Maylong M-285

chateau

Senior Member
Jun 8, 2012
1
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This is my first Android Tablet.

I have discovered the following about the M-285;

1 Android 4.0.3 operating system, Kernel 3.0.8+ and Root Access from factory.
2 SU is installed from factory. System, rootfs and data files all appear to be rw instead of ro from the
factory (cat /proc/mounts to verify). Also using a Terminal Emulator I get the $ prompt initally and after typing su I get the # prompt.
3 SuperUser installs from Google Play,appears to work and was able to update SU Binaries.
4 Root Check Basic installs from Google Play and verifies that I have Root Access.
5 Titanium Backup installs from Google Play and appears to work. Purchased Pro Version and all seems to work.
6 Hold Power and Menu Button during power up to enter Recovery Mode.(None of the keys work and must hold Power Button down to get out of the mode).
7 Was able to enter Safe Mode once but don't remember what keys I held down during power up.
8 Has an undocumented HDMI output that requires an HDMI Mini to HDMI cable. My TV reported it as 1080P. Also when connected to my TV via HDMI the TV displays whatever is on the M-285 display.
9 The camera is front facing only, has options for 5,3,2,1 M Pixels or VGA plus Video or Panoramic mode.
10 Will charge from the USB Port in addition to the supplied AC Wall Charger.

While playing with the tablet and ADB trying to get CWM Recovery installed I managed to pretty much kill the thing. Boots to the Maylong Screen three times and then hangs. ADB commands and shell still work so all is not lost.

I found the following post after the disaster and was able to get CWM V5.5.0.4 installed and it appears to work very well. Unfortunately I don't have a backup to restore from.

Link http://www.slatedroid.com/topic/31501-rom-pwn3d-momo11907cs9000/

If you feel "brave" and are already on an ICS based rom you can just flash CWM image to nandg device.
Download this file, unzip it and push recovery.img file to /sdcard.
Then you have to execute this command, with root priviledges, on "Terminal Emulator" or "adb shell":

cat /sdcard/recovery.img > /dev/block/nandg
sync; sync; sync

Now CWM is installed on your device.

Using CWM I was able to install the latest ROM from this link http://www.androidfilehost.com/main/Allwinner_A10_Developers/christiantroy/roms/ and it loaded but the touch screen does not work.

Not exactly what finally worked but the tablet is now restored (I think using the Christian Troy ROM above). Somewhere along the line the touchscreen started to working again.

I did not have a backup of my stock ROM as stated but did have Titanium Backup of all my apps and data which I used to restore all my apps at the end. I also had backed up my original /dev/block/nanda, nandb, nandc, nandd, nande, nandf, nandh and nandi files to my sdcard.

I found that information at this link http://androidforums.com/coby-kyros-mid9742/542637-creating-backup-image-mid9742.html
I'm basing this on my experience (and the experience of others) on other A10 architectured devices. To my knowledge no one has ran this on the MidXX42 series yet...so this process may not work. If it doesn't let me know and I'll come up with another...and another...until will hash this thing out.

The process is dependent upon ABD shell, and busybox.

Open ABD shell and enter the following a line at a time.

mkdir /sdcard/dump
cat /dev/block/nanda > /sdcard/dump/bootloader.img
cat /dev/block/nandc > /sdcard/dump/boot.img
cat /dev/block/nandg > /sdcard/dump/recovery.img

By using the following syntax I was able to restore the original Maylong bootloader.img and boot.img which allowed me to get back into CWM Recovery in one case.

cd /mnt/sdcard
cat bootloader.img > /dev/block/nanda
cat boot.img > /dev/block/nandc
cat recovery.img > /dev/block/nandg (Note: This recovery.img was downloaded and is not the original)

NOTE: None of this may work in another case and is probably not all that helped me recover the M-285. I have now also made two backups using CWM Recovery. Should be OK in the future.

NOTE: To boot into CWM Recovery, hold down the Power and Menu buttons. Seems like I remember you also have to hold down the Menu button when using the ' ADB reboot recovery ' command to get into CWM Recovery.
 
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