38 replies to this topic

[Klinux73]

captaincaveman80, on 02 August 2011 - 10:47 AM, said:

Wow you guys are brilliant! Your giving me so many ideas and inspiration to try and mod this little tablet.

So I can buy a small pci card which will enable GPS and 3g and just put it in?

I am also having a little trouble at the moment...for some reason the sleep/hibernation feature is no longer working properly. When I put the tablet to sleep and wake it back up there is always an error message and then windows has to start normally. Also hibernation takes around 5-10minutes to get back into windows and i end up with a black screen for another few minutes before I can do anything else!

This has only happened recently and for no reason I can think of, before the sleep function worked perfectly and hibernation only took less than a minute to wake up. Has anyone else had a similar problem?
I have tried to restore the device back to its original settings by restoring the factory backup from the D: drive but the problem still persists

Its really starting to annoy me now as its quicker for me to shut down and restart every time I use it rather than going into hibernation...

I would say that it might be a Graphics driver issue, as you say you've reinstalled windows 7 and the problem still persists, have you installed any updates for windows 7, it may be an update issue, I would also say stay away from windows driver updates particularly graphics drivers, try updating the graphics and chipset drivers directly from intel first, if that doesnt work try reinstalling windows without any updates, also check this page out.

Troubleshooting Hibernation


Well these Tablets seem to be getting popular, I was impressed with the build quality, touch screens are top notch, I also read elsewhere that the tablets are built by the company that build the iphone which explains the shape of the cases and quality,
I really thought when I bought it that it might be a bit cheap but im pretty impressed, I bought mine back in december off ebay from a seller who was importing them and had this one in the UK, at that time these could only be bought imported, I paid about £249 for it  as I originally said it was for my son who wanted a tablet and the only real option was an ipad "LOL" for mega bucks which he'd probably drop or loose or the Vega tablet which does Flash 10.1 these were totally out of stock and priced at the same as this tablet so I got him this one, I've since bought a vega tablet for a lot less which he borrowed so I got this one which has worked out for both of us, he only does internet on the vega so its ideal for him, Android tablets are great but functionality beyond email internet is more tricky, even getting Divx etc to work is hit and miss and while they all say HD on them I haven't actually got any MKV videos working, sales gimmick I think, but then this tablet is agvertised some places as a HD tablet, which is not true because of the 450, 455 CPU with the intel 3150 GPU chips which wont do HD, 720 as I said works in stuttering mode, get a broadcom decoder card and it works flawlessly including 1080p



I've noticed that more and more UK and other regions are selling these in stock not imported at very good prices and are available with different upgrade options, the 3G option is a Huawai 7.2 Mbps HSDPA card which fits in the second PCI-e slot that utilizes the inbuilt sim slot under the small slap on the bottom of the case, since this sim slot is attached on the USB bus it may also work with external 3G devices. You'll need to check that the card is unlocked for any network and that it will work in your region and naturally works on the USB b us, Ericson also sell similar cards which probably are Huawai rebranded one's or at least some so I've read but you'll need to check if they are compatible.

As I said at the start of this thread these tablets either come with 1 or 2 Gigs of ram, having read a bit 2 gigs is the limit imposed by the chip set 4 gigs would need a 64bit OS and atoms aren't really designed for 64bit thats not to say they aren't 64bit compatible, there is also only 1 sodimm slot, some models have a 64GB SSD attached to the sata port or 160GB and 320GB sata HDD.
Wifi is 802.11 (N)  bluetooth is also available on some, this upgrade is easy enough and achieved by removing the half size PCI-e wifi card and installing a Wifi+Bluetooth half size mini PCI-e card, Azurewave manufacture these which cost around £20 which have a broadcom chip.
Version 2 is also becoming available for these which have an upgraded Atom 455 CPU, and an increased resolution of 1366x768 currently the LCD panel is limited to 1024x600, it might be possible to update the EDID in the LCD panels of V1 to the new resolution of 1366,768, unfortunately intel graphics user interfaces dont allow for custom resolutions unlike ATI and Nvidia which can override the EDID settings. I will have a look into this at some point, still mod-ding my mod, when I've perfected the mod I will post a guide with the parts needed so others can do the same things.

