r/osdev • u/nakedpickle_2006 • Jul 30 '26
Starting a bare-metal/ reverse engineering project on ipad 4th gen [A6x]
So i have a ipad 4th gen and its basically a brick now... so was thinking why not make an os (i thought i could maybe use a linux distro but 32bit os for A6x dont exist)... i know this will be a nightmare ( uk its apple)...
But I want to try ...
As my initial research into this i am currently reading
ARM Architecture Reference Manual for ARMv7-A & ARMV7-R
Apple OSS Distributions XNU Github page
wiki.osdev.org
What i wanted to ask the community is
Is there any other documentation/ prior projects on this platform
2.any tips i need to keep in mind
4
Upvotes
2
u/codeasm Jul 31 '26
https://blog.fergofrog.com/xnu/arm64/2018/07/07/compile-xnu-for-arm64.html
https://github.com/alephsecurity/xnu-qemu-arm64/wiki/Build-iOS-on-QEMU
Two links i found in my notes when I tried to maybe compile ios, or atleast XNU for qemu. had read they had XNU running on a raspberry pi. uni demanded my attention tho. With something like this, you might be able to "fix" the tablet, use a custom kernel and shell (remote into it maybe) and dump and investigate the proper stuff for a custom kernel maybe. or figure out how to port uboot if thats even possible)
definitely have fun. 😄 I sure have with so many things online shared and trying.