My experience with MK808 and MK802

I was interested in installing Debian/Ubuntu on these devices. Because there are so many clones and some of images do not work, I struggled for a while and eventually find some sourses to make them boot. Not perfect but seemed working. I think it might be useful to share my experience.
For MK802, I bought from Amazon but they couldn't boot the images that I downloaded at all. I had to return them thanks to Amazon's great return policy. (BTW these were the first times that I returned anything from Amazon. :-) Eventually, I bought a MK802ii from Taobao in China. The seller claim they are geniune and it indeed works. The problem was I had a hardtime to get the wifi working. The wifi chip in the device is rtl8188eu and most of the images only include drivers for rtl892cu. Eventually, I found the images provided in here. I used v4 but substituted the 3.0.62+ kernel which include the 8188eu driver. After doing a "depmod -a" and a "modprobe 8188eu", the wifi worked. I am happy to say that this setup is very stable.

For MK808, it was even more difficult. Some of the images cannot even boot on my MK808 (not 808b). Eventually, I found the images provided here works well. (I found directly downloading the remix images did work well but downloading the homeio_rc1 rootfs and then putting it on a formated microsd card worked.) The only issue was again about wifi. Following the instructions given by the author, I made it working. However, even though it can detected the available wifi, it still take many trials to lock in. There are some other inconvenience but it at least it works.

I did some benchmarking on these two devices to compare with Dockstar. I used sysbench cpu test. You can install sysbench using apt-get. The command I used was "sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=10000 run". The results I got were:
Dockstar 744 seconds.
MK802 274 seconds,
MK808 239 seconds (single thread) and 123 seconds (two threads).

Hope this will save some time for people want to do the samething.

This is interesting. Thank you for sharing.

I also bought a MK802ii with the same wireless chipset, so far the android that it ships with has been the only image that supported it, I look forward to trying what you've done above.

Cheers

twinclouds Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I was interested in installing Debian/Ubuntu on
> these devices. Because there are so many clones
> and some of images do not work, I struggled for a
> while and eventually find some sourses to make
> them boot. Not perfect but seemed working. I
> think it might be useful to share my experience.
> For MK802, I bought from Amazon but they couldn't
> boot the images that I downloaded at all. I had
> to return them thanks to Amazon's great return
> policy. (BTW these were the first times that I
> returned anything from Amazon. :-) Eventually, I
> bought a MK802ii from Taobao in China. The seller
> claim they are geniune and it indeed works. The
> problem was I had a hardtime to get the wifi
> working. The wifi chip in the device is rtl8188eu
> and most of the images only include drivers for
> rtl892cu. Eventually, I found the images provided
> in
> [url=https://www.miniand.com/forums/forums/develop
> ment/topics/debian-wheezy-lxde-armhf-build]here[/u
> rl]. I used v4 but substituted the 3.0.62+ kernel
> which include the 8188eu driver. After doing a
> "depmod -a" and a "modprobe 8188eu", the wifi
> worked. I am happy to say that this setup is very
> stable.
>
> For MK808, it was even more difficult. Some of
> the images cannot even boot on my MK808 (not
> 808b). Eventually, I found the images provided
> [url=http://www.slatedroid.com/topic/77977-ubuntu-
> 1210-complete-armmk808rk3066-desktop-solution-new-
> homeio-release-chromiumtrue-flash-gles-goodies-xbm
> c-easy-setup-and-much-more/]here[/url] works well.
> (I found directly downloading the remix images
> did work well but downloading the homeio_rc1
> rootfs and then putting it on a formated microsd
> card worked.) The only issue was again about
> wifi. Following the instructions given by the
> author, I made it working. However, even though
> it can detected the available wifi, it still take
> many trials to lock in. There are some other
> inconvenience but it at least it works.
>
> I did some benchmarking on these two devices to
> compare with Dockstar. I used sysbench cpu test.
> You can install sysbench using apt-get. The
> command I used was "sysbench --test=cpu
> --cpu-max-prime=10000 run". The results I got
> were:
> Dockstar 744 seconds.
> MK802 274 seconds,
> MK808 239 seconds (single thread) and 123 seconds
> (two threads).
>
> Hope this will save some time for people want to
> do the samething.

Please let me know if it works for you. I have repeated the same procedure on 802ii and everytime it always works. However, it is a different story on 808. My previous installation still works but when I try to make image of the microSD card or create another card with rootfs. I cannot boot successfully. Not sure why is that.

@twinclouds and others,

I'm setting up the MK802 stick running Lubuntu 12.0 from Miniand (this stick is an old version a while back). Could not start Lubuntu Software Center! I wonder whether it was disable in this Lubuntu image? Basically, I want to replace Chromium with Firefox (in order to play Flash movies on various Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese websites).

Appreciate any advise!

-bodhi
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Yup! found out that there is no Lubuntu Software Center avaialble. Guess I need to going under the hood with apt-get.

-bodhi
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Twinclouds et al,

I'm trying to revive an old MK802+ stick (1GB) to make better use of it. It will be used by my old folks mainly for watching movies websites (Adobe Flash is a requirements).

Has anybody tried to use Ubuntu 14.04 or other images from this Linu-Sunxi web sites? it's an A10 so they said should work after fixing u-boot and other boot loader-related stuff.
http://linux-sunxi.org/Bootable_OS_images

Thanks for any tips!

-bodhi
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bodhi's corner

Hi, Bodhi:
I have one MK802 and it works pretty stable. The image I use is from https://www.miniand.com/forums/forums/development/topics/debian-wheezy-lxde-armhf-build. I even didn't change the uboot and anything else. However, I just use it as a headless server so my experience may not applicable to you.
From my experience, most of the images will work. The only issue is if it support the wifi chip in the MK802. You just have to experiement.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/27/2014 03:44PM by twinclouds.

Thanks twinclouds! the images I have tried from miniand official page were disappointing. None allows an easy way to install flash player! Lubuntu image is most robust, but it was too out of date and I could not install flash (repos were disconnected). I'll try your link to see how it goes.

-bodhi
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bodhi's corner

Hi twinclouds,

Thanks for the link to the Debian image. It is the best among all the images I've tried. However, I found out the hard way that Adobe does not provide Flash player for ARM !!! dmn… I've also tried gnash, but it did not play flash movies correctly. So now I'm back to stock Android.

-bodhi
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bodhi's corner

It is the best I tried also. However, for movie, video type of applications, I also found the best is the native Android.

Eventually, I found a new "ubuntu" distributions called danuntu and had good luck with MK808.

Thanks twinclouds!

Does the MK808 have WOL, or any sleep mode that will power down the stick?

-bodhi
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