Post Ai134bAryloTPZgtLE by dekkia@dekkia.com
(DIR) More posts by dekkia@dekkia.com
(DIR) Post #Ai1336HNMQl5Ip1H4S by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-02T22:26:53Z
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I upgraded the internal storage on my ebook reader.Turns it it's easier than you'd think but harder than it should be.So I wrote a guide on how to do it: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Tolino+Vision+6+Internal+Storage+Replacement+or+Upgrade/168276
(DIR) Post #Ai1336ycldLxSxFoTw by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T11:33:13Z
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The whole point of this exercise was to be able to put the entirety of the english-language wikipedia on it.That thing is about 100GB in size.
(DIR) Post #Ai1337tLMkiuIrn6tE by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T11:35:02Z
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The reason why I wanted to put wikipedia on it was because I recently started reading the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy.Having a device with the single biggest collection of human knowledge seemed funny.
(DIR) Post #Ai1338la766n15AQQi by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T11:38:23Z
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After the hard part was over, I wanted to have some fun and went on to replacing the boot animation.
(DIR) Post #Ai1339XnDqfnQbivZo by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T11:40:23Z
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And here's what the animation looks like.
(DIR) Post #Ai133ATZl0tUJol4ds by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T11:43:34Z
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The actual image frames for the boot animation have a thicker border than on the device. That's because the Tolino Vision 6 overscans by around 100px on each side.
(DIR) Post #Ai133B6DRLnoFepvs0 by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T11:46:08Z
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Now to the idle part of the process: getting Wikipedia on the device.
(DIR) Post #Ai133BfJKrsK0VFxZY by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T11:46:41Z
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In retrospect, I should've done this when I had the SD card out.
(DIR) Post #Ai133CDLIL65i3B8cK by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T12:29:00Z
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In case someone stumbles over this thread and wants the files. Here you go: https://zip.dekkia.zip/s/B7aT8gYeD84AdDF
(DIR) Post #Ai133Cw0cGpHwa4oEq by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T12:33:47Z
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Good news and bad news: Good: The file transfer hasn't failed yet.Bad: The Time estimation seems to be correct.
(DIR) Post #Ai133DV6VmtnhQUpwO by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T13:20:31Z
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Landing confirmed.The file is on the reader.
(DIR) Post #Ai133E9W5XE1ilP6vo by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T13:21:49Z
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Now I just have to install an app to read that file.I'm using https://kiwix.org/en/ for this. Since the fdroid version is outdated I downloaded it directly from their website and installed it over adb.
(DIR) Post #Ai133EmrjEhVgnoXGS by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T14:08:00Z
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That wold've been to easy
(DIR) Post #Ai133FZ4pzGW6KN2PY by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T14:10:23Z
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Ok maybe the file is just too big, I thought. So I tried the German language Wikipedia which has "only" 4,17GB. But that one crashed too.
(DIR) Post #Ai133GECN69u9rbsVU by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T14:11:14Z
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And then I tried the top 100 articles without pictures which come in at 13,28MB. Instead of crashing and throwing an error, the app just closed.
(DIR) Post #Ai133H6n67pMtB9TbE by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T14:13:36Z
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Then I tried the 5-year-old version from Fdroid. That one doesn't even need me to open a file, because it just randomly restarts in the menu.
(DIR) Post #Ai133HvU3eNRQOrxc8 by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T14:14:35Z
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To figure out what's wrong I will need to take a look into logcat.But I'm not feeling that today, so this is something for future me to do.
(DIR) Post #Ai133Ij7584luK5ayG by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T14:21:24Z
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Side question:The device has a black and white e-ink display and autostarts the main app which can't be closed normally.Why does that app have an icon which is in color?They do have an Android app for "normal" phones, but that one has a completely different icon. So they didn't just reuse it or something.
(DIR) Post #Ai133JFN9BsdWNBMFk by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T14:23:02Z
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It might be that they found that yellow produces a better gray than any kind of gray they could use.
(DIR) Post #Ai133JyORntPm0FJQW by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T14:23:56Z
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Or they're working on a version with a color e-ink behind the scenes. But even if that's the case it doesn't make sense since you can't see that Icon normally.
