Winbook tablet (Tw100): Requesting 64 bit UEFI bios

[Ulincsys]

Rednroll wrote:
>Ulincsys wrote:
> > Then, I saw a demo of a guy running 64-bit Linux on a bay trail tablet using
> Grub32,
> > but for the life of me, I can't figure out how to install in inside windows. I
> figure
> > if I can find a way to install grub 32-bit, then I'll be able to boot and
> install
> > 64-bit windows 8.1.
>
> Whatever happened to you writing your own 64bit UEFI bios that was touch screen
> enabled and all that other stuff? It sounds like you're spending a lot of time
> looking at other solutions. You're not going to get that bios written that way.
> Following all the things you said you were going to do in this thread, you should
> already have a 64bit bios built and you are now currently working on those bios
> touchscreen, and theme support big ideas. You already obtained a million signatures
> on the 64bit bios petition you signed, and are now organizing the Equal Rights to
> purchase a WinBook with a 64bit Bios March on Washington. As well, you probably now
> own a few different well under market price Dell Venue Pros with a 64bit Bios and are
> now signing the "We demand more RAM for our 64bit OSes on our Dell Tablets
> petition."

Honestly, that would be fantastical, but the world is just too cruel. I honestly could write a 64-bit UEFI bios, and it might even be touchscreen compatible, but there's no way I could fit it into the Winbook's BIOS ROM chip. The Winbook TW100 comes with 3584KB of bios ROM, that's just about ALL taken up with UEFI drivers. Creating touchscreen support drivers would take up at least 10MB (10240KB). And I guess I could write a touchscreen UEFI bootloader, and then store it in ESP, but if the UEFI BIOS doesn't support tourchscreen, then no apps you run on it will either.

Besides that, you know whats even worse? I am a horrible programmer when it comes to 1'st level code (IE: UEFI), I learned UEFI code by skimming over some quick tutorials on google, I mean, it's basically just C, but it's really funky:
//#include <efi.h>
//#include <efilib.h>
//
//EFI_STATUS
//EFIAPI
//efi_main (EFI_HANDLE ImageHandle, EFI_SYSTEM_TABLE *SystemTable) {
// InitializeLib(ImageHandle, SystemTable);
// Print(L"Hello, world!\n");
//
// return EFI_SUCCESS;
//}
I'm convinced that writing my own bios is a fools errand, I should focus on a cross-architecture bootloader.

[Rednroll]

>Ulincsys wrote:
>The Winbook TW100 comes with 3584KB of bios ROM, that's just about ALL taken up with UEFI drivers. Creating touchscreen support drivers would take up >at least 10MB (10240KB).

LOL!!! Like I said before, there's usually good reasons why this hasn't already been done.

As well as it being written in C language, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some assembler language sprinkled in there as well complicating things even further to make the code footprint smaller and run more efficiently.

I work in the development of electronic automotive devices. I hear these kinds of explanations from the Embedded SW engineers on a daily basis where they're typicaly working with 256K or 512K ROMS containing bootloader code. I'ld have to imagine BIOS code limitations aren't that different.

[Ulincsys]

Rednroll wrote:
> LOL!!! Like I said before, there's usually good reasons why this hasn't already been
> done.
>
> As well as it being written in C language, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some
> assembler language sprinkled in there as well complicating things even further to
> make the code footprint smaller and run more efficiently.
>
> I work in the development of electronic automotive devices. I hear these kinds of
> explanations from the Embedded SW engineers on a daily basis where they're typicaly
> working with 256K or 512K ROMS containing bootloader code. I'ld have to imagine BIOS
> code limitations aren't that different.

It's true that 3584KB is a huge amount of ROM for traditional BIOS, but remember, the UEFI BIOS standard consists of several thousand source code files, all of which add up to several MB of data, with no space left over for extras.

I tried out some assembly programming a few hours ago. I'm not even that good at math, so assembly isn't the programming language for me

[Ulincsys]

I have successfully booted Ubuntu 15.04 on the Tw100!!! here's the steps I took from here: https://sturmflut.github.io/linux/ubunt ... l-tablets/

Note: the guy who wrote the article I mentioned above for some reason thinks that Ubuntu 15.04 doesn't work on Bay Trail anymore, however I can tell you it still works absolutely fine.

Problems:
the touchscreen input is inverted by default (can be fixed using Xinput_calibrator).
WiFi does not work ootb.
Bluetooth does not work ootb.
Sound is detected, but does not work.
The battery icon works, but it's really buggy.

you'll need:
4GB or more USB drive
Make sure to fully charge the tablet before starting this process, you might not be able to charge while Ubuntu is running (unless you have a USB hub plugged into the full sized port).
USB OTG cable and keyboard/mouse (not necessary, but highly recommended if you don't have the POGO keyboard-case)

Downloads:
Ubuntu 15.04 ISO: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop
Universal USB Installer: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal- ... -as-1-2-3/
Bootia32.efi file: https://github.com/jfwells/linux-asus-t ... otia32.efi

1. Download the Ubuntu 15.04 ISO
2. Create a bootable USB drive with the Ubuntu 15.04 ISO using Universal USB Installer
3. Insert the Bootia32.efi file into the "EFI\BOOT\" folder of the bootable USB drive you created
4. Plug the USB drive you created into the USB 3.0 (full sized) port on the side of the tablet
5. Plug in any keyboard/mouse you might need(touchscreen input is buggy)
6. Turn on the tablet, and let Ubuntu start up from the USB drive

And you're done! If you want to know how to install Ubuntu on the tablet, follow the directions in the link at the top of this post. Now, I'm still not done with the reason I started this post, I am NOT going to stop untill I can find a way to run a 64-bit OS natively on the Winbook tablets without any workarounds, we're getting close, but not quite there yet!

