is a fairly high likelyhood of the long travel of the wire right on the back of the screen is introducing capacitive effects rendering the antenna less effective - will see what happens if I take the anteaan and wire up off the screen's grounding shield.

For sure adding GooglePlayStore to an unauthorized tablet will cause the wifi to start dropping and some pretty spectacular effects ( random soft reboots, what look like reboots but are not- you see the 3rd splash screen and then nothing and then you are right back to what you were doing before the 'reboot' happened, wild screen effects, backlight flashing completely off and full brightness et. c.) if you keep using it to go to google over and over

This does not happen on the roms shipped with google.

It may be caused by a missing part of the system that google provides to licencees, google punishing you for unauthorized access or whatever - it does cause a dash of concern when you first see this stuff.
To make it go away I do a Hard reboot - hold power down until tablet goes off, let go of power, wait 10 or more seconds, power back on and don't let go of the power button until you see the first splash screen (the 1st time you see a COBY logo in a Coby ROMs case).
 

whread

Member
Apr 15, 2013
61
3
hey!

just got back - pooped - will take 1042 apart manana day evening - will figure out the possible antenna issues and take some clear shots of the interior - will try to get sharp enough to see the chip labels - also may do a complete tear down if time & wife/partner allows - hope to do as good a job with the pics as powerpoint45 did.

Also I read what I wrote about brother and co and tablets - I have no intention of using this forum as a way to gain knowledge to take part in the design or development of any such - I just wanted to be able to have a fair conversation w/ my bro - that turned into a disaster (the brick!) and the work all of you here way before me did (re)openned a whole new/old world as well as saved my happy tablet.


THANK-YOU ANDROIDTABLETS.NET AND THANK-YOU
[ROM] [Coby MID1042] ▶Alien Droid◀ (Advanced GUI customization) [11.18.12]


thanx powerpoint45, thanx vampirefo - deep and for sure
 

vampirefo.

Senior Member
Developer
Nov 8, 2011
3,836
1,394
The lenovo a2109 is a good tablet, will do anything ask of it. I use it to write scripts and to fix other tablets.
Seeing it has a quad core it can run task very quickly, almost as fast as my pc.
The only downside of the tablet is like Coby tablets, lack of support and upgrades.
The a2109 user community is very active and very productive on making the tablet even better.
Would be nice if Lenovo stood behind their tablets and released timely upgrades.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Android Phone
 

whread

Member
Apr 15, 2013
61
3
$IMG_0087.JPG

Hey!

Wrote this for your (2 of you) requests but made it so almost any person reading it would get some level of understanding if they can get past how I write (talk).

Better photos of inside the Coby Kyros MID1042 8

Got somewhat more range for WiFi by moving the antenna cable from flat on ground shield of screen to above the screeen, 'up' from the front casing so it will be about in the middle of the void between the back and the front. Refer to the 1st photos I posted in this forum to see where the antenna cable was. Also that gets cable way away from battery, battery is D/C for sure but even so might produce unplanned weak electromagnetic fields.

Electricity is really and truly like amgic in many cases, it is one of the few things we know of that moves in the 4th physical dimension (a true dimension, not time, a direction something real can travel in) and despite conventional beliefs we do not fully understand it. Or anything else for that matter.

The actuall antenna is inside a rectangular space, it could be moved within the limits of the cables travel and there are several spaces that would accomodate the antenna, unfortunatly the cable will only allow placing the antenna closer to the board, mostly not a very good idea as the shielding inside is limited and mostly(read exclusively until someone tells us differently, maybe shielding is also different these days) deals with external sources of interference. The actual WiFi chip (marked TOC 9002 in this 1042) is inside a metal cover for shielding.

Shields keep out stuff like TV, FM radio, garage door controls, wireless house telephones and things like that.

