Rockbox Technical Forums

Rockbox Development => New Ports => Topic started by: cenobyte on April 02, 2012, 11:38:56 PM

Title: Trio TCH1643
Post by: cenobyte on April 02, 2012, 11:38:56 PM
Hello everyone, I tried to contact you all on IRC, but my session always got terminated for some reason. I have a Trio tch 1643 player that does not seem to work for transferring files to it. My brother bought it for about a hundred bucks about 2 years ago but now that it seems broken, has given it over to me for hacking. I would like to get anything at all going on the device instead of the default firmware . When I lsusb, I get 'rockchip media player' and I know some work has been done on this platform, but I was unable to find out how to manually set up a player with unusable support. I downloaded the installer but did not find the player. I am not averse to developing or helping, I just need to know how to load the files onto the player and what files, etc. On my particular player, there are no hardware buttons except for the on/off slider switch so the touchscreen would have to work. I am not a programmer per se, but I have been learning more as time goes by. I would like to do anything I can for myself and us all for the Rockchip platform so let me know how I can get started developing and testing... Thanks!
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: cenobyte on April 03, 2012, 12:14:16 AM
Even if I can only get a broken something, I'd still like to try. If not, thanks for trying.
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: wodz on April 03, 2012, 07:17:05 AM
Open it, take photos of components. Google doesn't provide any trustworthy info about what powers this DAP.
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: cenobyte on April 04, 2012, 02:34:31 AM
OK, so here is the one photo I think we need to see. If you need me to further disassemble it, let me know.
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: wodz on April 04, 2012, 03:29:07 AM
Its rk27xx - we have limited support for this platform. Catch me on IRC so we can look what can be done. In the meanwhile you may get familiar with rockbox/firmware/target/arm/rk27xx, rockbox/utils/rk27utils stuff as well as rk27xx datasheet floating around.
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: knob on April 04, 2012, 04:19:25 AM
I'm guessing this has the same fuselage as the Ramos T8 and Archos 43 Vision, all are Rk2705
and 480x272 touch screen, there is an SDK knocking around for the T8.

Might be worth seeing if the Ramos T8 firmware will work on this player, it would make a dual boot with Rockbox and testing easier.
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: wodz on April 04, 2012, 09:53:29 AM
knob, you seem to be well oriented in this matter. I would like to get 'T8'. What other brands to look for? Is it something particular I can look for in item description?
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: cenobyte on April 04, 2012, 06:00:53 PM
So is there special software I will need to use to flash? I am familiar with the Ben Nanonote pocket computer which uses usbboot to flash. Is there a similar program I would need to flash, especially since my player is not in the official installer?
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: wodz on April 05, 2012, 02:38:12 AM
Your player is not in official installer for a reason. You need to write touchpanel driver at least. Other bits may need to be tweaked as well. The point was it is doable in reasonable amount of time to port rockbox to work on your target. We don't service 'port requests'. If someone is interested he needs to get his hands dirty.

You don't need special software to flash rockbox on rk27xx player. But still you need to have working binary. Can you access hidden/system partition? We will need BASE.RKW firmware file to confirm configuration of various settings by dissasembling it. Look for 'rockchip system partition' on google. You may also try (at your own risk) rkusbtool from rockbox/utils/rk27utils. Having original firmware extracted is the very first step. More photos of internals will help also. It is interesting for example if this DAP uses external codec or the one integrated in rk27xx SoC. Another possibility is to have firmware upgrade file for *your* player.
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: knob on April 05, 2012, 04:59:24 PM
@cenobyte
Have you got a copy of the original firmware, I think it would be *.img rather than *.rkw.

See if you can revive your player first, if that works then you can copy the Rockbox bootloader into the firmware image and experiment further, as for Rockbox you would need to get the lcd working first, not easy, a datasheet for your LCD might help, the reference build is different all together in this respect.


@wodz
I don't think any rk27xx series devices are made anymore apart from the Hifimans and rk2738 ebook readers, maybe some Texet T900 are available in Russia.

ownta.com may have some old stock, but it's best to check they actually have in stock what they advertise.

It's very difficult to get hold of these now, most generic no-name PMP's you would usually end up with are Rk261x or rk28xx, no way of telling from the description I'm afraid.