[slimjim2234]

I'm in the processing of doing the same exact thing except with a tw802. I have a grub menu and have attempted the "install" and "try" options but have had no success, only a black screen.
I have introduced the "debug" option into the kernel parameters within grub and populated a split second scroll of text on the screen, then black screen again.
Also tried nomodset and acpi=off but still no go.
Even changed the default setting "set gfxpayload=keep" to "set gfxpayload=text" as suggested here https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting/BlankScreen, again still a black screen.
Here's the kicker... ubuntu server works great and the whiptail gui is fully functional, except it does not detect any disks to install on... another problem i'll have to work out on a later.

Used ubuntu 15.04 desktop and 14.10 server.

Any suggestions?

[Ulincsys]

I just did a guide on how to install Ubuntu 14.10 (64-bit) on a 32-bit UEFI bay trail tablet: http://askubuntu.com/questions/619872/i ... 873#619873

[slimjim2234]

Ulincsys wrote:
> I just did a guide on how to install Ubuntu 14.10 (64-bit) on a 32-bit UEFI
> bay trail tablet:
> http://askubuntu.com/questions/619872/i ... 873#619873

I have seen your post and everything goes fine and well until the expected gui appears for ubuntu's menu... still a black screen unfortunately. I'm starting to think there is a display driver issue where ubuntu tries to load what it thinks to be the correct one when in reality it is not the correct one.

[Ulincsys]

slimjim2234 wrote:
> Ulincsys wrote:
> > I just did a guide on how to install Ubuntu 14.10 (64-bit) on a 32-bit UEFI
> > bay trail tablet:
> >
> http://askubuntu.com/questions/619872/i ... 873#619873
>
> I have seen your post and everything goes fine and well until the expected gui
> appears for ubuntu's menu... still a black screen unfortunately. I'm starting to
> think there is a display driver issue where ubuntu tries to load what it thinks to be
> the correct one when in reality it is not the correct one.

Maybe the Tw802 has a different display from the Tw100.

[Ilari_the_fox]

Ulincsys wrote:
> I have successfully booted Ubuntu 15.04 on the Tw100!!! here's the steps I
> took from here:
> https://sturmflut.github.io/linux/ubunt ... l-tablets/
>
> Note: the guy who wrote the article I mentioned above for some reason
> thinks that Ubuntu 15.04 doesn't work on Bay Trail anymore, however I can
> tell you it still works absolutely fine.
>
> Problems:
> the touchscreen input is inverted by default (can be fixed using
> Xinput_calibrator).
> WiFi does not work ootb.
> Bluetooth does not work ootb.
> Sound is detected, but does not work.
> The battery icon works, but it's really buggy.
>
> you'll need:
> 4GB or more USB drive
> Make sure to fully charge the tablet before starting this process, you
> might not be able to charge while Ubuntu is running (unless you have a USB
> hub plugged into the full sized port).
> USB OTG cable and keyboard/mouse (not necessary, but highly recommended if
> you don't have the POGO keyboard-case)
>
> Downloads:
> Ubuntu 15.04 ISO: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop
> Universal USB Installer:
> http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal- ... -as-1-2-3/
> Bootia32.efi file:
> https://github.com/jfwells/linux-asus-t ... otia32.efi
>
> 1. Download the Ubuntu 15.04 ISO
> 2. Create a bootable USB drive with the Ubuntu 15.04 ISO using Universal
> USB Installer
> 3. Insert the Bootia32.efi file into the "EFI\BOOT\" folder of
> the bootable USB drive you created
> 4. Plug the USB drive you created into the USB 3.0 (full sized) port on the
> side of the tablet
> 5. Plug in any keyboard/mouse you might need(touchscreen input is buggy)
> 6. Turn on the tablet, and let Ubuntu start up from the USB drive
>
> And you're done! If you want to know how to install Ubuntu on the tablet,
> follow the directions in the link at the top of this post. Now, I'm still
> not done with the reason I started this post, I am NOT going to stop untill
> I can find a way to run a 64-bit OS natively on the Winbook tablets without
> any workarounds, we're getting close, but not quite there yet!

Any luck on getting 64-bit windows 7, 8, or 10 booting on these tablets? Your sig shows that you managed 64-bit XP, and I'll settle for that, but a walk-through would be appreciated, either way. I'd really like to be able to assign more than 1gb of ram to java, and I figure it might also solve the out-of-memory errors I keep getting when single programs start approaching 2gb of ram usage. (and, yes, I realize I'll be relying heavily on virtual memory, that's what it exists for)

[RichP]

The only way to get 64 bit Windows to run on any of the Bay Trail tablets (Winbook, HP, Insignia, etc) is to hack the 32 bit bootloader. Period.