Hacking the Tabbee to try and install PDF reader
Sunday, March 21st, 2010Tabbee is a lovely little tablet supplied in France by Orange for €215. I purchased one a couple of days ago and I am in general very happy with the machine. However, there are a few niggles:
- I can’t open multiple browsers and the (Opera) browser installed doesn’t have tabs
- The abilility to use Opera widgets is great but some will not install (I assume because of the restrictions below)
- There are restrictions in functionality, notably that PDF files cannot be opened while browsing or from the SD card and that nothing can be downloaded from the web.
The PDF issue is a real problem. I didn’t even think to check this before buying as it is such a basic feature these days. If you have a web connection you can always upload your PDF files to Google Documents and read them using their viewer but this is not always practical and doesn’t help at all if you come across a PDF on a web site (as you can’t even download it and then upload it to Google docs.)
I have been trying to find a solution to the above but to no avail. There are a couple of Opera widgets that can read the epub format and this could be a solution for those that have existing PDFs (for example, I would like to carry around various technical manuals and consult them via Tabbee). The problem is that although one of them can be installed (Opera eBook Reader) it doesn’t work and the other (eBook Reader) is not supported by Tabbee.
In desperation I followed various advice on the Internet to hack the Tabbee. I found the instructions for “Jail Breaking” (not really the correct term) to be very disjointed and often incorrect. Please find below a step by step on how to gain access to the Tabbee:
Download and Install Winscp (http://winscp.net/eng/docs/lang:fr) on your main computer
Open Winscp and create a new session. You will need to complete the host name, login and password and then set the encryption type. (Credit to Tabbee Jail Break Vallee Team (http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/4686/tabbejailbreakvalleetea.jpg)
– Host Name: Your Tabbee IP address, which can be found by going to “réglages (Settings)” and then clicking on “About”.
– User name: root
– Password:$agem30
To set the encryption type go to the SSH menu, select 3DES in the list and move it up to the top of the list.
Click connect to establish the connection. You may get a few security messages - just select Yes. This will give you access to home/root.
To gain access to home you will need to run a console command as described by Tabbee Jail Break Vallee Team. However, use the text below as the text in the image has a typing error.
Open a console in winscp (Click Command on the menu then click Open a Console). Type the following text:
mount -oremount, rw /
Nothing particular will happen in the console window but when you return to the main winscp window you should now be able to navigate up to the Home directory where you can see much more. One very useful folder that is now accessible is mnt/mmc. This is the contents of your SD card (if you have one installed) and you can use winscp to copy files to it.
That is as far as I have got so far. I’d like to install an eBook reader and a PDF reader but I’m not incredibly technical and I need some help. I think I can probably work out how to install a linux version of Adobe reader but I don’t know how to tell Opera to use the reader to open .pdf files and I also don’t know how to add a link to the reader from the GUI. Any ideas ?
Shaun.
PS. Je parle français alors n’hésitez pas de me donner vos retours en français si vous préférez. J’écris en anglais car c’est plus rapide pour moi 
