Rockbox as an Application (iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, WebOS etc.)

[Jon_]

Hey guys i tried searching to see if there is a topic so i can post this in but i couldn't find one everytime i clicked the second page of the search feature it would come up with cannot load page. So this is what i was going to state.

I currently now own an iPod Touch, i would like to say the iPod Touch has been jailbroken to enable 3rd Party Applications to be installed in the Operating System. My idea is just an idea not sure if it would work at all. Well as you can tell we can currently make simulator builds for the PC i'm not sure about the Mac. Well my idea was the possiblity to create a simulator application to run off the Operating System just like how the current version works with the PC. It might sound simple however i disbelieve that the coding process would be easy.

So fellow users what do you think, do you believe that since many applications have been ported to the iPod Touch since it's been enabled to install 3rd Party Applications do you believe that Rockbox can be complied into a simulator like applications since there should be enough ram and processing power to execute the Simulator itself and running rockbox should not require over the avaliable resource.

For those who don't know yet the iPod Touch is equipted with 128mb of memory and a 400mhz processor. However all is not dedicated to the application(s). Quite a bit of it is been taken up by the Operating System itself.

So do you believe something like this can be possible since it's not possible (at the moment i believe) to hack into the current iPod Touch firmware reason being encryption. So would an application simmulator simulating rockbox work.

Doing this would only happen if anyone sets their mind out to complete this project cause it sounds easy but surly it isn't that easy. Well thank you all for reading all of this i like to share my ideas, remember i never said omg build it now. I just put out an idea just incase anyone is looking for ideas. I'm not into coding that much so i don't know much about this however i do know enough to know easy from difficult and this isn't easy.

Take Care,
Jon


List of Emulators already built for the iPod Touch - might help you in deciding this might not be related in any way but just to show that things can be emulated on the iTouch.

- Gameboy Advance Emulator (Runs very smooth almost all roms work, full screen landscape support added)

- NES Emulator no lagging notices
- ScummMV Emulator
- Someone on the iPod Touch Fans forum working on PSX Emulator not sure how that will come out to be (PS1).

Have a nice day.

[krazykit]

The simulators can be run on pretty much anything that has SDL.  It has been run on a Linux-based cell phone.  If you can get SDL running on the iPod Touch, then you likely can get the sim to run.

[Jon_]

I believe that users have already ran SDL on the iPod Touch i'll search and report my findings asap.

Edit: Well it has been reported to run via info from the iPod Touh Fans forum and there is currently a port for SDL-MAME for the ipod touch/iphone.

http://www.engadget.com/tag/iphone-sdl-mame/

http://www.ipodtouchfans....ms/showthread.php?p=87678 compling the source for the above emulator.

original mame sdl google page

http://code.google.com/p/iphone-sdl-mame/

[GodEater]

Could you provide a link to the details of how the jailbreak works ?

[homielowe]

I've been thinking about taking some time to attempt to compile the arm-apple-darwin toolchain, be aware that you need your own decrypted copy of the OS, ( note this only works for 1.1.1, 1.1.2 needs to be copied off the device via ssh )
http://www.touchdev.net/wiki/Decrypt_Firmware
http://iphone.fiveforty.n....php/ARM/Mach-O_Toolchain This is a link to the iPhone dev wiki with steps to compile the toolchain

http://code.google.com/p/iphone-dev/ the google code link with sources and more instructions (svn)

Other unix applications have been cross-compiled such as Pyro sands , ucurl, wget, pipepanic etc.
I still consider myself pretty new at this , so any errors please correct me

[homielowe]

Currently I have been attempting to cross-compile rockbox to run on the iPod touch. I've created a new target in configure and set up the necessary files to make a simulator. But it seems my iphone-toolchain is showing symptoms of not being compiled properly ( barfing many errors when attempting to compile asm etc,). I'll create a diff that will compile cleanly with current svn and upload it on the patch tracker in the next few days and continue to work on this.  

[GuitarRocker2562]

So, the iPhone Linux team has gotten a custom bootloader running on the ipohne, which allows them to boot the linux kernel, unfortunately, no touch support yet. So, it seems that the floodgates have been opened to port rockbox, no? http://linuxoniphone.blog...8/11/linux-on-iphone.html

[ezzieyguywuf]

So I don't officially own one of these, but my father does and I've had a chance to play around with it. This phone runs on Android, an open source OS based on a linux kernel. I'm not too sure about any of the specifics, but I'd like to know if you devs out there would find it easier to port Rockbox to this device due to its open source nature.

It it is possible, I got a few ideas that I think would be nice as well. First, I think rockbox on the G1 would best be implemented on a virtual machine, so that it doesn't completely over-ride the standard os. Virtual machines are relatively easy to set up in linux, but I'm not sure how feasible this is on the portable platform.

Also, I thin it'd be nice to include support for audio-out via the USB connection so that i could a pure digital signal sent to an external DAC. This feature would be heavenly for audiophiles.

Anyways, any feedback is welcome!

[GodEater]

First, I think rockbox on the G1 would best be implemented on a virtual machine, so that it doesn't completely over-ride the standard os. Virtual machines are relatively easy to set up in linux, but I'm not sure how feasible this is on the portable platform.

I disagree on two counts :

1) VM's for some architectures might be easy to setup, but as far as I know there are none for any of the hardware targets that Rockbox-as-firmware runs natively on.

2) Rockbox would run much better as an application. That way there's no need for any hardware level stuff required. The Rockbox simulator code already does this for running as an application on PC hardware, so there's probably not masses of work involved in getting it running on Android - assuming there's an SDL implementation for Android already.

[GodEater]

We had a very brief discussion about this this morning on IRC, and the consensus is still that Rockbox-as-app still makes more sense than Rockbox-as-firmware on the iPhone and Touch. Specifically we think people that want it as a firmware on those devices are "mad".

[brendosoh]

Hey I know this topic is seemingly dead I've been checking for updates almost daily see if anyone has made a breakthrough
 
Look at this

http://www.theregister.co.../2008/12/01/linux_iphone/

Could that lead the way in getting RockBox on the iPod Touch
1. I know Rockbox isnt Linux but still its another OS
2. I know the iPhone isnt an iPod Touch but its pretty similar even in hardware isnt it?

I'm actually more interested in getting it on the Classic but I dont have that degree of technical experiece to help

[Chronon]

Linux running on one of these devices should allow someone to run a Rockbox simulator.

[saratoga]

Theres already an SDL port for the iPhone, so actually it'd probably be easier to just run it in the iPhone OS. 

[RonPou]

I am a big fan of the RockBox and now a big fan of the new Adroid/Google project. Does anyone know if there are plans to port RockBox to Android as an application? RockBox would be a major cool addition to the new phone!

[Llorean]

We ask anyone actually doing work to update a thread here. Since this thread doesn't have any news of work, you know as much as I do.