(DIR) Post #Ai133KtT1bXwd0wtO4 by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T14:24:54Z
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Except maybe the color variant has official support for 3rd party apps instead of people hacking it in as I did.
(DIR) Post #Ai133LbmMqzYqRgHSK by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T14:26:43Z
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So I'm calling it now: Tolino is working on an eReader with a color display and support for installing 3rd party applications.
(DIR) Post #Ai133MDM7938izGI1g by dekkia@dekkia.com
2024-05-04T14:02:49Z
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Update: They did in fact work on on a color variant.
(DIR) Post #Ai133MovrR6ibWqIb2 by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T18:16:29Z
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Hi, it's future me.I have no clue what any of that means:
(DIR) Post #Ai133P8rEKEZnuBEvo by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T18:25:34Z
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This is probably what that means.Can't access memory when there Isn't any.
(DIR) Post #Ai133ROAsLfslzMV5E by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T18:27:33Z
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are you telling me I've got 100 times 640K free and that's still not enough?
(DIR) Post #Ai133TIZm8NuhCl3dQ by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T18:36:16Z
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Soooo... I restarted it because I wanted to know what the memory usage is after bootup.But it doesn't boot anymore.great.
(DIR) Post #Ai133VZJKsxXjgbRzs by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T19:03:51Z
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Putting the OEM SD back in there makes it work again.50/50 that it didn't like the bootscreen or the bigger storage. My bet is on the bootscreen.
(DIR) Post #Ai133XdHf5KG8aTeT2 by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T19:42:06Z
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After following my own guide I got it working again.Yay!
(DIR) Post #Ai133Zl9kmoMjaAy12 by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T19:44:16Z
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32M free after boot.I guess that's intended and not something I did.
(DIR) Post #Ai133bfCftEodhPF0y by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-03T19:46:02Z
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But by re-doing the whole process with f2fs-tools 1.15 instead of the previously used 1.14 I now have an extra 36,4GB disk space free.That version really is buggy.
(DIR) Post #Ai133dz82mMfq4kBLk by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T19:16:05Z
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2nd time's the charm, right?
(DIR) Post #Ai133h0enYMzDgTweG by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T19:17:15Z
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The reader worked just fine for reading ever since I fixed the issue I caused while playing around.So if it breaks again, I know it's not caused by the larger internal Storage.
(DIR) Post #Ai133j7ovtHvmTqh5k by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T19:20:18Z
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That being said: let's play around a bit more with the bootscreen.
(DIR) Post #Ai133lFL2uUSMNNj5U by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T19:27:48Z
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The Original animation is 29.5KiB in size, while my custom one is 450.2KiB big.Guess that's at least part of the problem.
(DIR) Post #Ai133oCy2BNNXtINJA by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T19:30:34Z
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Let's see by how much I can make it smaller.
(DIR) Post #Ai133rBIyopSlbXadM by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T19:42:32Z
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Google recommends zopflipng to compress the png-files. So let's try that first.They weren't lying on their GitHub repo when they wrote it's slow.And their example shell-script at https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/base/+/master/cmds/bootanimation/FORMAT.md#png-compression doesn't work. For some reason, it expexts png-files to end with ".pngs"
(DIR) Post #Ai133ue866fVVs39Tk by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T19:52:36Z
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Wow, compressing 13 PNGs took 511,46 Seconds. That's eight and a half Minutes.Even for the i7-2630QM in this machine that's slow.
(DIR) Post #Ai133xQ3msCG76USSu by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T19:55:13Z
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Wowsers, that shrunk the whole animation file down to 353.3KiB. That's about 22% smaller.
(DIR) Post #Ai1340Jn0dxn6WZzbk by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T20:02:49Z
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And through the magic of deleting every 2nd frame, I got It down to 190.3KiB. That's 57% smaller than the original size.
(DIR) Post #Ai1343QzQKVOliyHkO by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T20:39:41Z
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Next thing on the list ist adding a trim.txt file. That way I only have to store separate files for the progress bar since everything else stays the same.
