yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] JJ2017:
I'm stuck - anyone got any advice?!

Please see photo - procedure stuck at communication stage. Card reader flashing blue - which gives me hope - but disk management program (Windows) is frozen. I've waited 20 mins+ at this point - do I just keep waiting or does the error message on the tablet screen mean it's doomed?

Any thoughts, anyone?!
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] <br />:
It is not doomed. The error is the card reader and tablet CPU trying to talk to the eMMC at the same time, causing both of them to fail to get anything useful out. Thus, Windows freezes and the tablet reports errors about not being able to read things. If you hold power on the tablet for a while it'll shut down, or you can pop the power cable out and put it back in. Then, retry the procedure. I'm sorry that I don't have a more reliable way to get the eMMC to detect on Windows, I spent countless hours plugging it in and unplugging it, trying every menu option and every combination of buttons and timing.. it wasn't fun and this is the best I could come up with. Hopefully it'll end up working for you!

To summarize:

1. Unplug the SD card from the reader.

2. Hold power button for a while (15 to 30 seconds, the screen will go black) or unplug the power cable from the motherboard and plug it back in

3. Start again holding down power and volume-down, and plug in the SD card right after you select enter bootloader. Generally, there's a period of time where the screen is black between the time you click the button and the time "Fastboot mode" appears at the bottom of the screen. If you plug the card in during that period it seems to read well.

Thank you for putting your faith in this mod!
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] JJ2017:
Brilliant - thanks for the reply - I will keep repeating procedure until it connects without errors. I thought the blue flashing light on the card reader was a breakthrough moment but unfortunately not! The saga continues......
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] Enlil27:
This is awesome, been waiting a long time for this.

Trying to avoid having to mess around with soldering onto the pins of a microSD adapter... What Ive been trying to do is, after carefully more or less cutting the adapter in half, getting the exposed pins to mate with a rj-45 plug. Seems like a good idea since the pitch/layout of the pins is identical, but I cant seem to get them to make solid contact. Idk, might mess around with it more later.

Failing that, I think Ill just order an "SD card extension" and use that. Can't post a link because of the new account restriction, but if you do a search on amazon you'll see a bunch for around $6-7 usd. Also curious if theres enough room in the hd8's chasis to just leave it attached.

Edit: Got the RJ45 plug and mutilated sd-adapter mated, just had to file down the top of the plug a bit so that the indents werent quite so deep. I'd post pictures, but again :( new account.
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] NFSP G35:
Couldn't something like this be used instead of messing with tearing apart and soldering an SD card adapter?

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/sparkfun-electronics/TOL-09419/1568-1041-ND/5140806

Or:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIABV776P5219
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] Enlil27:
The newegg link is broken, but what I was looking at was microSD extensions. They're male to female connected by a ribbon cable. Could just cut the female end off, strip back the wires a bit and solder onto the board from there.
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] NFSP G35:
Yeah, sorry, I fixed the link but that's exactly what I was talking about
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] JJ2017:
Thanks so much for this comment - had everything working in the guide then got stuck at the Fire logo on re-boot. Needed 'ln -r' to get symlink working.

Fire successfully rooted - got there eventually - see photo for output to 'su' in terminal editor. Awesome. Can't wait to de-bloat tomorrow!

Many thanks to <br /> (and everyone else who help achieve this) - great mod - most difficult for me was Part 3 'Hardware mod' - once everything soldered properly comms with PC was actually quite straightforward.

:svetius::svetius::svetius:
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] <br />:
Amazing work.. so happy for you!! Did you manage to get the SD to read on the PC using the route I mentioned or did you do it another way?

To whoever was asking, those adapters should be fine. I was just going for the cheap and available route. Most people probably have a micro SD adapter lying around that they never use.
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] JJ2017:
I used your method of rebooting to bootloader and quickly inserting the SD card.

I struggled for ages at this stage but I think the breakthrough was getting the wiring spot-on: checking everything soldered nicely and no shorting wires - it was so easy for the soldering to break off - I went over this many, many times! When I knew wiring good things started to happen - and if the tablet got stuck going into (but not reaching Fastboot) - i could quickly remove / insert the SD card into the reader and usually get communication with PC (windows) as you describe in your guide. I was getting this quickly towards the end: easy once you get the knack!

In my desperate times I also tried the 'handsake.py' method as referenced by DVBMan earlier in this thread - but I couldn't get that working (bit beyond my experience, probably)
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] HunterZ0:
Can you provide more detail on how to disconnect the camera and remove the motherboard? I've got 2 of these that have dead USB connectors due to mishandling by kids.

The camera cable has a black piece of tape over it. I peeled that up and saw white paper tear off underneath it, and what looks like a ribbon cable running to the underside of a metal shield.
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] <br />:
Yes, remove the black tape. There is a white QR code on the back of the camera, which is what the torn paper was. The ribbon cable goes to a rectangle on the motherboard. You can grab both sides of that with your fingernails or some tweezers and pop it right off. Just pull upwards from the motherboard. It doesn't take much force.