It would be nice if Modaco were to start a dedicated section to these and similar tablets these tablets would be great as dual boot tablets, I have tried the generic versions of Android on it which almost worked perfectly, i managed to install 2 versions the first worked except for the touch screen the second worked with the touch screen but was very buggy and neither worked with wifi.

On the SSD front I've been looking into various formats available SDHC to sata was one but speed would be the issue and the maximum life cycle of SDHC cards wouldn't be great and cost wise coming in around the price of an SSD, the only benefits would be incredibly low power consumption, less space taken up and low heat.


Compact flash would be an option using a CF to sata adapter like with SDHC speed would be an issue on the lower speed cheaper cards and also life span could be an issue the faster and more expensive cards cost almost as much as a decent SSD so I think the best option is either a 1.8" or 2.5" drive either a 32GB or 64GB, the 1.8" would give a little room inside the unit for addons the 2.5 slips straight in.

[Bintje]

Hi Klinux73,

You were right! My headset could be paired to this tablet. It makes me feel rather silly, because the problem was not in the tablet or the bluetooth, but in the headset.

It is a Jabra Halo that is switched on by folding it to its normal shape and switched off by folding it into its transport shape. The folding mechanism with the built in switch is apparantly not reliable anymore.

Thanks for your advice!

[Bintje]

captaincaveman80, on 02 August 2011 - 10:47 AM, said:

Wow you guys are brilliant! Your giving me so many ideas and inspiration to try and mod this little tablet.

So I can buy a small pci card which will enable GPS and 3g and just put it in?

I am also having a little trouble at the moment...for some reason the sleep/hibernation feature is no longer working properly. When I put the tablet to sleep and wake it back up there is always an error message and then windows has to start normally. Also hibernation takes around 5-10minutes to get back into windows and i end up with a black screen for another few minutes before I can do anything else!

This has only happened recently and for no reason I can think of, before the sleep function worked perfectly and hibernation only took less than a minute to wake up. Has anyone else had a similar problem?
I have tried to restore the device back to its original settings by restoring the factory backup from the D: drive but the problem still persists

Its really starting to annoy me now as its quicker for me to shut down and restart every time I use it rather than going into hibernation...

I have no idea if it is the same problem, but I once had to wait a long time for the tablet to start up (not from sleep). Apparantly I had pressed the reset button by accident when opening or closing the case. So the clock was of and probably the BIOS gave an error message that I didn't see because my phone rang. When the phone conversation was over, Windows still had not completed its startup.
After it had started it gave some error message about Windows update not functioning. It appeared to be that the clock wasn't showing the right time.

After setting it, everything worked fine. No idea if your problem is the same, but it is an easy check.

Good luck!

[captaincaveman80]

Thanks for the link, I'll try and troubleshoot the problem a bit further and let you know the results.

After doing a system restore I didn't install any updates or software and tried out the sleep/hibernation function and the problem was still there, even after installing windows updates and driver updates through windows update it didn't fix anything. I will try and download the graphics and chipset drivers directly from intel like you said to see if that makes any difference, also my tablet came with a CD with the original drivers on so I will copy those onto a USB stick and give them a try too

Here are the specs on my tablet:  ViewTab R116 - 10.2" Windows 7 Tablet PC - 1.66GHz Atom N455 Processor - 2GB DDR2 - 320GB HDD - Wi-Fi - 1.3MP Webcam - G-Sensor - Multi Touch Screen



and here is a link where I had it from : http://www.amazon.co...ref=oss_product

I have managed to find the processor driver but where do I find the graphics and chipset drivers? How exactly do I find out what parts are inside my tablet?
Please accept my apologies for sounding like a NOOB this is my first venture into mobile computing, I am more used to desktops and I built my current machine myself so I have a vague idea on how things work there but I am a bit nervous about this tablet business!

