[ale] hacking an android tablet to single function device

[Steven A. DuChene]

Since Andriod tablets have become so cheap lately (Pandigital for $29.99 plus $4.99 shipping) I would like to see if it is possible to re-purpose one to do server as sort of a single function display device. Does anyone know if it would be possible to reconfig an Android tablet to NOT have a full desktop interface with icons and things and instead have it boot up to the display of a single application?

Also I noticed some of these tablets use a ARM926EJ-S CPU that is supposed to enable the direct execution of 8-bit Java bytecode in hardware and has an MMU on the chip (not always a given for ARM CPUs). Does that mean it would be possible to run a standard Java application without the load of a full JVM? Is all compiled Java code end up being 8-bit bytecode that could be directly run on this CPU?
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Steven DuChene