[CosmicDan]

Phoebus wrote:

Thanks @cosmicdan. Well, I definitely know better than to cross-flash a BIOS. However, could this post on 4pda be something? The author there is offering a BIOS file for my particular hardware revision which he seems to have customized somehow but I’m not sure in what way. My initial feeling is that he has enabled dual-booting but I’m not sure (unfortunately my Russian is really bad). Any thoughts? Thanks again! P.

Hmm, Google Translate does come up with “it is reflected adequately to that for dualBut” so it seems so.

Filename attached says N1W6; just be sure to confirm it lists the same in your BIOS.

[CosmicDan]

Phoebus wrote:

So, after about 2 weeks of waiting to hear from someone I decided to go ahead and flash my tablet starting with the Android part, using the files downloaded here. The result… a bootloop. I’m ecstatic.

The dual-boot is a different BIOS, AMI Boot Manager is inside the UEFI. So you would need a dual-boot BIOS update. But obviously it is a bad idea to cross-flash a BIOS from a different hardware revision unless you can recover from a brick.

I don’t think that it’s possible. You would have to reverse-engineer the UEFI (using something like UEFI Tool) from a dual-boot model and inject/replace the modules that do the dual-booting part, at the least. Not sure if that is good enough though, such a thing would take a lot of trial and error. You would have to start by decompiling the BIOS from your version and the BIOS from a DualOS model and do a binary diff on every model. You’d have to research on the structure on AMI UEFI images and manually research the plain-text differences in modules, if any…

…it would be very time consuming regardless, and might not even be possible.

Keep an eye on the two 4PDA threads (one is a General thread, the other is about Firmware) – if anybody can hack together a DualOS system for a non-DualOS model, it’s those guys.

[CosmicDan]

dalgibbard wrote:

Should you need/want to, the documentation does specifically state that there is a risk with flashing BIOS (as per any BIOS flash really.). If you definitely want to, you can flash the BIOS by unpacking the BIOS folder contents whilst in the Windows installation, and running ‘0_flash64.bat’ as Administrator (not confirmed or well documented, but seems logical).

Just to re-iterate;

Do NOT flash the BIOS. Only if the hardware revision of your iWork1x is IDENTICAL to the BIOS, otherwise you will BRICK IT like I did and need to reprogram it with an EEPROM flasher. There are at least 5 different known hardware revisions so far. But you should avoid the BIOS on TechTablets and find the correct one for your model on 4pda. There is no BIOS model verification – it will just happy flash and brick your device without warning – so don’t do it.

[CosmicDan]

cptrios wrote:

Thanks a bunch CosmicDan. No bother with the Lightroom thing – I don’t actually care that much about the performance of the software as long as it lets me back up to the cloud. One more question if’n you don’t mind – how’s the speed on the full-size USB3 port?

The fastest USB3 device I have is a SanDisk Extreme USB 3.0 32GB stick, I just ran a CrystalMark and it’s not inhibited at all (the numbers I got are higher than the average rates listed here and that’s on battery power with as much power savings as I can enable, except DDR3 speed set to 1600MHz).

Pretty much the only drawback of this tablet at it’s price range is the battery. It’s not horrible, but it’s exacerbated by the fact that it will never draw more than ~1.5A to charge, no matter what cable/charger I throw at it (so you’ll have to get used to charging during the day as well as overnight if you use it heavily).

It also does get a bit warm under load, but I did a heatsink mod and it never goes above 32 degrees C now.

EDIT: Oh, and WiFi speed is terrible when you have BT enabled. Haven’t been able to figure this out yet, neither have the guys at 4pda from what I can tell.

[CosmicDan]

NB: I managed to recover my 1x with EEPROM flasher (same as Hi12 guide and hardware) and BIOS I found on 4pda.

 

cptrios wrote:

Hi All – Just ordered one of these (I plan on using it for photo viewing/uploading while traveling, with maybe a bit of light editing. I don’t expect Lightroom to run well, but maybe Raw Therapee?), and I have one question that isn’t answered in the review: is the MicroSD card reader a USB2-speed model like most of these tablets seem to have? I don’t want to bother buying a fast card if so. Thanks!

 

I don’t have any of those softwares so I really don’t know. But using Eclipse for Java development is OK, and that is a typically heavy IDE. I think the main speed issue on this type of hardware is slow storage.

 

If you want me to run some benchmarks, let me know.

 

microSD slot is trash, I have a Class 10 card and it is nowhere near handling even it’s maximum speed. Other USB 2.0 card readers like my desktop are better even.

[CosmicDan]

Great, looks like I bricked my iWork1x with this BIOS update.

I had problems with slow charging, and actually, the device couldn’t charge at all while it was powered on; I noticed that BIOS in the download section here had a newer date than the version I was using.

So I made a BIOS backup and flashed the one from here, thinking I had nothing to lose. I do have a dualboot version, but I figure if the BIOS was incompatible, it would say so and refuse to flash – just like, say, EVERYTHING ELSE THAT HAS A BIOS. But after I shutdown, all I got was the charge LED flashing for about 30 seconds, and now the device has no sign of life at all.

So what can I do, request a warranty replacement from GearBestI guess, hoping they’ll cover it despite the dents on the edges?

I know the device is cheap and budget, but what kind of hardware will let you flash a BIOS from a device that doesn’t suit!?!? Either that or Cube have stuffed up and incorrectly marked two incompatible models as the same (as far as BIOS/UEFI is concerned)…

Not happy ?

So, if you have a dualboot iWork 1x, AVOID THE BIOS UPDATE HERE.

EDIT: I’ve asked GearBest if they can replace it under warranty, also mentioning to them that I have opened the device (it’s obvious, so I’d rather them tell me now if they’ll still honour warranty or not) and if they don’t support it then I will order an EEPROM flasher and clip. I’m not sure my backup is good enough though, I noticed just now that it’s only 4MB whereas the new one was 8MB…

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