For those who may be interested  (or don't already know) I have posted the instructions how to do a system restore from the backup included on the tablet. I am not sure if it will be the same for every model out there but for those who have the same one as mine it should prove useful:

----------
We copied a complete backup of Windows 7 in local D diskof your tablet (D:/MaxBak). If you still keep those backup files and yourtablet can boot as normal, then you can restore OS for your tablet without arepair disk.

HOW TO RESTORE



(1) Connect an USB keyboard to the tablet

(2) POWER ON

(3) When the tablet boots to image of "Windows BootManager", please use arrow key to select the option "MaxDos 8",instead of "Windows 7", then press "ENTER" to continue

(4) Next step, please select THE THIRD OPTION beginningwith the DIGIT "2", then press "ENTER" to continue (Thereare some Chinese characters, please NO WORRIES, just IGNORE them)

(5) Next step, please select THE FIRST OPTION beginningwith the LETTER "R", then press "ENTER" to continue

(6) Accept "Start (S)" to continue therestoring, it will take 10 - 15 minutes to restore OS in your tablet.

----------

I have tried to play around with other OS on the tablet, I tried out the Android x86 build which worked fine but with no touch screen capabilities, and I also tried out the Chromium OS build which worked but again no touch screen capabilities and I could not connect to the net and therefore not do anything! (LOL)

I would be very interested in getting other fully working OS on the device so that I could dual boot, and also I am very interested in fitting a SSD




So happy I found this forum...I was starting to wonder if I was the only person who had one of these tablets!

Edited by captaincaveman80, 03 August 2011 - 10:14 AM.

[Montatez]

I bought this tablet as well took me several months to get it, but i did finally!   The first one i got nothing worked in it so i sent it back 2 months later got a new one back, blue tooth, wifi, 3g, 2 gigs of DDR2 and a 500 gig HD.  Actually quite like just got Diablo II and Warcraft III to play on it.  But like all of you i have a problem and this is the first forum I have seen about this tablet.  My problem is I cannot connect my 3G at all.  I went to AT&T to get a SIM card but they want an IMEI number wich I have no way of getting I think PLUS i cannot get a seriel number either.  Even after contacting the manufacturers in China, lot of help they where, I still cannot get it to work.  I did use a Verizon 3G SIM card but could not connect to it, but it did detect it using there Globetrotter Connect software.  Any Help or someone I can contact to get some help????

[Archael]

Montatez, on 25 August 2011 - 08:11 PM, said:

I bought this tablet as well took me several months to get it, but i did finally!   The first one i got nothing worked in it so i sent it back 2 months later got a new one back, blue tooth, wifi, 3g, 2 gigs of DDR2 and a 500 gig HD.  Actually quite like just got Diablo II and Warcraft III to play on it.  But like all of you i have a problem and this is the first forum I have seen about this tablet.  My problem is I cannot connect my 3G at all.  I went to AT&T to get a SIM card but they want an IMEI number wich I have no way of getting I think PLUS i cannot get a seriel number either.  Even after contacting the manufacturers in China, lot of help they where, I still cannot get it to work.  I did use a Verizon 3G SIM card but could not connect to it, but it did detect it using there Globetrotter Connect software.  Any Help or someone I can contact to get some help????

I actually had this same question, there's actually an empty slot inside the unit that takes the 3g card which it doesn't come with, the guy that started this thread is all over it and has some details in his many posts.

Also that is a great idea for Diablo, I gave up trying to find games that would work well on this but thats a great idea, the only game I found that worked well was Risk 2, going to download diablo 2 right now.


On a side note, has anyone had any luck finding replacement hardware for these?
I blew my speaker out somehow, did a little searching for one to replace it but kind of gave up.

[Klinux73]

The IMEI number will be on the 3G mini PCI-e card inside the tablet printed on a label stuck on the card, you'll need to open the tablet by unscrewing the 2 screws on the side of the case, then slide the back off. I've not tried using any of these cards in the tablet so couldn't really say what the lack of connection is using a sim, but at a guess it might be software related.

