austnash posted a video explaining how to install the modified firmware on Archos 7 Home Tablet to have the full Google Marketplace experience on the device, as released by knightdominion to the forum since 19th of June this year in this thread: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=34668

Keep up the good work austnash!

Download it: firmware_archos5.aos

Version 2.0.28 (3D accelerated) / 1.9.21 (non 3D accelerated) – July 15th, 2010

Display: fix black screen issues experienced at display wakeup
Audio: enable higher volume on loudspeaker
Video: fix Turkish subtitles support

You can discuss this firmware update in the forum: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=35492

Version 2.0.15 – June 3rd, 2010

Display: add accelerated 3D openGL support
Fullscreen: add statusbar notification when an application is requesting fullscreen with ability to enable fullscreen for this application. Fullscreen enabling/disabling can be performed through power menu (on long power button press).
Archos media center: faster display
Thinkfree: v2.0 with full edit features
Thinkfree: can now be un-installed by user. Note that sometimes during this process an invalid shortcut might remain on the home screen. If this happens this shortcut can be removed by a long press and drag towards tray trash icon.
Display: add transparency to notification tray background

Version 1.9.10 – June 3rd, 2010

Video: fix some MJPG files not playing correctly
Audio: add support for .M4B files
Audio: improve speaker sound quality
Tethering: fix user password support and do not filter devices pretending not to be phones (e.g. Windows Mobile)
Internationalization: add Hebrew glyphs in font and corresponding virtual keyboard layout
Location: fix location manager sometimes preventing device suspend
System: better management of background applications under high memory pressure.

you can discuss here
http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=34032

roy

Version 1.7.99 – April 21st, 2010

Download it here: archos.com

The changelog:

Wi-Fi: fix disconnection occurring on some devices after a few minutes of web browsing.
Wi-Fi: correct speed is now reported in Settings
USB: fix crash sometimes happening when connecting USB in MTP mode
USB: fix Archos Multimedia Center not working during USBNET connection
Video: disable resume and bookmark features when video file is not in the “Video” directory
Tethering: re-enable user/password functionality
FM radio: Add button to force speaker output

Another couple new things reported by users of the forum:
- Paid Apps now work with the Marketplace hack
- Hebrew fonts support has been added

You can discuss this firmware update in the forum: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=32665

Download: Download Archos 5 Internet Tablet OS v 1.7.95 (88543Kb)

According to the change-log:

Version 1.7.95 – March 23th, 2010
Multimedia center: fix multimedia center sometimes not starting
Suspend: implement a deep sleep mode triggered by long press on power button that suppresses device wake up by alarms. Normal suspend behavior is preserved and triggered by a short press on power button.
System monitor: add kill all applications entry on top of the running application list for easier access
Mutlimedia: increase Archos Multimedia Library update speed for large hard drives when using MSC USB mode
Multimedia: fix some mp3 files playing with wrong sampling rate
Multimedia: fix some subtitles preventing correct video playback
Multimedia: fix compressed MKV subs sometimes not displayed
Cell phone tethering: disable TCP/IP header compression since it conflicts with some carriers
Networking: fix some DHCP issues occurring with some buggy access points on certain firmware revisions (e.g. WRT54G v5 FW 1.01.0)
Networking: fix some Wi-Fi disconnect occurring when exiting from suspend
Networking: fix Wi-Fi turning directly off when wpa_supplicant.conf file is empty
Appslib: version 1.1.6b2 of appslib is installed at firmware upgrade
Accessories: add HDMI minidock support

You can discuss this firmware update at: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=31897

The performance of these Texas Instruments processors is very relevant to us Archos Fans. In this video I interview Atul Aggarwal, Director of Product Marketing at Texas Instruments, about the performance, hardware acceleration, software support for their awesome OMAP3 series of processors.

Android 2.1 is thus said to have been “available for developpers” just only about 2 weeks ago and it is demonstrated to run beautifully on both OMAP3430 based Zoom2 and the OMAP3630 Zoom3 development devices.

OMAP3430 is similar to the more powerful OMAP3440 that Archos is using in the Archos 5 Internet Tablet with Android. Thus I try to get some informations from the Texas Instruments representative about which kinds of hardware acceleration limits in terms of Video playback and 3D rendering and other graphics accelerations that we might see in firmware updates. Of course the firmwares that Archos can release for us do not have to feature all the latest from Texas Instruments, but the latest stuff that TI can demonstrate, logically Archos engineers might also be working with those tools for our firmware updates.

