Archos Gen8 is busy making more chanages, but still no Gingerbread

Version 2.1.8 – February 16th, 2011

• External keyboard layouts: various country layouts are now supported using Settings > Language and keyboard > Select external keyboard layout setting (qwerty us/uk, azerty french, qwertz deutch, latin america spanish, russian, japanese).
• Proxy: http proxy settings have been enabled for the browser in Settings > Wireless & network > wifi proxy settings.
• Network shares: introduce an option to enable/disable network share scanning per Wi-Fi Access Point in Wi-Fi authentication dialog box
• Battery: improve robustness of battery charge status for hard drive based A70it
• Sound: fix sound level saturation causing loss of audio when playing on speaker
• Music: fix some MP3 files have bad sound after seeking
• Video: make some high level H264 HD files play correctly
• Video: fix black screen on video player resume from suspend for MPEG4 files
• USB host: fix NTFS UTF8 support
• Wi-Fi: fix network disabled occurring after several suspend/resume loops
• Wi-Fi: prevent false state information reported when authenticating/enabling Wi-Fi
• Multimedia library: avoid deletion of multimedia files happening sometimes on SDCard

Download firmware here (from Archos.com)

Releases notes from http://update.archos.com/8/gen8/changes_firmware_archos_android_gen8.htm

New Archos Firmware 2.1.3 for Gen8

Version 2.1.3 is replacing version 2.1.2 due with loop bug

• Video: fix some audio glitches after seeking WMA files
• Video: add support for MTS files
• Video: bring UTF-8 and UTF-16 encoded subtitles format support
• Video: fix SUB subtitles sometimes truncated
• Video: add IDX/SUB subtitle handling
• Video: fix http://.*mpeg playback
• Video: support resume and bookmark for network shares
• Video: fix some FLV files not playing
• Youtube: fix mobile site video not playing
• Multimedia: fix RTSP support for Android applications
• Multimedia: fix some web radio applications by adding basic M3U support
• Audio: apply shorter steps in audio balance tuning
• Audio: fix sound glitch on system notification while playing music
• Music browser: fix album view crash on scroll with a lot of albums
• Music: support samba protected directory access
• Thumbnails: resolve thumbs generation freeze
• Indexing: improve rescan robustness
• Indexing: fix scanning not restarting after connecting device on PC or ejecting SDCard
• Network shares: large files (>2GB) can now be played
• Wi-Fi: fix disabling power saving not working
• Wi-Fi: enable IEEE802.11n support
• Wi-Fi: achieve faster reconnection
• SDCard: fix sdcard removal not being taken into account
• Storage: enable EXT3 filesystem support and migration
• USB keyboard: fix external directional keys layout when rotating the device
• Memory: enable 32MB swap by default and increase it to 64MB after Android reset or full device reformat
• Applications: fix applications disappearing sometimes between reboots
• Applications: fix unit not responsive after Google voicesearch use
• Power management: allow to define deep sleep mode by default in settings/about device/power management
• VPN: PPTP VPN support has been fixed

Archos Gen8 Kernel with Root and Overclock option

Happy new year everyone!

There is new life to Archos device using the new SDE (Special developer Edition) Development have open up the MOD community. I will be testing there kernel and post some feedback and benchmark result. Happy Rooting. :)

Your can download the SDE through Archos website
http://www.archos.com/support/support_tech/updates.html

There are three different various of Kernel on development, and there will be more to come.

• dogmaphobia kernel: Not overclock, no EXT4 support
• $aur0n kernel: Not overclocked, EXT4 is supported
• ardatdat kernel: Overclocked, EXT4 is supported

dogmaphobia Method - root only
================
1) Boot into SDE
2) Flash initramfs by dogmaphobia ( http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=880321 ) and my kernel (or any other kernel)
3) Reboot -> SDE -> Developer Edition
4) This is rooted, but not perm root, you need to add/remove apps every restart

$aur0n Method - rooted, boot from SD
=========================
1) Boot into SDE
2) Flash initramfs by $aur0n ( http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=895599 ) and (or other kernel that support EXT4)
3) Reboot -> SDE -> Developer Edition
4) Boot from SD card, because EXT4 file system is used, so it is fast and all contents are stored on SD card so that it is perm root with unlimited /data/ storage

ardatdat Method - rooted, overclockable, boot from SD
=========================
1) Boot into SDE
2) Flash initramfs by ardatdat ( http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=897877 ) and (or other kernel that support EXT4)
3) Reboot -> SDE -> Developer Edition
4) Boot from SD card, because EXT4 file system is used, so it is fast and all contents are stored on SD card so that it is perm root with unlimited /data/ storage

Change Log for ardatdat (2011-01-06)
- EXT4 fix (Quadrant score ~ 2500)
- Stable at max frequency 1200Mhz and min frequency 250Mhz (thanks Tzbob)
- Selectable frequency using SetCPU: 250/300/1000/1152/1200 Mhz
- 2.6.31 scheduling tweaks
- Source code pushed to github.com for easy sharing and conforming to GNU public license
- Merge various commits ( details can be seen in my github: https://github.com/ardatdat/archos-kernel/ )
- Quadrant scoring 2808 using 1200Mhz and boot from SD (Sandisk 8G Class 4)