As for the blown speaker take a look at the size get some measurements and have a look on ebay there are loads of spares for netbooks you should find something that fits.

Edited by Klinux73, 18 September 2011 - 10:14 PM.

[Jnay]

Hi
I am getting this tablet on Friday or Saturday.

I am not very technical and cannot understand a lot of the jargon typed in this thread so I was wondering if this tablet can be used upon arrival ?

Or do I have to do a lot of messing around with it?

Thank you very much for reading xxx

[Jnay]

Hi
I got my tablet yesterday

Can anyone tell me if there is anywhere I can buy a cover/sleeve for it please? I did buy one with a little keyboard on it that connects via a usb

but even though it says for a 10.2 tablet it was way too small.

Also can I get a stylus or a pen or is it totally touch screen

Many thanks xxx

[Archael]

Sorry to ask this type of question again, does anybody know where to get replacement parts for these?
A friend of mine was messing around with mine, took the cover off and damaged the ribbon cable going to the touch screen, and I have had no luck finding any type of replacement parts let alone something that important.

Yeah I need smarter friends apparently

[sooconfuseddd?!?]

Hi i have 1 of thoses as well but it says that my wifi is turned of, is there any way of turning this on
thanks

[sooconfuseddd?!?]

Jnay, on 24 September 2011 - 09:41 AM, said:

Hi
I got my tablet yesterday

Can anyone tell me if there is anywhere I can buy a cover/sleeve for it please? I did buy one with a little keyboard on it that connects via a usb

but even though it says for a 10.2 tablet it was way too small.

Also can I get a stylus or a pen or is it totally touch screen

Many thanks xxx

the keyboard can be bought of ebay but you hav to search for a r116 keyboard

[Rocket Ronny]

Hi I received my R116 yesterday and I am pleased with its operation so far. Yes it is a bit heavy but I have a Samsung Q1 Ultra which is smaller and just as heavy so I am used to the weight. I upgraded the hdd in the Q1 to a SSD (64gb) so I am going to purchase a 1.8in ZIF to SATA adapter board and use the 64gb SSD out of the Q1. My current query about this tablet is I am not 100% sure that it has a genuine copy of Windows 7 Ultimate. When you purchase a new laptop or netbook you are given the opportunity to make recovery dvd's or cd's, or you get recovery dvd's or cd's with the computer. No such opportunity with this tablet. Can anyone tell me if they have made backups or if it is a genuine windows 7 copy. Rocket Ronny

[awarner]

As I have installed Ultimate myself an not from a new pc I can not say about a bcakup but with starter edition it does not happen but that is on netbooks which have no dvd drive anyway.
Without checking you should be able to still make a system restore disc.

[xxpop]

captaincaveman80, on 03 August 2011 - 10:13 AM, said:

Thanks for the link, I'll try and troubleshoot the problem a bit further and let you know the results.

After doing a system restore I didn't install any updates or software and tried out the sleep/hibernation function and the problem was still there, even after installing windows updates and driver updates through windows update it didn't fix anything. I will try and download the graphics and chipset drivers directly from intel like you said to see if that makes any difference, also my tablet came with a CD with the original drivers on so I will copy those onto a USB stick and give them a try too

Here are the specs on my tablet:  ViewTab R116 - 10.2" Windows 7 Tablet PC - 1.66GHz Atom N455 Processor - 2GB DDR2 - 320GB HDD - Wi-Fi - 1.3MP Webcam - G-Sensor - Multi Touch Screen



and here is a link where I had it from : http://www.amazon.co...ref=oss_product

I have managed to find the processor driver but where do I find the graphics and chipset drivers? How exactly do I find out what parts are inside my tablet?
Please accept my apologies for sounding like a NOOB this is my first venture into mobile computing, I am more used to desktops and I built my current machine myself so I have a vague idea on how things work there but I am a bit nervous about this tablet business!

