[Acer Iconia Tab A100] pio_masaki:
Section 3

Additional Recovery tools:

Blackhole Wipe/Nullifier by pio_masaki

These are tools I created to make wiping a little easier, but please read the post completely before deciding to use it! There are multiple versions, and they can and will wipe internal SD, as well as take up to 40 minutes to run (1, not all). Please ask questions if you have them there and I will help as best I can!

AROMA Recovery Touch Recovery

A touch file manger to be used in recovery, even on non touch CWM! Good for renaming backups as soon as you make them (I tend to forget afterwards and get confused by 6 backups with just dates). Also moving a downloaded zip from internal to external or whatever before running a system wipe, any number of things. Please read the post completely before using this tool! It can cause damage if not used properly and with care!

Kernels:

linuxsociety / godmachine's A100 OC Kernel

Plenty of extra balls thrown in for good measure, a good place to look if you like high benchmarks and plenty of extra goodies baked in. Available in a few flavors, with some GPU OC thrown in for good measure.

ezterry's A100 OC/UV Kernel

The only other option for a kernel that we have besides stock and CM9's included kernel. Excellent kernel, really wakes up the A100, allows up to 1.5 GHz for some extra umph and undervolting to help conserve power on our very weak batteries.

PRO TIPS:

The 10 minute rule:

The reason I mention waiting 10 minutes on first boot of a ROM install is this: Alot of things happen the first time the ROM runs, alot of scripts run, the kernel has to settle and search and move things, files are flying all over the nand. Think of a tornado in a cubicle. That's first boot for your device. Allowing it 10 minutes uninterrupted allows all of that to happen and settle down. The following reboot lets all that new info fire up from it's new home and continue settling in. After restoring and downloading apps, that reboot allows that new info to settle into it's new home and the system to catch up. This isn't device specific, rather a general rule of thumb for all devices. Does not really apply to restores unless something is changed.

Undervolting:

Undervolting on this device is only available on ezterry's excellent kernel. The following is a rough guideline of how to do it, and do it right:

Start small, don't just dump it -200 and expect it to work. For the time you're testing, make sure it is NOT set for boot. If something goes wrong you don't want it doing it everytime it boots, right? Go in small increments, -25 is usually OK. For now, don't overclock. Starting at 1 Ghz, lower every speed range down -25, and run the device for at least 10-20 minutes, normal use, hard use, benchmark, browse the web, watch a HD movie. If all is fine and its not lagging, freezing, force closing or heating up more then usual, move everything to -50, and repeat. My device freezes at -150 but runs stable at -145. Every device and chip is different, mine may do -145 yours may do -175 or only -50.

Overclocking

Overclocking is available on ezterry's bodacious (already used excellent) kernel, up to 1.5 GHz, and the CM9 kernel up to 1.4GHz. As with undervolting, this should be done in small steps and tested between to find your max. Generally 1.5 GHz is fine for every device, however all devices and chips are slightly different, and some may not be stable at it. Mixing undervolting and overclocking can be tricky, but following the steps above for undervolting you can find that sweet spot for your device.

Batteries and why they fail

This section is entirely my opinion, other's swear one way, other's another, but this is what I've concluded from multiple posts for this device.

Consider 10% to be 0%. There have been more then a couple posts that say they let their battery fall below 10% and they can NOT get the device to work properly again afterwards. I think there's a few reasons for this, and I'll explain them now. First, a lot of batteries tend to have some kind of breaker protection if the voltage drops below a certain level. This is to prevent damage to the cells, which it does, however we can't close that breaker to restore activity from the battery, IE, it's dead anyways. This threshold varies from one device to another, one battery pack to another, some can go to 0% and be ok, others can't. I say voltage level, because while draining the voltage can spike up, and it can also spike down, which can fall below this threshold even though it says you have 5% battery life remaining, and trigger the protection.

The acer does not seem to power on without a working battery. If the battery is "dead" it doesn't seem to boot. Its basically a brick until either the battery is replaced (by acer I would assume) or the motherboard is replaced due to some sort of damage causing this. Replacing the motherboard costs almost as much as a new unit, so at this point, just save up some more and buy a new one.