It's always a problem with Rockbox as soon as the port gets developed the manufacturer moves on to something else so it's a game of catch up. ;-)
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: cenobyte on April 05, 2012, 11:14:02 PM
OK, so I used testdisk to analyse the partition on the player because when I plugged it in, it was not appearing as a removeable disk. After that, I can now see a 21MB partition on which i found a HOLDON.BIN file and a folder SYSTEM with FILEINFO.DAT FILESORT.DAT SAVE.BIN and STATINFO.STA. Have I hit something, or are there more hidden partitions?
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: wodz on April 06, 2012, 03:29:45 AM
@knob
What about this one http://www.ownta.com/onda-vx530t-mp4-player-with-4.3-inch-touch-screen-and-tv-out-function-4gb.html
I vaguely remember this being rebranded T8 but there seems to be a few different versions.
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: knob on April 06, 2012, 05:09:31 AM
One sure way to check:-
ftp://ftp.onda.cn/download/driver/oamp3/VX530T/

If it is rk27xx then it's best to message ownta to see if they actually have any to ship , they are not too good at updating their stock levels, but they respond to questions ok.

Cheers
knob

@cenobyte
copy the contents of the system folder while you can, look for a second partition and copy the contents of that too, you need the RESOURCE folder,  then we can make an image file.
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: cenobyte on April 06, 2012, 02:52:01 PM
I have managed to see the 16GB part of the player but nothing appears to be on it (even with "show hidden files") . The 21mb partition is not showing up again, so maybe the SYSTEM folder was the equivalent of RESOURCE? If not then I have to keep looking...
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: knob on April 06, 2012, 05:47:14 PM
The layout of the firmware partitions do vary, early players had 1 partition later replaced by 2.
If you haven't done so already you might want to check this thread out:-
http://mympx.org/forum/mods-themes/41908-firmware-extraction-new-rockchip-rk27xx-series-players.html

err just a thought!  :o
Quote
My brother bought it for about a hundred bucks about 2 years ago but now that it seems broken, has given it over to me for hacking
Your brother didn't by any chance flash the player with the wrong firmware? If so then there would be no point in trying to pull it off the player  :)
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: cenobyte on April 07, 2012, 12:25:48 AM
Ok so first of all my brother has done nothing to the player including use it since he got it about 2 years ago. The firmware on it is the same crappy one it came with.

As for the firmware extraction goes, I have hit a wall. I looked at the thread that knob suggested and tried to download the rkusb.tag file, but what I got was a read-only .rar file that I could not for the life of me extract. I first tried on my Trisquel laptop, then an Acer Windows XP, then a Windows 7 laptop and all of them could not open it. If someone has the raw file rkusb.tag, I would love to get a copy so we can proceed with the hacking. Thanks.
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: mortalis on April 07, 2012, 03:38:27 AM
rkusb.tag is just an empty file. You can create it by yourself.
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: cenobyte on April 07, 2012, 03:18:34 PM
Is it a textfile? I will try that first.
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: saratoga on April 07, 2012, 03:26:14 PM
Is it a textfile? I will try that first.

4th post in that thread. Which might be good for you to read before you start trying to back stuff . . .
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: cenobyte on April 07, 2012, 03:59:04 PM
OK, excellent! Sorry about being a little dense, I created the empty file after I reformatted the 15GB part because it was not appearing. I finally got that 58MB partition to show up, I backed it up 3 times, so how am I supposed to send you all files?  I must say even these first steps are quite exciting.
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: knob on April 08, 2012, 03:37:21 AM
No need to upload your firmware, others can't test it as we don't have this player.
You must do all the testing and modifying yourself!

You need to get the archos 43 vision firmware, open with imaging software and copy ALL your firmware contents to it, save the image and flash it to your player using RK27BatchUpgrade_Image

If you're on linux the hifiman wiki should help:-
http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/HifimanPort
If you are on windows then winimage or ultraIso to open the .img.

http://www.archos.com/support/download/firmware/archos43vision/1.10/Archos43.img

http://www.box.com/s/ejrm2fc43ojdv8knxed0

If you successfully revive you player, then you need to get the build environment setup to create a custom Rockbox build for your player.
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: cenobyte on April 08, 2012, 01:20:56 PM
Once again i apologize, but I'm not sure what to use as "imaging software". I searched my package manager and did not find much.
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: cenobyte on April 09, 2012, 02:52:47 PM
OK so this is how my first and possibly last attempt went. I used mount -o loop to open the .img file. Because of complaints of size, I first deleted all the contents, unmounted and remounted it and then copied all the files I backed up from the Trio player onto the image. Then I unmounted it. As per the Hifiman wiki, I put the .img file in the main 17gb partition and rebooted the device. It powered off but has not come back up since. I think I may have bricked it for good.
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: wodz on April 09, 2012, 04:40:19 PM
@cenobyte
rk27xx devices are virtually unbrickable but it is more involiving to recover from bad flash. I am not experienced with other players than RM970 clones but all share the same rom which provides sort of DFU mode. What PID:VID do you have after connecting your 'bricked' player to PC?
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: knob on April 09, 2012, 05:25:09 PM
Quote
I first deleted all the contents,

