This is my information dump post that's been coming for a few weeks. I'm working on initrd and rootfs trying to bring us up to date on the vogue as well as iron out tinboot stuff. I apologize for the crazy long post of links and all, but I need to do this to keep my stuff straight and hopefully help point others in the right place.
Tinboot References:
From what I can gather, Martin DZO maintains the Tinboot for the Vogue. There are a couple of other contributors as well that should be thanked for their work on this as well. The sources files can be found here:
SourceForge - androidhtc/tinboot.git/summary
As ACL has pointed out, he and the other contributors have generated an installer and done a ton of huge changes with the initrd. Those source files can be found here:
SourceForge - androidhtc/bootenv.git/summary
Safe Memory Locations (MTTY and Parition Layout)
In order to find what memory we should touch and not touch, I've gathered that MTTY can be used for a lot of this diagnostic as well as gathering information about bootup. The best resource I have found is this thread over at XDA:
[REF] The DEFINITIVE MTTY Thread!! MARK 2 - HD2 Edition - xda-developers (latest one)
[REF] The DEFINITIVE MTTY Thread!! - Diamond Edition - xda-developers (original thread)
For the partition layouts, there is an amazing thread over at XDA that details everything. It was originally started as a way to free up some extra space on NAND by removing the ULDR from the MBR, and it gives a great reference in the second post for where data gets stored:
[TUT] ULDR Removal for Elf/Elfins [ONLINE] - xda-developers
You can use MTTY to issue
info 8 which should return this for all HTC devices:
Partition[0], type=0x20, start=..., total=... BOOT (ULDR)
Partition[1], type=0x23, start=..., total=... RAWFS (XIP)
Partition[2], type=0x25, start=..., total=... IMGFS (SYSTEM)
Partition[2], type=0x04, start=..., total=... FATFS
I have read through almost all of the threads, and I'm trying to better understand it. Unfortunately, I can't MTTY on my device since USB is toast. Android doesn't see the USB port either unfortunately, so I'm dead in the water on that front.
I may hit up that guy who was offering up his TMOUS TP2 as long as he gets it back. I don't mind returning it, but there is some risk involved in what we are doing. As long as he's cool with that, I'd just need to know how long I can use it as a dev phone. Thinking how awesome it would be if I could just flash all day long and test changes
