For those out there building custom solutions for their Android-based tablet/device, it is important to understand what processor the device is using. One of the devices I recently had the opportunity to test was a unit from Archos. With the announcement of the Cisco Cius this week, I imagine more and more solution developers will be poking around their Android tablets to build innovative solutions.

We will be connecting to our Android tablet by using something called Android Debug Bridge (ADB) which provides a Unix shell when we connect to the device.
The first step I took was to upgrade the firmware on the Archos unit, as I found several issues on the Archos forums for people that were running dated firmware. I did this over-the-air without plugging in.

Next, I downloaded the USB drivers for the Archos device. Unfortunately, my laptop is running Windows 7 and the drivers don’t work on Win7. To workaround this issue, I fired up VMware Workstation and turned on a Windows XP VM that I had lying around. I then copied in the drivers into my XP VM.

Now plugin the Archos device.

Next, tell VMware Workstation to connect the Archos unit to the XP VM. Do this by going to:
VM --> Removable Devices --> Archos USB Device

Next, install the drivers. Now drop down to a command prompt, navigate to wherever you saved the Archos download drivers (also includes adb.exe) and type: adb shell
You are now connected!
To find out the processor, type cat /proc/cpuinfo

As we can see here, this Archos is running an ARMv7 processor. Now you’re ready to start compiling your apps for an Arm processor (have fun compiling the VMware View Open Client!).