The power cable that goes to the battery works in the same fashion. The best way to unhook that cable is to get something like a pair of tweezers, go underneath the battery wires, and then pull upwards away from the motherboard. It will pop out.

The LCD connector (to the left of the power connector) has a hinge that must be undone; on the opposite side of the ribbon cable, use your fingernail or tweezers to get under the plastic bit and pop it up. It will turn 90 degrees so that it is pointing up. At that point the ribbon cable can slide out, but since it is such a tight fit the only way to slide it out is by removing the motherboard from the cable rather than the other way around.

The touch screen connector has a ribbon cable that goes into a smaller version of what you had to deal with on the LCD connector, but with one added annoyance; where you see the microchip inside the ribbon cable (the larger, square portion of the ribbon cable), there is adhesive underneath. You can peel the ribbon cable up from the motherboard but make sure to release the latch first, then slowly work something thin under the cable to help peel it up.

I hope this helps.
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] HunterZ0:
Yes, that did it - thanks!
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] JJ2017:
Worth trying this Mod on Fire 8th gen?

@ <br /> - do you think this will work? Isn't the new hardware pretty much the same as 7th gen?

I'm tempted to have a go.

BTW: Rooted 7th gen will run Xposed as detailed in Fire HD10 post by retyre (https://xdaforums.com/hd8-hd10/general/hd-10-2017-xposed-t3722252) - Flashfire works too.

However, DragonFire1024's framework-res.apk (https://xdaforums.com/hd8-hd10/development/root-restore-stock-battery-stats-power-t3849341) definitely doesn't - but that was for HD10 so that's why I got stuck at 'Fire' logo on reboot! Managed to restore tablet with ADB sideload update but, of course, root lost :crying: !!!
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] diplomatic:
No, don't bother with this, unless you have a plan to defeat dm-verity. Fire OS 6, which is based Android 7, implements integrity checking for every block on the system partition. So merely mounting system in read/write mode will modify it, causing the device to refuse to boot.
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] JJ2017:
Oh, I see. That's a shame :( Could take sometime before a work-around is found then. Thanks.
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] rabb1th0le:
Trying to root Fire HD 8, 5th gen.

Wonder if anyone knows the corresponding test pads for CMD, GND, CLK and DAT0 in the 5th gen mainboard?
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] ColdKeyboard:
Did anyone find a reliable way of getting the SD card reader to recognize the flash?

I triple checked the wiring and tried plugging in the SD card into the reader anywhere from immediately when I press `Reboot to bootloader` to waiting for screen to go blank, I did this like 20 times so far and while most of the times reader will start to blink the LED, I haven't had luck of seeing the SD card getting mounted.

Also I've found a easier way (at least for me) to modify the SD card. Using a copper tape and cutting a thin traces, you can solder one piece directly on the SD pins and then use the other end to solder wires so they are not blocking you from inserting the card into the reader. See the image attached.
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] JJ2017:
Sounds like you're really close to getting it - don't give up! I've attempted this mod several times now and the mounting stage is the sticking point - literally hours of time required!!

I can only guess your wiring isn't 100% spot on - blinking blue light is usually really good sign. Try really quickly removing and inserting SD card at this point, if it won't mount.

I played about with some copper tape on the main board to make the wiring easier - didn't work for me so took it out and soldered wires to test points - then it was OK. Maybe the copper tape is your problem?
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] RagManX:
Getting my SD-reader this week. Will hopefully have time next weekend to give this a shot. My soldering skills are mediocre at best, but hopefully I can pull this off and get a rooted HD8. Just glad I have the right model to do it. Thanks, [MENTION=9348949]<br />[/MENTION] for your work.
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] Ares33x:
Curious, what is needed to perform this on the 8th Gen tablets?

Do I just need to find the eMMC connection points and perform the same procedure of copying the SU files into the system partition?

Also do you know if the system partition are unique to each tablet, assuming they are un-linked from their amazon accounts. If so I wonder if it possible to write older images to "downgrade" a tablet or create pre-rooted images.

Just some thoughts, but I will poke around for the 8th Gen hardware and find the points if they are different. I have access to oscilloscopes and logic analyzers if needed.

Thank you again for taking the time to find this stuff out, reminds me of game consoles and backing up their system images.
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] richaardvark:
I don't believe this hardware rooting method is an option on an 8th-generation Fire tablet, unfortunately :-/. See this comment about five or so replies back:

Unless you somehow have an 8th-generation device, not running FireOS 6...

---------- Post added at 06:14 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:57 PM ----------

I'm torn myself at this point as to which direction would be best for me, mainly because there have been so many updates and changes lately and I haven't been following too closely.

