Rockbox Technical Forums

Rockbox Development => New Ports => Topic started by: ta on January 31, 2009, 04:14:55 PM

Title: Vosonic VP8870
Post by: ta on January 31, 2009, 04:14:55 PM
That Player seems to be a good replacement for Archos Jukebox Recorders

-2,5" SATA HDD support > 137 GB
-NP-100 compatible replaceable battery
-WAV & MP3 playback
-AAC recording via mic and line in
-Huge colour lcd display
-Video recording and playback via i/o
-Photo slideshow
-Card reader
-148 x 76 x 27 mm

http://www.vosonic.com/product.php?kind=1&PA=feature&id_1=16&id_2=0&id_3=0&id_4=0
Title: Re: Vosonic VP8870
Post by: Mystery Keeper on January 02, 2011, 09:37:18 AM
I've made a list of chips I could read without disassembling the device. Which means one side of the board. I'm a programmer (though my assembler experience is next to none), but I can't handle hardware. Someone smarter pretty please, give a start to this port!

XILINX
SPARTAN
XC3S100E
TQG114DGQ0929
D4002590A1
4C

Programmable CPU
-----------------------
hynix
H27U1G8F2BTR
BC        948F
M1W80295AA3

Memory (128MB?)
-----------------------
SunplusIT
SATALink
SPIF223A-HF022
MQDY295v1 (?)
0949-00500 (?)

SATA controller
-----------------------
(Wave pattern logo)
WM8978G
03APNA4

Obviously related to audio, but who knows how much work it really does.
-----------------------
TPS6
1032
T1 01W
ZF45

Boost converter.
-----------------------
2x

CL245A
TI 72K
A841

Low-voltage octal fet bus switches. What are these? ^_^'
-----------------------
BPT
98W
ZE3H
-----------------------
BHSW
TI W
99ZH

Post Merge: January 02, 2011, 06:21:38 PM
I found out several different "digital frames" (VP8870 can act as one) use .mtg files as firmware upgrade. They all have some similar elements in interface - like filepaths and icons. They even have remote controller of identical design. What does that mean? They are all built in same way? There's one firmware toolkit for them all?
Title: Re: Vosonic VP8870
Post by: TexasRockbox on January 02, 2011, 11:28:32 PM
If it's any help the Digital Foci Picture Porter 35 uses .mtg files.

I have a VP8870 as well.  Nice hardware:

1) Standard battery
2) User upgradable 2.5" SATA HDD  (easily done -- mine is 640GB)
3) Excellent 800x480 LCD with outstanding viewing angles.

Crazy bad firmware, but not a bad way to store and play hundreds of CDs worth of .flac files.

I've written Vosonic several times with suggestions to improve the firmware.  No reply and no improvements.

I have some datasheets and an interesting version of the VP8860 (almost identical except for FM) firmware.

If Vosonic would allow for gapless and screen background changes....
Title: Re: Vosonic VP8870
Post by: Mystery Keeper on January 03, 2011, 05:17:17 AM
http://www.mediafire.com/?b0266ly4cggmj

Datasheets I gathered so far:
XILINX SPARTAN
Wolfson WM8978G
Texas Instruments CL245A (Not sure if the right one)
Texas Instruments TPS61032
Title: Re: Vosonic VP8870
Post by: saratoga on January 03, 2011, 02:12:15 PM
http://www.mediafire.com/?b0266ly4cggmj

Datasheets I gathered so far:
XILINX SPARTAN
Wolfson WM8978G
Texas Instruments CL245A (Not sure if the right one)
Texas Instruments TPS61032

You should make a wiki page for this port and then put the documents on the wiki.
Title: Re: Vosonic VP8870
Post by: Mystery Keeper on January 05, 2011, 04:06:21 PM
http://www.mediafire.com/?yp0q213506j2u
Here are several different firmwares for it. Can help in reverse engineering. I still can't use wiki.
Title: Re: Vosonic VP8870
Post by: Mystery Keeper on January 08, 2011, 07:20:03 AM
Its CPU seems to be XILINX SPARTAN. But there's a string "MSP430 Firmware" in firmware upgrade file. Confusing.
Title: Re: Vosonic VP8870
Post by: Bagder on January 08, 2011, 04:28:47 PM
"XILINX SPARTAN" is an FPGA, it is not a CPU at all.