For those who may be interested  (or don't already know) I have posted the instructions how to do a system restore from the backup included on the tablet. I am not sure if it will be the same for every model out there but for those who have the same one as mine it should prove useful:

----------
We copied a complete backup of Windows 7 in local D diskof your tablet (D:/MaxBak). If you still keep those backup files and yourtablet can boot as normal, then you can restore OS for your tablet without arepair disk.

HOW TO RESTORE



(1) Connect an USB keyboard to the tablet

(2) POWER ON

(3) When the tablet boots to image of "Windows BootManager", please use arrow key to select the option "MaxDos 8",instead of "Windows 7", then press "ENTER" to continue

(4) Next step, please select THE THIRD OPTION beginningwith the DIGIT "2", then press "ENTER" to continue (Thereare some Chinese characters, please NO WORRIES, just IGNORE them)

(5) Next step, please select THE FIRST OPTION beginningwith the LETTER "R", then press "ENTER" to continue

(6) Accept "Start (S)" to continue therestoring, it will take 10 - 15 minutes to restore OS in your tablet.

----------

I have tried to play around with other OS on the tablet, I tried out the Android x86 build which worked fine but with no touch screen capabilities, and I also tried out the Chromium OS build which worked but again no touch screen capabilities and I could not connect to the net and therefore not do anything! (LOL)

I would be very interested in getting other fully working OS on the device so that I could dual boot, and also I am very interested in fitting a SSD




So happy I found this forum...I was starting to wonder if I was the only person who had one of these tablets!

HI,

I have the same device with the same configuration but i lost my drivers cd and i was wondering if you can help me getting a copy of it.


Thanks in advance.

[Bffn45]

Wow this thread really exploded since i first posted

i was thinking to sell the damn thing (because of the battery) and buy a z670 tablet but all the mods you guys are doing really give me hope

but what whould you guys say if we added another battery in parallel with the original?


->im not trying to sell anything but here is the link to a compatible battery- http://tiny.cc/n8bbo



this in parallel with the original? what do you guys think? would the mobo handle it? the battery is 180 x 45 x 8 mm so maybe we can "glue" it to the cover and make a custom cover for it? would it look bad ..ideas?

also ...SSD-...how about a 1.8" SATA2 ssd.....it shoud fit right in the connector here is what i found: http://tiny.cc/1hswd

***as a note it would appear that the diffrence in watts between a 1.8"sata2 ssd and 2.5" hdd is only 0.55 W...i don't know how much that would influence the overall battery  time

Edited by Bffn45, 10 January 2012 - 07:47 PM.

[Jnay]

Hi,
I love this tablet and have no issues with it at all - till tonight lol

I put it on charge and went into the kitchen, when I returned with coffee the charger was on fire!!!!

I couldn't believe it, I was really freaked out!!

Where can I get a new charger, I have had a look round but can't find one for this tablet.

Thank you, Jnay xxx :)

[fma965]

any 1 had any luck getting wifi working on android on it? also what about the sim card? i cant get giffgaff working with it not tried no other network though. using globetrotter software. any 1 got wifi working on it on windows 8 aswell?

[lord of zombies]

really sorry to bump up an old post, but i also have this tablet and reading through your experiences i have to say i had a very different experience, i have only just discovered  my tablet model (re discovered my poorly written handbook yesterday and this page came up through google)


i got mine from amazon as well from a company "factory direct from china" and the order was first delayed, then a month later when i finally received the device it was covered in dead pixels. after one day the hard drive failed, i had it replaced and was told i had been given a old (used) hard drive, around 80% of the sectors or bad if i can recall correctly. (didnt return it as i didnt want to wait another two months to use my device)

anyway since i had to re install windows and the device had no windows key with it i then had to pay for a copy of win 7. after this i couldnt get any of the drivers to work from the cd, there is now a strip on the touch screen that wont respond, ive opened it up so many times to attempt a repair but i cannot see anything wrong.

anyway, the main reason im posting is to ask (because the cd that came with my device does nothing, and i have since lost it)
do you know where i can get a driver for the "g sensor" on this tablet? i cannot find it anywhere, its rather annoying.

thanks guys, hope your mods turned out well.