I have four 7th-gen Fire HD devices: three HD 8s and one HD 10.

My HD 10 is rooted. My HD 8s are not, but DO use the "pm hide" method to help keep system bloatware under control and to also prevent the device from updating. All of my devices are still running FireOS 5 and have OTA updates disabled.

The rooted HD 10 works well ✔ but oh my god I would kill to have Android 7 (not really, not into violence ✌ ? ☮)!

Three questions re: current software update options for HD 10:

1) If I update the HD 10 to run FireOS 6, is the rooting method which I used previously to gain root still an option?

2) Have they even released FireOS 6 for 7th-gen HD 10s yet? Are they even going to?

I believe when I last looked at the Amazon manual firmware download page last week or so it seemed 7-generation HD 10s did not have Fire OS 6 available for download.

3) Is there anyone out there who is using an HD 8 or 10 with the newer Fire OS 6 (Android 7-based) update who used to run the older Fire OS 5? Are the enhancements pretty substantial/definitely worth updating for, or am I better off with my rooted current device and the older version of android?

And then for my three HD 8s (not rooted, but utilizing the 'pm hide' system app disabling method):

1) Are the updates so substantial/helpful it's worth updating, even though I'll then lose the ability to hard-mod root?

Thanks to anyone out there with answers to any of my questions/to anyone who has a moment to share their guidance!
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] richaardvark:
[MENTION=8132642]diplomatic[/MENTION], do you by chance have any insight into any of the questions I asked above? Are gen 7 tablets going to ever get the Fire OS 6 / Android 7 update? Are the enhancements in the newer OS version worth holding off on rooting for? Can I update my currently rooted gen 7 HD 10 the latest OS release and then return re-root once again?
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] diplomatic:
Hi, richaardvark..... I have no idea if Amazon will ever update FireOS 5 tablets to FireOS 6. I'm not that concerned about it as I don't actually have any Fire tablets. ;) Unfortunately, rooting will not mix well with FireOS 6. It's almost certain that the security hole you used to root your HD10, the one that involves a "dirty cow", will be gone in any upgrade that's released. (It may even be patched in a minor FW update.) If you're talking about this HW method, well, you quoted my previous answer to this: dm-verity. Look, if you're so concerned about rooting your devices, my advice is it's best to avoid ones that are so locked down as if they were gaming consoles. Even though the tablet market has shrunk, there are still plenty of choices for cheap unlockable tablets.
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] Arbre4:
Thank you for this hardmod ! It's so much sexier than a simple sw mod :D

I have a two questions :

1) It seems that my tablet update by itself (airplane mod ON). Can an update break this mod ?

2) Can I remove bloatware thanks to root access ?
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] <br />:
No problem :)

1. I would imagine that an update could write to the system partition and break things. When I rooted I got Titanium and froze the updater app to prevent any updates from ever happening.

2. Yes, using Titanium you can uninstall or freeze apps. I recommend only freezing them so that they are gone but can easily be "thawed" if things break.
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] klister:
And I broke it... ?. Not sure how except maybe when I was soldering the wire onto the vss area on the motherboard it took me several tries to get the solder to stick and maybe it heated things up too much on the other side of the pcb. It wouldn’t turn on either to the fast boot mode or regular boot and shows no sign of power. I accept that it may be bricked accepted that possibility when I started but thought I’d reach out to see if anyone had any ideas.
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] <br />:
Try removing all sources of power (USB, battery), hold the power button for 10 seconds, then reconnect the battery. It might start up — this happened to me a few times. I wasn't too careful with my board and I'm surprised how much it has lived through. Don't give up!

If that doesn't work, make sure all the wires are unsoldered and double check that there's no solder bridging in places it shouldn't be.
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] ColdKeyboard:
I've finally managed to get the Fire to show up with my card reader.

It too a few tries but I finally got it to show up.

However I had an issue trying to execute commands mentioned in the tutorial.

In particular `chcon u:object_r:system_file:s0 FILENAME` didn't work for me. I would get an error 'invalid file folder u:object_r:system_file:s0'

I managed to go around it by using `chcon -R --reference=somefile FILENAME`.

What was confusing and what I would really appreciate if someone could take the SuperSU archive and package it so people could just extract it

to /system folder.

Another confusing thing was that there were three different partition (1.7GB, 32GB and third one I don't recall size but looked like recovery or something), and I wasn't sure

which one I should use (1.7GB one is closes to 1.5GB mentioned but some stuff was missing from that partition but it existed on larger one). Maybe marking which files/folders

are to be created would help a newb like myself.

Would anyone be so kind to post a archive that contains folder with files and folders already copied/renamed so one can just cp

them from desktop to SD card. Creating symlink and doing chmod and extended security attributes I think I have covered.

