Rockchip RK3066 (part of RK30xx family) is a Chinese dual ARM Cortex A9 SoC targeting multimedia products such as tablets (e.g. ), mini PC (e.g, ) and in theory set-top boxes, but I can’t find any products based on this Rockchip processor. It seems mini PCs/ HDMI TV sticks have taken over this market. RK3066 Processor The processor features two ARM Cortex A9 clocked at up to 1.6 Ghz with a quad core Mali-400MP GPU.
Sudo apt - get install sharutils I did not try the kernel since I don’t have RK3066 hardware, but the guys at ArmTvTech appeared to be successful. I always interesting to look in arch/arm/configs to see what configs are available for a given platform:. rk30sdkdefconfig – RK30 SDK board (Apparently a tablet board). rk3066sdkdefconfig – RK3066 SDK board. Basically the same as above except a different gyroscope and a different WiFi (memory?) option are used. bqEdisondefconfig – This is the configuration file for bq Edison tablet In the KConfig we can also find some other hardware (mobile phone boards), but no defconfig files are using those in the source code released:. RK30 smart phone board (MACHRK30PHONE).
RK30 smart phone loquat board (MACHRK30PHONELOQUAT). RK30 smart phone a22 board (MACHRK30PHONEA22) Since we now have the source code, and some, but this will certainly take some, and don’t expect GPU acceleration ever on RK30xx Linux.
And the lack of SD card boot capability really makes it a pain, since you’ll have to choose Linux over Android and vice versa. However, this kernel has already been useful for Android as some kernel modules have been build for MK802/UG802 (e.g. Bluetooth) RK3066 Tools There are also some (rktools) mainly to modify ROMs which you can retrieve and build as follows. Make This will generate 4 tools:. afptool – Tool to unpack and pack the firmware files Command line:. afptool -pack xxx update.img. afptool -unpack update.img xxx.
imgmaker – Tool to create rkimage files (and it seems to convert the old firmware format to the new firmware format) Command line: imgmaker -rk30 -rk29 loader major version minor version subversion old image out image. imgunpack – A tool to unpack (new format) firmware images Command line:./imgunpack. mkkrnlimg – Tool to pack and unpack Kernel images (Also part of omegamoon github account in binary form). Command line:./mkkrnlimg -a -r Another tools call rkflashtool can be used to reflash the NAND.
The source code is, and it’s for RK29xx / RK28xx processor, but are available. “This tool uses a low level protocol supported by the internal bootloader of the RK processor.
Because of that, this tool doesn’t need anything to be present on NAND flash, and can be used to successfully reflash bricked tablets”. See for details. Finally Romdump allows you to dump RK3066 ROM to an SD card, check for details. Sorry, if the usage for each tool is not very clear, but it’s just not obvious to me either, and I could not find a wiki or tutorial to use them. So if any reader has already worked with those, better descriptions or links to tutorials/wikis are welcome.
Update: A new tool called is available for download for both Windows and Linux. AFAIK the source code is not public. This tool is still interesting as it will allow you to extract the content of firmware files, for example to extract recovery.img, system.img, etc, and flash a new firmware via rkbatchbool. I’ve tried to extract a firmware for MK908 (RK3188) and it works. Support CNX Software - Donate via or on Patreon. Actually what killed my website armtvtech.com is the UG802 JB preview firmware update that I built and uploaded to my server.
I had over 500 downloads in under 24 hours, some linked directly to my file from some other forums. I also had over 1000 downloads for the MK808 beta 2 firmware at the same time. This led to using close to 500GB in under 24 hours. So I was suspended for using too much bandwidth. The site should be back up and running by tomorrow, but I will have to reupload my firmwares to free file servers. That’s the only I can keep it running with having a massive bill every month. I understand that if the code is not using GPL code, linux drivers source code does not need to be released.
Mac-rk30 and plat-rk uuencode files were not part of the GPL source release, but omegamoon had to add those files to be able to compile, which does not seem right. For the wifi-driver, the uuencode file was part of the release, but then it’s mixed with source code files during the build, which also does not seem right. But I don’t that much about open source license compliance, so maybe it’s OK. Pipo U3 seems OK, Pipo is a known Chinese brand with a Rockchip RK3066 you can’t go wrong. However, 3000 mAh battery is a bit on a low side. Now I always recommend buying a tablet with a larger battery (at least 4,000 mAh), as one charge would last about 4 hours, and you’d have to recharge the device less often leading to a longer useful life.
Last year I bought a tablet with a 2,300 mAh battery, and now it’s almost useless as the battery only lasts 30 minutes per charge. For tablets with 3G support, you may also want to check out some of the Mediatek tablets.