PhoenixCard

Phoenixcard is a closed source win32 application developed by Allwinner. It's used to convert an Official Image into a bootable self-installing SD card.

There is an open source application that runs on the linux commandline called OpenixCard that does the same thing.

Resulting Card
The mbr of the resulting card refers to an empty fat partition, but there is a real but hidden vfat boot partition at offset 0x1500000 (21MB) or 0x2400000 (36MB).

The partitions to be installed are stored raw in the card in an special format been reverse engineered.

PhoenixCard for A31
i try the PhoenixCard 3.09 for Mele M9 STB. there are some differences between above description.

Make bootable sd card

 * press DiskCheck button for scaning the removable disk.
 * select your sdcard in disk
 * select image from Img File
 * if you want to write a bootable, check Startup.
 * Burn Sd card

Resulting Card
boot1 will found the fat partition at 73728. but this partition is broken. i delete all other partition and re-create the fat start from 73728, size 50M.

make a bootable sd card without PhoenixCard(fail)
according to A31 boot progress, i want to make a bootable sd card by myself. but i do not success, here is my tring:

repack the image through image imgrepacker, i could get boot0_sdcard.fex, boot1_sdcard.fex, sunxi_mbr.fex and sys_config.fex. convert sys_config.fex to sys_config.bin through fex2bin

dd if=boot0_sdcard.fex of=/dev/sdd seek=8 bs=1024 dd if=boot1_sdcard.fex of=/dev/sdd seek=19096 bs=1024 after this, boot1 will boot successfull and found sd card. but boot into burning nand.
 * boot0 locate at 8k
 * boot1 locate at 19096k

[      0.210] boot1 version : 2.0.0 [      0.215] script installed ok    [       0.216] PMU: AXP221 [      0.216] bat ratio = 100 [      0.218] dcdc3 1260 [      0.264] pll1 1008 [      0.320] power finish [      0.325] dcdc1 3300 [      0.325] dcdc2 1200 [      0.325] dcdc4 1200 [      0.326] dcdc5 1500 [      0.329] flash init start [      0.585] [mmc]: init mmc pll6clk 600000000, clk 25000000, mclkbase 0x8151030b [      0.587] [mmc]: SD/MMC Card: 4bit, capacity: 968MB [      0.592] [mmc]: vendor: Man 0x00035344 Snr 0x00ba5beb [      0.598] [mmc]: product: SD01G [      0.601] [mmc]: revision: 8.0 [      0.604] flash init finish [      0.641] fs init ok    [       0.642] fattype FAT16 [      0.642] fs mount ok    [       0.649] dram_para_set start [      0.652] dram_para_set end [      0.652] type=1 [      0.719] Sprite start [      0.719] 0    [       0.719] card sprite begin [      0.723] display init [      0.885] lcd 0 timeout=50 [      0.939] try gpio config [      0.939] gpio start [      0.939] mbr fetch [      0.989] lcd 1 timeout=200 [      1.189] lcd 2 timeout=100 [      1.289] lcd 3 timeout=0 [      1.289] lcd 4 timeout=0 [      1.300] erase flag=1 [      1.301] storage type = 1 [      1.305] burn nand [      1.305] dram ch=0 [      1.305] nand ch=2 [      1.307] nand init compare with the right log: [      0.215] boot1 version : 2.0.0 [      0.220] script installed ok    [       0.221] PMU: AXP221 [      0.221] bat ratio = 100 [      0.223] dcdc3 1260 [      0.269] pll1 1008 [      0.325] power finish [      0.330] dcdc1 3300 [      0.330] dcdc2 1200 [      0.330] dcdc4 1200 [      0.331] dcdc5 1500 [      0.334] flash init start [      0.590] [mmc]: init mmc pll6clk 600000000, clk 25000000, mclkbase 0x8151030b [      0.592] [mmc]: SD/MMC Card: 4bit, capacity: 1886MB [      0.597] [mmc]: vendor: Man 0x00035344 Snr 0x5049ccd1 [      0.602] [mmc]: product: SD02G [      0.606] [mmc]: revision: 8.0 [      0.609] flash init finish [      0.647] fs init ok    [       0.648] fattype FAT16 [      0.649] fs mount ok    [       0.655] dram_para_set start [      0.658] dram_para_set end [      0.658] type=1 [      0.689] 0    [       0.855] boot_disp.output_type=3 [      0.855] boot_disp.output_mode=5 [      0.857] boot_disp.auto_hpd=1 [      0.860] hdmi open [      0.862] DRV_hdmi_set_display_mode,mode:5 [      0.867] DRV_hdmi_open [      0.990] ERR: Parse_Pic_BMP failed [      0.991] key 0 [      0.991] cant find rcvy value [      0.994] cant find fstbt value [      0.999] try to boot [      1.000] load kernel start [      1.036] load kernel successed [      1.036] start address = 0x4a000000

dd if=sunxi_mbr.fex of=/dev/sdd seek=20480 bs=1024 dd if=sys_config.bin of=/dev/sdd seek=19848 bs=1024
 * i also the try the following things accoring the hexdump the bootable sd card. but no more luck.
 * boot1 will load the boot.axt, and boot.axf will load u-boot according to linux/linux.ini