I would really love to finally get my Fire HD rooted :)
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] chitlinsoulfood:
Thanks a ton for posting this </ br>! The test points to get into the eMMC were the breakthrough I had been hoping for. :)

Finally got around to trying this out on my own FireHD 8 7th Gen. Here are the details and the places where I got tripped up a bit.

Hardware Mod - SD Card Adapter

Long story short, make sure you don't end up getting a short. :)

In the end I used small bits of heat shrink tubing on the connections inside the adapter to make sure that things didn't shift around, along with some superglue to keep the wires in place and the whole thing together. If I were doing this again, or modding for friends, I'd probably work out something more permanent, but a weird superglued monstrosity did alright.

For the device side of things I ended up using some 30AWG solid-core wire I had laying around and I cut a small notch in the casing to let the wires hang free while the device was snapped back together. A few dabs of glue kept the wires in place without any fear that a pad would rip off while I was goofing around with things.

VirtualBox, Windows 10, and raw disk reads

I've used Vbox a lot in the past but the raw disk feature was a new one for me. This took some trial and error, particularly given how flaky my hardware mod was. Here are the important bits.

First off, the SD card reader (a Transcend model that looked identical to the one linked) kept flipping between PhysicalDrive6 and PhysicalDrive10 seemingly randomly whenever the adapter was attached. To deal with it I just made a vmdk file for each and dealt with it as it came up. Finding the mapping each time was easy using the Windows CLI DISKPART utility and its handy "LIST DISK" command.

In order to add the VMDK files in the Virtualbox Virtual Media Manager and, subsequently, the SATA device in the VM settings I had to run the manager application as Administrator, which was weird, but I went with it. Without running as admin the VM logs had some access denied errors.

Symlinks and Attributes

The symlinks on the eMMC were kinda weird. To get the app_process symlink to work properly I had to use the "-h" flag (aka "--no-dereference") on setfattr to get things working properly. Without it the symlink itself lacked the attribute, causing the symlink to be effectively invisible to regular users. Which was a problem when I used adb shell to get in there and run some pm commands as user, since it led to "app_process: not found" errors. Those errors didn't happen when running under su though.

To check the status of all the attributes I used "ls -lZ" and looked for anything with a question mark instead of the proper attribute. The only problems were the app_process symlink and the install-recovery.sh symlink. Once they had the right attributes applied, everything worked great.
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] klister:
Ok, I tried variations of no power and holding the power button, then powered holding the power button (with variations of including the volume keys) and it still won't power on. I've ordered a replacement motherboard from eBay but will continue to work with this one until I'm certain I've exhausted all options. When I get home today I'll take a magnifier and have a look to see that there aren't any solder bridges burning me.
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] Roqnrob:
after hardmod?

after (if I'm able to) hardmod this device, how do I go about wiping it and installing a generic/fresh Android? Could someone post a guide and which version of Android should I use?

Do I even need to wipe the tablet to remove all Amazon stuff and have the tablet running as efficient as possible?

Thanks.
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] Arbre4:
There is no alternative to fire OS !
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] <br />:
As of now there's no way to install a custom ROM like LineageOS. All you can do is remove the Amazon apps, install another launcher, and hope you don't break things. This process only allows rooting of the device, not unlocking the bootloader to install a custom recovery or anything.
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] Arbre4:
Too bad. It seems that my SD card reader doesn't read in 1-bit mode. I did the "cover up pins 1, 2, and 9-test" and my SD card is just detected, without being readable.

edit : my laptop built-in SD card reader reads in 1-bit mode !!
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] dfroggatt:
Root Fire HD 7 (7th Gen)

As I understand this thread, hopefully not mistakenly, this method can be followed on the Fire 7 (7th Gen) as well.

I an running a Macbook with OS X. Are there similar instructions as indicated in this article that would allow using an Apple as opposed to a PC using the Terminal program?
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] <br />:
It would work on Fire 7 if we knew where the eMMC pins were.

MacOS should would just like Linux. No virtual machine needed. You can run the commands in the MacOS terminal and use the Mac's own disk utility.
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] klister:
Thank you <br /> , you nailed it! I had solder bridged the resistor immediately below TP28 with such a tiny amount of solder that I couldn't see it with the naked eye or reading glasses; a magnifying glass finally aided in seeing it. So its back up and running but I'm going to wait a little while before trying it again.

As a side note, the replacement board was noticeably slower even though Antutu identified the exact same specs. I'm glad to have the old one working again and now I have a board to practice on...
[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Original Android Development] <br />:
Awesome dude! Let me know if you get further! Personally for me, while rooting was a bit difficult, it was also a rewarding experience and pretty fun. I honestly don't use my Fire but I'm glad I spent the time to root it because I learned a lot from it.

I would like to soon [emoji4] I'm working on starting a YouTube tech channel and I think a walk-through of this would be a nice addition. I just have a lot of projects in my life and so little time.