Source: XDA via ardatdat

Gingerbread is the first Android version to feature the Ext4 file system

Android 2.3 Gingerbread, it turns out, actually has some optimizations up its sleeve that help dual-core processing. We were wondering what happened with that, considering the barrage of dual-core handsets about to hit the market from LG, Motorola and Samsung. Gingerbread swaps the YAFFS file system, currently used in most Android devices, for Ext4, the current Linux kernel file system. Well, with a name like "Yet Another Flash File System" (YAFFS), the current version was destined to go.

YAFFS is single-threaded, which would have been a bottleneck when trying to record those full HD video clips, and save them to the flash memory, whereas Ext4 doesn't have this limitation. Thus the new file system is more suited for usage with the multicore ARM-based chipsets that will be creeping into handsets and tablets next year. According to one Googler that has been pulled in to help with Ext4 for Android, as long as developers are mindful about how Ext4 does buffering and sync, there is no need to worry about data loss.

Ext4 will actually improve the handling of data loss, if developers make sure their application data is getting to persistent storage on time. Linux writes to so many files at once, that not all of them get written to permanent memory, and there is a risk for data loss. For example, when you drop your Android phone and the battery escapes, there is a chance those files that were not written in permanent memory, will evaporate.

There are newer Linux file systems out there, like Oracle's Btrfs, but Google went with the current generation Ext4 as more mature, not to mention that's what El Goog started using in its servers this year. It makes us all warm and fuzzy inside that Android got Google's server file system, and suddenly the little green robot can claim much more geek-cred with us.

Source: PhoneArena

Zeam Launcher

I had initially purchased a Viewsonic G-Tablet for my parents and an Archos 70 Internet Tablet for myself. Over my Christmas bread, I delivered the G-Tab to my parents, funny thing is, when they saw the Archos device they fell in love with the smaller form-factor. So, I ended up keeping the G-Tab and leaving my Archos 70 behind (I will visit you later!).

So being the inquiring boy that I am I started investigating, installing and reinstalling stuff onto the G-Tab. I started out installing the VEGAn BETA 4 build; info can be found here (http://vegantab.gojimi.com/) and here (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=884103). I generally like the VEGAn build, nice interface and fun, though still buggy.

I finally loaded the TnT Lite, build 3.1.2. details can be found here (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=842004). I have found that this build is fairly stable and very usable. I unfortunately do not like the launcher interface though. So I started looking into alternative launchers. I found several, some at cost, some free. I finally settled on the Zeam Launcher Version 2.8.4, which is free and can be downloaded from the Google Marketplace, details can be found here (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=664149). I particularly enjoy the ability to extend the launcher to full screen; this gives the UI a very clean feel. Some of the other features that I enjoy are the ability to configure how many rows and columns to use for icon placement. There are many other features that I will not cover here, but I would strongly encourage any person that has a G-Tab to install this launcher, I don’t think that you will regret it!

Happy Tab-ing, and Happy New-year!

HD movie file splitter for Archos

Archos have release a ArchosHDVideoTransfer, it will split file MKV file into 3GB pieces. It come with three version OS: Windows, Mac, Linux. I have tested with the windows version, splitted a 8Gb MKV files and it have split into three pieces. The split filename are like movie.mkv, movie.mkv.1, movie.mkv.2. I have copied the movie into the external SDcard, it the Archos able to play the 720p movie file without any issue. I able to seek through the split video file without any issue

The split file will not work on Windows Media Player or Media Player Classics, the movie will stop on the part1 of the split file.


















You can download the application from Archos website under "ArchosHDVideoTransfer"

Fix - for GTab won't turn back on

There is a reset button, but you have to crack open the device to get to it. I'm serious. This is a known issue with stock (and I assume TnT Lite 1.x is also affected, going on what you've written) - I've had this happen myself and I've called CS about this, already.

imo, you have three options:

1- Wait for the battery to die and it might "fix itself" (stress the "might" part). The device is definitely on, in this sleep mode that you can't get out of. I know this because when it happened to me, the device was recognized as a USB device when I connected it to my system and ran "lsusb" (Ubuntu). Second, when I first cracked my device open, I could see a green light inside so that told me it was actually on and drawing power.

2- Crack it open and hit the reset button in the middle of the board - this will most likely fix it immediately, but as you may expect it will void your warranty. There are four screws behind the rubber feet that you have to take off, and a bunch of clamps around the device that you'd need to pry open with something like an iPod plastic prying tool. It's a bit of a PITA to open and you have to be careful.

3- Return it / exchange it. Of course, all your data is there so hopefully there's nothing you care about or stuff that's confidential.


EDIT: The battery should drain completely within 24 hours. Once that happens, you can use the power button again to start it up and then you'd want to connect to AC to recharge, of course.

Source: XDA