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PineTab2: Tutorials and FAQ

This is a collection of tutorials and frequently asked questions for the PineTab2.

Tutorials

Putting the Device into Maskrom Mode

To recover from a bad eMMC/SPI flash, plug the included debug adapter into the charging USB-C port and switch the white switch to its “ON” position to bypass eMMC/SPI boot. This tries to boot from SD, and if no SD is inserted, enters Maskrom mode.

Recovery from non-booting device

Warning
You cannot use a virtual machine for this tutorial as rkdeveloptool does not function as intended.
Note
Before trying this, try the Maskrom instructions above by changing the debug adapter switch to “ON” to bypass the internal storage to boot the factory image off an SD Card. If this doesn’t work you may proceed with this tutorial.

There may be situations where the device refuses to turn on and you cannot see anything coming up through UART. This may indicate that your device is bricked. The PineTab2 includes a debug adapter which allows the user to access Maskrom mode. On it’s own this mode is useless as the user requires a miniloader from Rockchip to access any rkdeveloptool commands.

Install rkdeveloptool

First you must install rkdeveloptool if you haven’t already. You can find instructions on the Rockchip wiki.

Clone

git clone https://github.com/rockchip-linux/rkdeveloptool.git

Install dependencies

sudo apt-get install libudev-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev dh-autoreconf pkg-config libusb-1.0

Compile

autoreconf -i
./configure
make
make install

Put device into Maskrom mode

The debug adapter, bottom port is for UART and the top one is for maskrom

The debug adapter, bottom port is for UART and the top one is for maskrom

Turn off your PineTab2 by holding the power button for around five seconds. Then grab your debug adapter, make sure the Maskrom switch is in the “ON” position, plug it into your PineTab2 and plug a USB-C cable into the top port and into your computer.

Check that your device is in Maskrom mode by typing lsusb into a terminal. If it displays Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Company Device then it has successfully entered Maskrom mode.

Troubleshooting

  • If you only see QinHeng Electronics USB Serial (UART) either try switching USB-C ports on the adapter or plugging in both adapter ports into your computer.

Boot miniloader using Maskrom

To issue any commands using rkdeveloptool you must first load a Rockchip miniloader through Maskrom.

Note
The zip is hosted directly on this website.

Download MiniLoaderAll.bin.zip

Once you download and unzip the miniloader, issue this command using rkdeveloptool.

rkdeveloptool db MiniLoaderAll.bin

Note
This command downloads the loader to the device temporarily. If you powered off the device and wish to enter Maskrom and issue rkdeveloptool commands you must follow the above instructions again.

Once the command completes, wait for the device to reappear in lsusb. Make sure it has a different name than before. Be patient as it can take ~20 seconds.

Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Company Device USB-MSC

Recovery to factory firmware

To make sure the only boot option for the device is via SD Card, erase the internal storage.

rkdeveloptool ef

You will have to wait for a while until it has finished. Once the command has completed, force power off the device and place an SD Card with the DanctNix factory firmware into the card slot.

Download factory image

https://echo.danctnix.org:7269/factory_images/pinetab2/

Note
The factory image is flashed to a microSD card and it will overwrite the eMMC installation after booting.
Info
Newer images use the volume and power button for selection at boot instead of the keyboard.

Screen Rotation

Auto-rotating the Screen

Auto-rotation is handled by your operating system. However, the following general steps should work on distributions that support iio-sensor-proxy:

  • To enable auto-rotation, install the iio-sensor-proxy package: sudo pacman -S iio-sensor-proxy and reboot.
  • Some desktop environments, such as KDE, default to only allowing screen rotation while in tablet mode (detached from the case.) To enable it with the keyboard attached, go to System Settings–>Display and Monitor -> Display Configuration -> Uncheck “Only when in tablet mode” and click “Apply.”