That's where you went wrong, you would have deleted the RK27BOOT.BIN. you need to only copy the original Trio firmware files over, overwriting the files such as BASE.rkw and BMP0.BIN whilst keeping the Archos image directory structure intact. The Archos image should be big enough at 67MB.

I think you will need to hook up to a windows machine and use the updater to force dfu mode and then flash the image, if you still can't get into dfu mode then its time to open the player again and force it into dfu mode as per this thread:- http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,32587.0.html
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: cenobyte on April 09, 2012, 07:24:27 PM
The player is not showing up under lsusb on my linux box any more, so I will try to update it via the XP machine now. If not I will try to open it (I am guessing it involves shorting of pins?)

Post Merge: April 10, 2012, 02:33:35 AM
I plugged the Trio into the XP machine and downloaded a temporary copy of winimage. I opened the Archos image with winimage and used the 'inject folder' option and tried to add everything from the Trio firmware. Again, I was told there was no more space in the image so I am not sure how to go about copying files into the image without running out of space. After saving it, I tried to use the batch upgrader, but no device was detected. I may have to go to plan b for recovering the player...
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: wodz on April 10, 2012, 02:38:58 AM
@cenobyte
Please, please read carefully what other say to You. I bet you didn't read thread knob pointed you to. You are wasting your time as well as ours.
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: cenobyte on April 11, 2012, 02:34:04 AM
Ok I have read the full thread now. I examined the memory chip in my player and found it had no Samsung NAND but instead 2 seperate units. On the one with smaller pins, I connected pins 5 and 6 as per the other thread with folded foil. That caused the following device to appear under lsusb:

Bus 001 Device 040: ID 071b:3201 Domain Technologies, Inc.

but no /dev/sdx appears so I cannot really address the drive in a way I know of.

Post Merge: April 11, 2012, 03:52:19 AM
I have confirmed that with the same pins shorted on the XP machine, no device appears either under the OS in general, or under the BatchUpgrade program
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: wodz on April 11, 2012, 04:38:19 AM
The device enumerates in rockchip specific recover mode (we call it DFU here). In this mode it will not expose any mass storage. If you have proper files you can recover the player. There are various materials how to do it. Other then this you can send arbitrary binary file to the player using rk27load utility (but this is of limited use for now as you basically know nothing about internals of the player).
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: cenobyte on April 11, 2012, 12:41:23 PM
OK great so I accessed the famous DFU mode! I expected to find a hard drive, but apparently not.

Post Merge: April 11, 2012, 02:39:38 PM
I found this thread which is great, but I need a .rfw file, which I cannot find on the mympxplayer.org.
http://mympxplayer.org/rockchip-dead-player-recovery-guide-vt6686.html

maybe there is a way to make one?
taking a break now...
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: cenobyte on April 13, 2012, 04:00:43 AM
So I have come to decide that I want to go straight into work on getting Rockbox on the Trio. I do not want to hunt for some obscure files that I have no idea how they were made. I want to everything the Free way from now on if possible. I'll just assume some part of rockbox will work on the player, try and load it, and go from there. The touchscreen does not have to work now, even some boot messages will do. I think I am ready to start developing (myself and the code).
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: wodz on April 13, 2012, 08:25:54 AM
Go for it. Bear in mind that you need to first develop lcd driver to see anything :-)
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: cenobyte on April 13, 2012, 01:11:37 PM
By develop, you mean write from scratch? I was under the impression I could at least see something...
Title: Re: Trio TCH1643
Post by: wodz on April 13, 2012, 06:23:47 PM
Sorry dude, virtually every target has different lcd controller. You should be to able to control backlight though which gives some limited means of feedback. The very first step is to dissasemble main binary of your player, find out lcd init routine and try to figure out what type it is. Then you can look if there is driver for such thing written already (chances are low to be honest).