(DIR) Post #Ai1346Tw5pe2DjNBFw by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T20:44:09Z
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With that, I'm down to 29,1KiB. Which is not only 93% smaller than my original custom version but also slightly smaller than the original. By 350 bytes to be exact.
(DIR) Post #Ai1349sVSw56kntLTE by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T20:45:40Z
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Did I mention that I haven't tested if any of this works? According to the google documentation it should, but that doesn't mean much. So let's do that next.
(DIR) Post #Ai134CRJwT7MhMCB0q by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T20:50:49Z
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I copied the file over to the correct directory using adb shell and hit restart.
(DIR) Post #Ai134ES6SWvqwMZpVg by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T20:53:01Z
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And obviously that didn't work. The Trimmed files still replace the _whole_ screen, not just their part.
(DIR) Post #Ai134GIbaoWUfU9Gz2 by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T20:54:51Z
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Let's try not setting a background color next. Maybe it'll default to transparent or something.
(DIR) Post #Ai134IPPkT9rDBLjsG by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T20:56:12Z
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And it defaulted to black. Bummer.
(DIR) Post #Ai134KRGCZp5VUEF1s by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T21:07:20Z
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So back to the bigger files I go. Maybe removing some of the thick white borders will help. Probably not, but one can dream.
(DIR) Post #Ai134MZqFdsM8gG7gO by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T21:12:01Z
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And now I'm at 166,0KiB or 64% smaller.That's still a lot, but not the 93% I could achieve if there was an option to selectively clear the frame on each display update.
(DIR) Post #Ai134OeAYWWeYgIbho by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T21:13:23Z
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But here's another idea: Can I modify the original file to make it boot quicker?Let's give that a try.
(DIR) Post #Ai134QxNy35LirIyw4 by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T21:16:27Z
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The unmodified original takes 60 seconds from pressing reboot to reaching the boot screen and another 15 seconds until the login prompt.
(DIR) Post #Ai134TMH2UBLAcxt0S by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T21:28:26Z
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Got the original down to 1,6KiB from 29,5KiB. Let's see how it does in the speedtest.
(DIR) Post #Ai134WAga1h9tYZArQ by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T21:32:26Z
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Here we go! Finally, something I can call a success: From pressing reboot to the boot screen It took 35 seconds and then an additional 19 seconds to the login prompt.
(DIR) Post #Ai134YWNqKEvBQjWxU by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T21:34:50Z
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Note: n=1 and I can't be bothered to do more testing. Do I look like a scientist to you?
(DIR) Post #Ai134bAryloTPZgtLE by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T21:39:18Z
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Ok, I just noticed that I had it plugged into my PC on the second try.So let's do another run without usb power.
(DIR) Post #Ai134e7n0g8EYtGySO by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T21:46:05Z
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I did a few more:Try 2: reboot to boot screen: 36sboot screen to login: 17sTry 3: reboot to boot screen: 62sboot screen to login: 17sTry 4: reboot to boot screen: 35sboot screen to login: 17sTry 5: reboot to boot screen: 61sboot screen to login: 17s
(DIR) Post #Ai134gkVFiHshXOv4q by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T21:46:46Z
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So while I didn't manage to speed up boot time by making the animation smaller, I found that the device takes double as long every second boot.
(DIR) Post #Ai134j0spmZviv51t2 by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T21:48:06Z
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One of these days I'll solder some wires to the serial pins to see if I get some kernel logs during boot out of it.I'd really like to know why the boot times are so drastically different.
(DIR) Post #Ai134l4VBIf46imwnw by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T21:53:07Z
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Ok, so the boot animation doesn't affect the boot time at all as it looks like.My "big" 166KiB custom one also takes either 30 or 60 seconds.
(DIR) Post #Ai134nEr7m8EpPeFDk by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T22:06:16Z
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I again uploaded that stuff, in case someone wants this: https://zip.dekkia.zip/s/B7aT8gYeD84AdDF
(DIR) Post #Ai134p3wLKaYU8YYU4 by dekkia@dekkia.com
2023-12-08T22:17:25Z
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Oh, and about the Wikipedia thing: The problem still exists. Could not open the file (or any smaller one). The App just crashes and that's it.I still can access Wikipedia over the browser, but that's not the same.