Rotating the Login Screen

Login screen orientation is handled by your operating system. Below are the instructions for the SDDM login screen that ships with the factory image:

By default, the login screen is set to display in portrait mode. If you wish to change it to landscape mode to match the keyboard while in the case, use the following steps (Credit to chzbacon) :

  • Install necessary software: sudo pacman -S xorg-xrandr xorg-xinput
  • Edit /usr/share/sddm/scripts/Xsetup. For example, using nano: sudo nano /usr/share/sddm/scripts/Xsetup and add the following two lines to the end of file:
    • xrandr --output DSI-1 --mode 800x1280 --rate 60.00 --rotate right
    • xinput set-prop "pointer:Goodix Capacitive TouchScreen" --type=float "Coordinate Transformation Matrix" 0 1 0 -1 0 1 0 0 1
  • Now edit /etc/sddm.conf.d/sddm.conf, for example: sudo nano /etc/sddm.conf.d/sddm.conf and add the following two lines (case sensitive):
    • [X11]
    • DisplayCommand=/usr/share/sddm/scripts/Xsetup
  • Reboot, and your login screen should now display in landscape mode.

Frequently Asked Questions

General

How does the PineTab2 compare to the Pinebook Pro?

It’s slower, as it is intended to be a successor to the PineTab1, not the Pinebook Pro. It’ll still handle web browsing, video playback and documents fine though.

What is the Performance of the PineTab2 compared to the PineTab-V?

The PineTab2 is notably faster than the PineTab-V. You can see this by comparing the Quartz64 sbc-bench results to the Star64 ones. Performance should not be a factor of consideration when purchasing a PineTab-V.

I am a casual user with minimal Linux experience. Is this device for me?

The PineTab 2 is considered early release at this point, and the community is expected to develop support for it over time. For example, the Known issues page details several features that are not yet fully working. You may at times need to troubleshoot this device and some development experience is ideal if you want to realize the tablet’s full potential at this stage.

For these reasons, the PineTab2 may not be the ideal device for casual users. However, if you feel up to the challenge and want to learn while joining a great community, you are more than welcome! Please join one of our chat platforms: the community is always happy to help!

What works, what doesn’t?

Please see Known issues.

I only know Python, can I help with drivers?

Drivers are (at least typically) written in the C programming language. Unfortunately, there is no way to “code drivers in Python” because usually drivers need to access and process memory allocation directly. If you feel like this is interesting to you, we suggest you to spend some time learning the C programming language, maybe with an emphasis in device driver development. The good news is that, since you already know a programming language, you already know part of the skill.

In short, you can only help with drivers development if you learn the C programming language first.

Hardware

Does the Tablet support a Pen?

No, adding a digitiser for pen inputs would make the price too high.

Is there SPI Flash?

Yes! A 128 Mbit flash chip (sk25lp128) is reportedly present on production devices.

Software

What operating systems are currently available?

The PineTab2 uses ARM operating systems. Please see Software for a current list of software releases.

How can I install an operating system on the SD card / eMMC?

See the article Software.

Can I run Android on it?

Theoretically yes, practically there’s little chance anyone wants to make a well-supported Android build for this device. If you’re looking for an Android tablet, buy any mainstream tablet, and you’ll get better value for your money.

However, if you just need to run a few simple android apps, you might want to have a look at Waydroid which can be installed on Arch Linux ARM using the following command: sudo pacman -S waydroid

Booting

What’s the boot order for SD cards and eMMC?

The SPI and the internal memory (eMMC) have a higher boot priority than the microSD card. Please see the Software for more detailed information.

Can I install a different OS on my PineTab2?

Yes! While all PineTab2 come with an OS preinstalled, you are free to use any OS on the integrated storage (the eMMC) or an SD card. See Software for how to install them.

Bluetooth

The Bluetooth isn’t working

The BES2600 Bluetooth driver still needs to be implemented. Please see the Networking Using USB section above for a workaround.

Wi-Fi

The Wi-Fi isn’t working

The BES2600 Wi-Fi driver needs major cleanup and bugfixing: at the moment it causes system crashes. Please see the Networking Using USB section for a workaround.

Video

Can PineTab2 play back DRM content such as Netflix?

Yes, though the specific implementation depends on your installed operating system.

On the default Arch Linux Arm: Widevine, using the widevine-aarch64 package in the AUR is working, and was demonstrated on the PineTab2 using Paramount+ and Disney+. Install it (yay -S widevine-aarch64), run the included register script to get Firefox to recognize it, and it should start working.