Updated Android 4.4 Beta and Ubuntu Images for pcDuino8 / A80 OptimusBoard Boards Released

pcDuino8 and A80 OptimusBoard are the only two Allwinner A80 development boards currently “somewhat” available, and albeit the PCB color is different, every else is basically identical, and pcDuino8 firmware should probably run on A80 OptimusBoard and vice versa. If you own any of these boards, you may interested in two images, one with Android 4.4 (beta), and one with Lubuntu, recently released by pcDuino / Linksprite.

pcDuino8_Ubuntu_Update

Android 4.4 (beta) 2014-10-08 – sun9iw1p1_android_optimus.img to be flashed with PhoenixCard (Windows) or Livesuit (Linux)

Lubuntu 14.04? 2014-10-08 is comprised of two files:

  1. Kernel – pcduino8_kernel_livesuit_20141008.img to be flashed with PhoenixCard or Livesuit first. See instructions to use Livesuit with A80 OptimusBoard.
  2. Rootfs – pcduino8_ubuntu_20141008.rar. First extract the rar files to the root of an SD card or USB flash drive. There should be two files: pcduino8_ubuntu_20141008.img and update.sh. Now connect the mass storage device to pcDuino3 / A80 Optimusboard, and reboot the board to flash the image to /dev/nandd automatically.
    The serial console should show something like:

    mount udisk succeed

    update.sh found, updating rootfs from udisk, please wait…

    writing pcduino8_ubuntu_20141008.img to nand flash

    it will take about 8 minutes to finish…

    During the update, one blue LEDs will blink quickly, and once the procedure is complete two LEDs should blink slowly (success) or fast (failure)

I have tried the Ubuntu image on A80 OptimusBoard, and the kernel update works fine, but the rootfs update (USB flash drive) failed to complete successfully, ending with “write ubuntu to nand failed. update failed, please retry.” after a few seconds. The reason being /dev/nandd partition is only 630 MB, and Ubuntu image is 1.7GB, so I’d have to repartition the flash, something that’s used to be done in the board files for older Linux kernels, but with Allwinner kernel is might be different… An unofficial source also told me an A80 GPU SDK would be released by the end of the month.

Thanks to miniNodes for the info.

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14 Replies to “Updated Android 4.4 Beta and Ubuntu Images for pcDuino8 / A80 OptimusBoard Boards Released”

  1. I deeply hope to have access to that GPU sdk as i have an project which relay on that sdk.
    As i told you i am planing to build some transcoding machines with clustered Optimus Boards.

  2. @hoangdinh86
    I’ve actually started to do that this week-end, but stopped due to power issues with USB3 hard drive. I’ve bought a better power supply, and I’ll complete the test in a few weeks.
    In the meantime, here’s what I got with iperf using Gigabit Ethernet:
    Client connecting to 192.168.0.107, TCP port 5001
    TCP window size: 153 KByte (default)
    ————————————————————
    [ 6] local 192.168.0.104 port 40624 connected with 192.168.0.107 port 5001
    [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
    [ 6] 0.0-60.0 sec 1.40 GBytes 200 Mbits/sec
    [ 4] 0.0-60.0 sec 4.73 GBytes 677 Mbits/sec

    So Gigabit Ethernet works, but performance is not really great.

  3. Oh thanks. I really want to buy a android tv with a good wifi performance >4MB/s. After read all your review, I cant not find any android TV box with strong wifi. Rockchip and Allwinner always have problem with wifi due to wifi chipset AP6330, AP6335: weak signal, slow <2MB/s, unstable, lag… I found Amazon FireTV with Snapdragon 600, Atheros wifi however it's not pure Android.

  4. @hoangdinh86
    The performance depends on your environment and router, so even if I can compare the results because I’m always using the same results, and with the box in the same location, they can’t be compared to the performance of other setups.

    I’m also using SAMBA that will not be as fast as HTTP or NFS for example, so you may get a little more performance if you use a different protocol.

    HPH NT-V6 gets over 4MB/s using 802.11ac, but I’ve noticed stability may vary depending on… the time of the day/weather?

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