I like bringing “new life” to old equipment.  Especially when they are perfectly viable despite they are not current technology.

I have finally set aside time to root and re-flash my old android tablet, a viewsonic gtablet with the NVidia Integra 2 processor.  It was released in 2010, in the beginning of Android proliferation and was quickly obsolete.  That didn’t stop an avid community of developers to update the aging, and no longer supported, hardware.

A few years ago, I started with a cyanogenmod and quickly moved to their 2.3.7 “gingerbread” mod from the factory installed 2.1 “Eclair”.  Functionally it was fine, but due to the slow hardware, I have since left it in the junk pile till recently.

Updating to 4.1 “Jellybean” was pleasantly easier this time around with the help of Ray Waldo’s detailed instructions and videos.   This wouldn’t be possible without the volunteer development team: Team DRH.  Although they have since disbanded, their author The3DmaN kept the files for the nvflash, roms and recovery files, public on his Google drive (good man).

Although the Android API are drastically different from one version to the next, it’s doubtful I will develop any apps on the 4.1.x platform (as of now, we’re on 7.1).    Don’t know.  Maybe a “hello world”.

I am glad the platform is on a more viable android version, but it’s the amount of reading required gave me a better understanding of the platform.