AFAIK, that FPGA can feature both soft and hard CPU cores though.
Title: Re: Vosonic VP8870
Post by: Mystery Keeper on January 08, 2011, 05:09:53 PM
Does that mean the device uses both SPARTAN and MSP430?
Title: Re: Vosonic VP8870
Post by: Bagder on January 08, 2011, 06:13:00 PM
MSP430 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI_MSP430) seems to be a tiny 16bit microcontroller at max 25MHz so if there's one of those in your player you can rest assured that there must be something else in there as well.
Title: Re: Vosonic VP8870
Post by: saratoga on January 09, 2011, 12:56:42 AM
That FPGA is basically just a huge block of multipliers that you can arrange into a fixed function DSP chain.  I kind of doubt it has enough CPU performance for the GUI in the link above.  Theres probably a real ARM or MIPS core buried in there somewhere. 
Title: Re: Vosonic VP8870
Post by: TexasRockbox on January 09, 2011, 12:04:09 PM
I have had mine apart.  Chips noted:

XILINX-x3s100e Xilinx Spartan-3E FPGA

WM8978 - Wolfson Stereo CODEC with Speaker Driver

TVP5150A M1 - TI Ultralowpower NTSC/PAL/SECAM Video Decoder with Sync Detector

TPS61032 - TI Boost Converter

TM332DM355 - TI Digital Media System-on-Chip

SunplusIT-spif223a-hf022 - Sunplus SATA/IDE

MSP430F2232 - TI Microcontroller

HY27UF(08_16)16G2A Series(Rev0.4) - Hynix FLASH Memory

Title: Re: Vosonic VP8870
Post by: Bagder on January 09, 2011, 02:13:03 PM
Spartan-3E seems to be too small to be able to feature one of Xilinx PowerPC cores but can only fit a MicroBlaze one, which I think indicates saratoga is right: there's a CPU core somewhere.

Alternatively, this is a MicroBlaze design accelerated with key parts done in pure FPGA but I'm not into those details enough to tell if that's possible with a Spartan-3E.

Edit: eek, "TM332DM355" is a Texas Instruments beast with probably an ARM9 core. See http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/tms320dm355.html for a similar model
Title: Re: Vosonic VP8870
Post by: Mystery Keeper on January 09, 2011, 02:37:24 PM
So, most of that media player's functions are made in hardware? They do upgrade the firmware though. They added FLAC support too. Also, firmware is upgraded in two steps: shell, then boot. Which means booter can be altered.
Title: Re: Vosonic VP8870
Post by: saratoga on January 09, 2011, 02:57:26 PM
So, most of that media player's functions are made in hardware?

No, the TM332DM355 is a pretty typical CPU.  Similar parts are used in a lot of Creative Zen players for instance.   Check out the link posted above.  I'm not really sure what that FPGA is used for.  It seems unnecessary. 
Title: Re: Vosonic VP8870
Post by: kkurbjun on January 10, 2011, 02:29:40 PM
I don't think the spartan 3E 100 has a Microblaze processor on it, that device is too small to create a soft-processor system that does anything useful.  Picoblaze might be an option, but that would just be for some simple operations.

The DM355 looks similar to the DM320 used on the M:Robe 500, but without a DSP.  At least on the DM320 they made some nice architecture decisions so it could do quite a bit with video, but without using their libraries and codecs it would take alot of work to bring out all the full capability.
Title: Re: Vosonic VP8870
Post by: Bagder on January 10, 2011, 03:19:02 PM
With the ARM core present a CPU in the FPGA makes no sense anyway.

I figure the FPGA is then rather used for video/graphics acceleration.
Title: Re: Vosonic VP8870
Post by: Guenter55 on March 01, 2012, 08:15:47 AM
Hi (after a long pause),

the CPU is definitively the MSP430F2232 of TI.
This CPU is a 16-bit device, so most of the hard works has to be done by the FPGA hardware - although it's claimed to support DSP functionality.

Guenter