A person could add cable for sure but would have to be 100% sure there were no shrots between antenna plus (the inside wire) and antenna minus (the outside woven wire- shield) as well as make 100% sure there was a continous ground shield where the joins (2 are required) are made - in other words the woven wire keeps out interference and you have to find some other woven wire very similar to put around where the inside (the signal) has been joined and covered with spaghetti or shrink tubing. Any transmission cable can lower the signal by capacitive impedance - that happens when 2 metal things (like wire, aluminium foil et. c.) are close but not touching. The WiFi signal will respond only to very tiny capacitive values or little parts of metal very near each other, like small wires very close to each other in one spot. On the other hand there are possible capacitive values that would affect the signal thru harmonics.

People should be able to get all or most chips id's from these photos. If anyone wants specific areas or closer I already have them but the files are between 2.5 and 4 meg so will have to send another way.

As you will notice, there is a number of connection areas for hardware not included in the Coby 1042. There is a hard to decypher hand written revision number on the end (right, we go left to right here mostly) long white label (the number starts with written A printed 1042) and as seen on the small white label the circuit board was made in 2008.

After a closer look in here i believe it is quite possible at least some of the WiFi issues as well as others reported by myself and others may be due to heat. By the time a person felt the casing being warm the chips would be pretty dang hot. IN a couple of days I will take this apart again and put some heat sink plastic stuff (very careful to not short the electrical connections) between the top of the CPU and GPU and the big heat sink/ground shield on the back cover might get a much better acting machine that can be pushed into signaificantly higher performance.

A final word for now on the odd behavior these things seem to exhibiit at times and seemingly caused by variuos things, rom/wifi/google et. c., I have been able to get the tablet to behave poorly by changing all the values that pertain to the location of the tablets use (like China vs USA as locations, language input time zone et. c.) will does cause issues with WiFi and Google services as in all the stuff google does.

OK - will not be here for a few days - got to do some other unrelated stuff that allows me to play with things like Coby 1042's and also have been messing around with directly modifying the system via the terminal/USB Keyboard/HDMI TV just as if this were a full sized system so will obsessivly persue that for at least a while. Can try out lots of things that way and report to the ROM makers what does what.

The truely beautiful thing about real systems like CPM/UNIX/LINUX/ANDROID and the like is what Windows and Apple and the few similar gave up, real and total control of every aspect of their hardware. A bit sticky when you 1st get into it but whatever level you go to you gain immensely.

On the other hand it it superb to just do some mindless thing(s) from time to time... OH YEAH!!!


Always Remember: It could be worst, liverwurst in this case. Oui, Givalt!
 
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whread

Member
Apr 15, 2013
61
3
So whread and vampireof fixed y'alls tabs?

Sent from my Amazon Kindle Fire2 using Tapatalk 2

Hey there powerpoint45! Do not know status of vampirefo but mine is good to go using 3 different ROMs from 1042 clones, not all 3 at the same time - I want to use AlienDroidV2 but no Wifi - wrong wifi module in there

Are you considering making ROM that works on all versions of the 1042?

I have been playing around with changes to my live system-

Also found some ROMs that do have additional parts (files) to deal with hardware differences, NOT any for Coby at this point.

And have been installing Android on a few different laptops with pretty fair sucess.

Finally, found that Google is taking 'active measures' (whatever that means) to prevent pirating of their services by 'unlicensed devices' and Adobe and they are blasting away at each other.


Hope all is well with you.
 
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powerpoint45

Member
Sep 9, 2012
78
19
Hey there powerpoint45! Do not know status of vampirefo but mine is good to go using 3 different ROMs from 1042 clones, not all 3 at the same time - I want to use AlienDroidV2 but no Wifi - wrong wifi module in there

Are you considering making ROM that works on all versions of the 1042?

I have been playing around with changes to my live system-

Also found some ROMs that do have additional parts (files) to deal with hardware differences, NOT any for Coby at this point.

And have been installing Android on a few different laptops with pretty fair sucess.

Finally, found that Google is taking 'active measures' (whatever that means) to prevent pirating of their services by 'unlicensed devices' and Adobe and they are blasting away at each other.


Hope all is well with you.

If you could upload current rom of yo system then when I get some free time I prob could. But id need you to do the testing sice i dont got the tab

Sent from my Amazon Kindle Fire2 using Tapatalk 2
 
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