Gtablet Modding - The Journey, so far.

Hurricane Irene Saturday, around 7pm, with Irene to arrive in full force at around 2am.

The word on the net was that the stock UI was a lttile lame. I began to explore the device with the stock UI. Not too bad. Then tried to install some apps that I was using on my phone. Too much drama. I got the device to play with it anyway.

First mod: Cyanogen 6. Follow the guide, try to boot. No go. Soft Brick. 


Thankfully, I found this link to reflash back to original. It flashes back to pre-3588. Attempts to update via the original update app were failing. Possibly storm related.

I moved forward anyway.

This time, Cyanogen 7   First attempt was thru ROM Manager. Fail. Have to pay to be able to download mods. Soft Brick.

Reflash back to original; see above.

Try to update via  stock firmware again. Fail. Blame it on the storm. Time to sleep, watch storm coverage and see what tomorrow brings.

Awake, it's now Sunday. No storm drama here. Great. Continue with the Cyanogen 7 install, this time through the ClockworkMod Recovery option. Success!


It boots (all the first boots take 5-10 minutes) after rebuilding the dalvik cache. App it up, with all my favorite Android apps. Pretty good. Not great.

Then, through Google, I find out that Honeycomb has been ported to the Gtablet. Maybe I should try Honeycomb, this is for educational purposes, right?

First 2 Honeycomb attempts fail. 


Have to flash back to original firmware before flashing to Honeycomb. RTFM.

Honeycomb boots, albeit slow; see above for why and don't panic. App it up, with all my favorite Android apps. Pretty good. Then I look for the camera app. No camera with Honeycomb on Gtablet. Why have it then?

What to do? I have seen good things about Vegan-tab, and you've got to love the name.

Re-flash back to original, install Vegan-tab, wait for boot. Awesome. It figures. The last mod I try, is the one I like the best.

Still not crazy about the form factor. I need a harness or something.

Hive76, Irene and My Gtablet

dtoliaferro couldn't host the Saturday Open House for Hive76. I like the idea of weekend open hours at the space, so I volunteered to host, even though as a 'dismember' I would need a member to let me in. Brendan stepped up to let me in.

Aaron from PACS stopped by to check out the space. I let him play with my Teensy. Then 5 people from space1026 stopped by!

I am amazed how many artists are interested in technology. Unfortunately, they were interested in Artemis, and I am not familiar enough with Artemis or the Hive76 computers to get a game going. Hopefully, they will watch for the next official Artemis action and come back.

On the ride home, while browsing the web, I saw that HP was discontinuing the Touchpad and support for WebOS. Blowing out all tablets for $99/149 respectively. I tried to buy a $99 Touchpad, but they were already sold out.

That was ok. I really don't like the form factor anyway.

Then Woot.com had the Viewsonic Gtablet on Monday. Too much temptation to handle. I Woot'd it.

Amazingly, the Viewsonic Gtablet arrived on Saturday, about 14 hours before we were supposed to be in the midst of Hurricane Irene. Perfect timing. When better to have a new toy, than during a storm? Plug it in and charge it, prepare house(s) for storm, and then......the green light on the tablet. All charged and ready to go.

To be continued, let the hacking begin.