Development and Flashing Methodology of a Custom Android ROM for the MediaTek MT6580 SoC using Scatter File Segmentation
[Your Name/Anonymous Researcher] Affiliation: Independent Embedded Systems Lab Date: October 26, 2023 Abstract The MediaTek MT6580 is a legacy 32-bit System-on-Chip (SoC) widely used in budget Android devices from 2015-2018. Despite its obsolescence, the chipset remains popular among hobbyists for repurposing old hardware due to its well-documented Download Agent (DA) and the use of scatter files for block-level flashing. This paper presents a complete workflow for developing a custom Android ROM (based on AOSP 6.0/7.0) for the MT6580 platform. We detail the structure of the MT6580 partition table, the critical role of the MT6580_Android_scatter.txt file in defining memory addresses for preloader, boot, recovery, and system partitions, and the flashing process using SP Flash Tool. Furthermore, we discuss the challenges of driver compatibility for legacy Mali-400 MP2 GPU and touchscreen controllers. A case study on a generic MT6580 device demonstrates a successful de-bloated custom ROM deployment. 1. Introduction The MT6580 SoC features a quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU clocked at 1.3 GHz and a Mali-400 MP2 GPU. Unlike Qualcomm’s Fastboot protocol, MediaTek devices rely on a proprietary preloader and a scatter file for low-level memory operations. A scatter file is a human-readable text file that describes the start address, length, and partition name for every region of the flash memory (eMMC). Without a correct scatter file, any custom ROM will brick the device by corrupting the preloader or NVRAM region. This paper aims to demystify the creation of a custom ROM for this specific SoC by leveraging the scatter file as the ground truth. 2. The MT6580 Scatter File: Anatomy and Critical Sections A standard scatter file for an MT6580 device (e.g., from a device dump) follows this format: Mt6580 Custom Rom With Scatter File
| Partition | Stock Size | Custom ROM Size | Scatter Address | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | PRELOADER | 256KB | (Unchanged) | 0x0 | | BOOT_IMG | 16MB | 14MB (Compressed kernel) | 0x1b80000 | | SYSTEM | 1.2GB | 980MB (De-bloated) | 0x3b80000 | | USERDATA | 2.5GB | (Unchanged) | 0x10b80000 | Development and Flashing Methodology of a Custom Android