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**claydoh** · Mar 18, 2021, 08:14 PM

IF it is an Intel x86 tablet, and IF it has a boot loader that is unlockable or accessible, and IF you can find instructions on how to do it if it is, then the Neon based image might work.

But this looks like it is an Arm based android system, so the x86 image is useless here. The fact that you see fat32 is irrelevant.
Arm based systems usually require a fairly hardware-specific build of an OS, even if it is a fairly generic tablet, so the Pinephone Arm image won't work, even if you can unlock or access the bootloader and flash an image to the device.
These cheapies have little support and leave out things like bootloader and firmware access as they are meant to be more or less disposable

**woodsmoke** · Mar 19, 2021, 10:53 AM

Hi Claydoh

Thank you for the timely reply and pity response.

Yes, I completely agree with your assessment.

When I purchased it, this was back during the time of the "flame wars" at Ubuntu forums against Christians that Shuttleworth had to step into and quash, there was, I am sure you remember a "Christian Ubuntu" that was labled Ubuntu CE that was so despised by the rest of the folks that there was even a "Satanic Ubuntu" made just to offend them...

I ASSUMED that it was an ARM based and did not have any kind of FAT partitions or all that thereupon.

It was purchased at a "Christian Outlet chain" by the name of Mardel's and a lot of the students in the school purchased them by the boxload. A lot of the students had them.

The whole OS was intended to push "Christianity" and there was an obvious inclusion of "Bible" stuff on the O.S. to begin with.

Whether "Zeki" itself was made specifically for the Christians or somebody purchased the "Zeki OS" and put it on a "Zeki platform" i do not know. The "forum" if it could be called that was all very "cagey" about just any kind of discussion of anything other than "Christianfied" type topics and even "Chatholics" or any kind of "Liturgically based" discussion was given "short shrift" it was all very "mainline Baptist / and fundamentalist".

So...at that time I was in the middle of donating "junqeue" computers to people and had a working knowledge of a variety of distros and the guts of an Ubuntu system and so... tried to actually get "at" the file structure of the device and found that it makes a GREAT SHOW of listing the different parts of the file structure in the form of a vertical list, decked out in white text with "/' marks labled "root" / whatever" but one cannot actually get "AT" the file structure. One can tap lables all one wants and nothing happens.

So, I had deleted all of the "Christian" stuff, that, curiously, is possible.

One can install some things, there are a few weird side scrolling games and that is about it, they just "magically" appear if one "installs them from the app so labled and there is also something known as a "Get Jar". One can install a few more apps from it and the app actually "seems" to download them onto the device.

And the reason that I write that is because if one tries to download "too many" things the it asks to delete other things.

So... the above is by way of explaining that the device and the OS itself is completely locked down.

The "church fathers" and the "school administrators" had such a "bad taste" in their mouths about how the "christians" were treated at both Windows(tm) forums and then, later, at Ubuntu forums that they would "harumpf" when they saw a student with one of the deivices and absolutly NOBODY took on into church and read the Bible app on a device as opposed to the physical book.

I had been hired to teach both science and english ( I'm fully state certified in both ) and also to set up the networking for a bunch of old x86 computers (new then) and found that the previous person had paid someone to put a "firewall" and "anti-virus" on the machines and then, basically, let the students "play" on the computers. The person had left before I was hired.

I did a SIMPLE CHECK of the browser history and found that the students, both male and female were all over the few porno sites of the time.

When i showed this to administrator I literally thought that he would start bleeding from various orifices because he just exploded and "didn't want to see it" and "take care of it or you are fired!"

I told him a very simple thing... that all that needed to be done was to tell the students that I would randomly walk around and lean over them, take the mouse away from them, and "check the history'...

If either of these cases was found I would call their parent.

a) the history had better be there and not show any kind of porno site access
b) the history had better not have been "cleared"

Well, that stopped the stuff in it's tracks but the administrator and I were never in a cordial relationship, not because I was doing anything "wrong" but because I had exposed what was being done.

So...again, that all leads back to the Zeki.

The people who made it perceived that "the flock" was so afraid of "anything" on the net that they figured that the only way to get "young folks" to become aware of how to interact with the net that they made this completely locked down device to allow the students to get onto "the net" in terms of their future.

As another example... there are two browsers, apparently to give the illusion of "choice" both are based on the old IE5 but have different "skins".

Neither browser will allow one to go to "anywhere" that there is ANY KIND of link or whatever to where one can download or even read discussion about "a Linux or Windows(tm) operating system". If one looks for "Ubuntu download" one gets a cryptic message that..."the site is not accessible at this time, please try again later or try other search terms".

One can immediately type in...Project Gutenberg and one can go there and download a book into the storage card and read it, but the browsers are completely locked out of "any operating system" type site.

So, to get back to the Zeki.

When the church school and I parted company I put the dingus in a drawer and forgot about it.

So...how did a FAT system get on it?

I do not know but can maybe make a guess.

I do not know how much you know about the "history" of the Knoppix OS, but it was, up until a few years ago, very "close to the bone". One could actually DO stuff with it in terms of fiddling with a hard drive or recovering files from a hard drive, etc. A lot of it was very "command line".

I still have a lot of the cd's going back to "Adrianne", which was the version that would actually TALK to you when you were doing a lot of things.

Nowadays, it will find files on a non-operational hard drive but that is about it.

I downloaded the following:

Ubuntu Mini
UBPorts AppImage
KDENeon for tablet

and I also have various cds for:
Knoppix Adrianne
Kubuntu
and
Ubuntu Mint.

KDENeon for tablet would just "hang" at the login screen for large amounts of time except once...I actually got to SEE the OS and it is, in my opinion, just drop down dead gorgeous, but then I like "bergundy" colors and there is a mix of also blues and greens the "app menu" is at the bottom kind of like "Calypso launcher" etc. and it works... I really do like what I see.

BUT... when I tried to install it and got to the actually partitioning part of it it reported that it needed EIGHT gigabytes and that the 6 gigabytes was not enough and stalled.

Soooooo... It "apparently" recognized the partition as FAT... dunno...

The Ubuntu mini would just not "go there"
Ubuntu Mint and Kubuntu would not "see" the device at all.

Now what is really CURIOUS is that Knoppix Adrianne was one of the "old close to the bone" versions and

It SEES the partitions, a vary small one, I assume the bootloader (745 kilobytes) and the rest it 6.6 gigs as...

GET THIS...

ZEKI fs1
ZEKI fs2

or
ZEKI sda
ZEKI sdb

The word ZEKI is in both if the places to where Knoppix could be installed.

So, what that tells me is that the various installers are "seeing" or "not seeing" the partitions but "do not know what to do with them".

However, Knoppix could not format the partition(s) or do anything with them.

So, what is going on with the device?

I think that your assessment is correct, that it is so locked down that nothing can be done with it.

OR

It may be, that at some time in the past I tried to partition the device using Knoppix and it got to the stage of "lableing" things and then stopped.

Because I do not remember actully trying to install Knoppix but that would have been ten years ago and a lot of water under the bridge.

I had mused that I could try checking it with Kali but after spending several hours last night I'm going to throw in the towel.

I think that you assessment is correct.

And, since this is thread is an obvious waste of server space, if an administrator wishes to delete it, please so do and with my prior permission, although it isn't needed!

thank you again!

woody

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