Not that I am able to exactly confirm what kinds of hardware acceleration upgrades and Android upgrades we might get in the next firmwares, but I can tell you that I heard lots of very exciting stuff from the Texas Instruments engineers and product managers at the Mobile World Congress, as I was there to film 55 video interviews for my other site http://ARMdevices.net

I am meeting with Archos soon, the CeBIT is coming up in just one week and I will be there filming 50 videos as well. So look forward to more very exciting updates on the hardware acceleration updates for Archos Android that are coming!

You can discuss this video at http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=31121&p=206299#p206299

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Ameet Suri, Strategic Marketing Manager at Texas Instruments, explains some of how Texas Instruments is working with Archos on powering the awesome Archos 5 Internet Tablet series running Android, what kind of work goes into it, he tells a bit about how TI supports Archos and how Archos innovates impressively in the industry.

This is one of about 55 videos that I filmed for my other site at http://armdevices.net at Mobile World Congress 2010 last week in Barcelona.

I spoke with the Texas Instruments people a lot off camera as well about Archos, and I think there is a lot of very interesting updates that you can be looking forward to coming up. For more ideas about what type of Texas Instrument technologies you may look forward for Archos to implement look for my upcoming OMAP3440 video running Android 2.1, comparing it to the 1ghz 45nm performance of OMAP3640 and also check out my amazing OMAP4 video, even look forward to my Texas Instruments nHD DLP Pico Projector video.

You can discuss about this video at http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=31121

Download it here: Download Archos 5 Internet Tablet OS v 1.7.77 (88530Kb)

According to the Archos 5 Internet Tablet with Android firmware changelog:

Version 1.7.77 – February 19th, 2010

Cell phone tethering: now propose both DUN and PAN bluetooth profiles if phone supports it and select DUN as default one
Cell phone tethering: properly clear former settings to avoid migration issues with new tethering infrastructure
System: fix device not entering in suspend mode after being mounted on PC with USB
Video: fix MPEG4 streams in MP4 files sometimes had wrong aspect ratio
Music: fix .MP4 genre was sometimes not recognized correctly
Playlist: add support for “PLS+XML” mime type in Archos Media Center
Android: prevent going fullscreen when an application change its window attributes
Developers: fix ADB/DDMS screenshot feature in landscape

You can discuss this firmware update in the forum: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=30944

You can Download the Firmware 1.7.71 at archos.com

The changelog is following:

Version 1.7.71 – February 11th, 2010

* Cell phone tethering: add DUN and PAND bluetooth support for connection and automatic detection
* Cell phone tethering: add one click enable/disable shortcut in “Power control” widget
* System Monitor: a new application to kill background processes, list system alarms responsible of waking up the product and “wakelocks” preventing device to sleep.
* GPS diagnostic: a new application to monitor satellite reception levels
* Storage: add FAT32 support for internal storage, with capability to reformat device in FAT32 (settings>about device->repair and formatting tools options). Note that if you choose to reformat your device in FAT32, file size will be limited to 4GB which is incompatible with most of the full length HD movie file size. Use of FAT32 filesystem format is not recommended for hard disk based products.
* Archos Media Center widget: faster launch of media center applications
* Video: allow volume autogain for files played from a network shares
* Video: fix some MP4, WMV9 HD and MPEG1 files not playing
* Calculator: add clear button in menu
* File browser: file overwrite does not freeze UI anymore
* Keyboard: fix a wrong letter in Android russian keyboard
* System: fixes device power off when time is changed in the past
* System: better handling of media center application restart

With this new firmware, power users can now edit the wifi configuration files in ADB mode to experiment with WPA-EAP and adhoc WiFi support. Instructions for how to do that are in the forum: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?p=202045#p202045 and in the wiki: http://wiki.archosfans.com/index.php?title=Connecting_to_LEAP_or_WPA2_with_ADB_/_Enable_Adhoc_Connections

You can discuss this in the forum: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=30646

Wow.

Just like a PC, the ARCHOS 5 Internet Tablet can be freely programmed in alternative ways in addition to the applications that can be created for the Android platform. To have total control of your Internet Tablet, ARCHOS has opened up this device, thus allowing creative minds to program their own tablet, or create what could be the tablet of the future.

Skilled developers and programmers can now choose to switch over to a true standard Linux environment as offered by the Ångström Linux distribution. Developers can put this on their ARCHOS 5 Internet Tablet devices and join other enthusiasts who are experimenting with various ideas and interfaces based on the Linux operating system.

Read more about the Special Developer Edition firmware for the Archos 5 Internet Tablet on: archos.com

Read more about the Ångström Linux distribution at: angstrom-distribution.org

Discuss this in the forum: forum.archosfans.com

Let’s have some fun!

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