For this, I never go below 10% if ever possible. Even on my phones.

Another thing I try not to do is charge in bursts, or at random times. Basically, I plug in at 10%, then allow full charge to 100%, I don't charge in between those ranges, and I don't charge for periods less then 100%. So I don't plug in at 48% then unplug at 60%. I've learned this one from my Evo 4g, the battery was fantastic for months, then I started using the car charger to top off, and the battery life over the course of 2 weeks took a very noticable hit on overall life. I lost easily 4 hours a day usage on it. This on a phone and ROM combo that got me 16 hours a day.

Again this entire section is just what I've noticed and is purely my opinion, please do whatever you please with your device, it is yours after all!

ADB and Fastboot...is it really a faster boot?

No, fastboot isn't a toggle to boot at warp 9. Fastboot is a mode you can put your bootloader into for flashing the system for upgrades, repairs, mods, or general havok if you're not careful. The bootloader is what you see when you first turn on your device, that lovely Acer logo with the text up in the left corner (usually saying bootloader version and Unlocked Mode if unlocked, or nothing if it's locked). If you go into fasboot, it will say download usb protocol, so if you see that, you're in fastboot mode for whatever reason.

How do I get into fastboot mode?

Well you can do this in a couple ways, either Quickboot app (reboot bootloader), if you're on CM9, the power menu will give the option, or you can use ADB for it.

adb reboot bootloader

I'll explain some more about adb after fastboot, I know its odd, but one does have something to do with the other at times.

Once you've rebooted to the bootloader (device will turn off, vibrate, then boot to acer screen) you can then issue your fastboot commands assuming 2 things:

Acer USB drivers are installed and working correctly (if you use adb to reboot, then it is)

Your tablet is connected to your PC over USB.

Now, at this point, its up to you to do whatever you want, but BE CAREFUL USING FASTBOOT FLASH! It doesn't care or check what you're flashing, it'll just flash it. For example, I flashed CWM Touch recovery to boot once because I was distracted and mixed up the images for whatever reason. End result: Can't boot android. Why? Because boot was recovery, it only booted to CWM Touch recovery. Booting to actual recovery booted to TWRP, which was my previously installed recovery. I got it back easy enough once I figured out what I did wrong, but not all mistakes are reversible, or fixable!

General Fastboot uses and commands...

general layout goes like this:

fastboot (this is calling the command) flash (this is what fastboot will do) recovery (where it will send it to) recovery.img (the file it will send)

So, it looks like this:

fastboot flash recovery recovery.img

it will then flash whatever img to whatever partition you said, and let you know when it's done. You can flash any img to any partition, provided it fits, which means you do have to be careful about what you flash to where!

when you are finished with fastboot:

fastboot reboot

There are plenty of other commands, but the general basic use of fastboot is to flash a recovery or bootloader, so that is what I laid out above.

This section is hugely in need of improving, I know, but the guide in general is still rough, my apologies.

What about ADB?

ADB, or Android Debugging Bridge, can be used in System or in custom recoveries to interact with the device behind the curtain, meaning what you do isn't readily apparent on the device itself, unless you do something obvious like reboot it. ADB has a ton of commands, in particular in ADB Shell mode (you drop into the device shell itself, issuing commands from within itself, not from the PC).

Some random ADB commands:

adb reboot (where to reboot to) so:

adb reboot recovery

adb pull (what file to copy) /(where to copy file to) so for example, a recovery log to the adb working folder:

adb pull /cache/recovery/last_log recovery.txt

adb push /(file to copy to) /(file to send to device) so for example, placing that recovery file back into the device:

adb push recovery.txt /cache/recovery/last_log

Thats all the time I have for now, sorry in advance, I'm still working on all of this, I swear lol

Placeholder for additional tips and usage, some ADB stuff, and anything else I can think of.

Placeholder for Toubleshooting.

Placeholder for FAQS.