Rockbox Technical Forums
Rockbox Development => New Ports => Topic started by: garagemc on April 03, 2006, 09:45:15 AM
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Any chance? Would be awesome.
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New ports of Rockbox basically require owners of the hardware to get started on it. So, if you can find a group of fans of the HD5, and start investigating the hardware, it could always happen.
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finding a group of fans is easy plenty of users around. What do you mean by investigating the hardware?
Thanks
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Finding out what all the hardware components are (processor, etc), how they're connected. Whether the firmware is stored in flash or on disk, whether it's encrypted. Basically, figure out everything necessary to write drivers for the hardware in the device. Get datasheets if you can. Then, get started on a bootloader..
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Here's our little guide:
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/NewPort
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I'm not a programmer myself unfortunately (yet!) but i've seen links to the datasheets on the atraclife colloquium - this guy is working on a rockbox port for hd5. the link to the forum:
http://www.atraclife.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1903
and the data sheet:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://www.nevola.be/index.php%3Fwiki%3DNW-HD5&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=3&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3DCXR704060-201GA%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26rls%3DGGLJ,GGLJ:2006-26,GGLJ:en
sorry for URL it's a translation from spanish. Hope this helps.
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Wow that one CPU actually has a real data sheet complete with pinouts. Plus its an ARM7TDMI, so developement is actually possible.
Unfortunately, a 22.5MHz ARM7 core isn't going to be very fast, so that CPU at least would take a lot of work to be useful. That page does list another ARM core, but doesn't give a spec sheet for it. Maybe its faster.
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Um, hi!
I know that probably everyone but me replaced his or her HD5 so far, but I still feel interested in trying to port Rockbox to this wonderful piece of hardware =) (Not so long ago everyone said that NW-HD5 would be one of the best HDD players if it wouldn't have had such a bad firmware and PC software - SonicStage - so it's quite an interesting experiment, "What can it really do with a better software?")
As you can see I like writing long post, sorry for that.
Anyway, I have a quite good C/C++ knowledge and a fairly basic assembly as well (being able to understand block diagrams, pinouts and such, of course), and I have found a very-very deatiled service manual too:
http://www.eserviceinfo.com/download.php?fileid=20800
...with pinouts and all. It even tells you how tpodisassemble and the fact that HD5 has a lot of measurement functions build in, in its hidden service menu.
And it sounds good since I haven't got any knowledge in making such measurements "by hand" at all.
Anyway (yes, this post will have a point, soon! =)), this PDF makes me think I can skip most tasks in http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/NewPort , and can almost straight start with http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/PortingHowTo , which sound much more familiar to me.
If I am wrong, possibly I should abandon this "project" (porting to HD5), as many did before. Otherwise I would try it. (Good chance to practice before the next semester =))
So I ask the experienced Rockbox-porters: is the service manual I've found enough to get things started or is it still necessary to took everything apart, scan the boards, make the measurements etcetcetc, which I wouldn't think I would be able to do well (and hence wouldn't do anything)?
Thanks for your attention and reply in advance =)
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As someone who has started a port (Gigabeat) I can tell you this service manual is very interesting indeed!
Next step would be to collect all the datasheets for these componentes and find a way to run your own code. Figuring out how a firmware update works is a good place to start.
Post about your port in HD5 forums so you can get some other people interested.
Good luck!