Rockbox Development > New Ports
Cowon D2
Llorean:
Why are you hinging everything on one person?
At any point, any of you can pick up and continue working on things. Those who wish to "help" with NAND can attempt to work on it on their own, see if they have any breakthroughs themselves, etc.
Instead of talking about how to "figure a way to keep the port developing", why not just develop?
3amsleep:
--- Quote from: Llorean on May 28, 2009, 11:53:52 PM ---Why are you hinging everything on one person?
At any point, any of you can pick up and continue working on things. Those who wish to "help" with NAND can attempt to work on it on their own, see if they have any breakthroughs themselves, etc.
Instead of talking about how to "figure a way to keep the port developing", why not just develop?
--- End quote ---
i understand what you mean, and I didn't want to hinge everything in shotofadds, but i think it would be nice if he can share some knowledge on the NAND driver so other people can catch up and do some work there. It seems to me that many people is counting on shotofadds to finish that driver, so if he says that he dosn't want to expend much time doing that, people will start working on that.
Personally i'd love to just go and finish the driver myself, but I have next to no skills/knowledge in that area, in fact many times I tried to understand how it works/what needs to be done, but i've failed miserably.
I think comunication and organization have been missing in this project for the last year or so, I think it would be really helpful if shotofadds beign the project main developer states who is working in what, and where help is needed how.
shotofadds:
Apologies in advance for the long post.. :o
Now I don't mean to be rude, but please realise that everyone contributes to Rockbox in their spare time. That is, the time left in the week after working, eating (this is a big one for me!), sleeping, socialising, spending time with my friends/family and all those other mundane time-consuming things like trying to find a new place to live.
If there's some time left in the week after that, and I choose to spend it on Rockbox, then great. If not, then I really don't need to explain myself.
Also, don't assume that no posts here means that no work is going on (for example, I actually read your post while waiting for a D2 build to compile). Tasks like disassembling and fully understanding complex routines in the original firmware are long, slow jobs where you potentially won't see the results for months, and far more of that will be needed if we are to ever have read/write NAND capability.
Having said that...
It's quite obvious that the D2 port hasn't progressed as far as it could since it got audio playback and a reliable read-only filesystem last year. The reason for that is simple, and it's exactly as Paul says: as far as I know, no-one else has expressed any serious interest in working on low-level aspects such as the NAND driver or SD card driver. These are the two most important obstacles to usability of the D2 port, far moreso than issues with the touchscreen UI (imho).
Don't get me wrong, people have contributed all sorts of improvements and tweaks over time, and these are hugely appreciated. Unfortunately the fact remains that no-one seems to want to tackle low-level issues. The other Rockbox devs who own D2s (there are a few) have enough on their plate already, before worrying about "new" ports like the D2.
As far as the SD/MMC driver is concerned, the necessary specifications are freely available, links to the TCC7801 controller specs have been leaked several times on here and elsewhere, and the Cowon firmware is available for reverse engineering. Drivers for other players have been written using far less information than that in the past, but so far no-one has decided to work on it...
The NAND driver is a bit of a special case because it's rather complicated and there is no documentation whatsoever. I'm part way through documenting in plain English everything needed to read a logical sector of data (ie. what the driver does already). When this is complete I'll add this to the wiki in the hope of attracting some attention from others. Expanding the driver to a read/write capability may be possible one day, but only if a very significant amount of time and effort is spent on it.
--- Quote from: 3amsleep on May 29, 2009, 07:55:27 PM --- I think comunication and organization have been missing in this project for the last year or so, I think it would be really helpful if shotofadds beign the project main developer states who is working in what, and where help is needed how.
--- End quote ---
The CowonD2Info wiki page already has sections listing Known Problems and Work To Be Done, and since I try to keep the page up to date with any significant changes, those are still current. What would you like to see beyond that?
Finally, let me just say I definitely haven't lost interest (remember I originally bought my D2 just to work on this!). I just don't have as much spare time to spend on it at the moment.
GodEater:
--- Quote from: shotofadds on June 01, 2009, 05:16:38 PM ---If there's some time left in the week after that, and I choose to spend it on Rockbox, then great. If not, then I really don't need to explain myself.
--- End quote ---
Too right mate. You don't owe anyone anything.
grantmasterflash:
This is probably a terrible time for a question like this, so first I'll say thanks to shotofadds and everyone that works on the Rockbox port. Also, I realize the D2 port is far from finished, so it's a bit early for feature requests.
With all that said...
I see in some of the released Rockbox ports that there is an option to flip the display upside down. Would there be a similar way to make an additional option in Rockbox for D2 for moving the display orientation from landscape to portrait mode (like a 90 degree and 270 degree option, so that the headphone port could be oriented at the top or bottom of the device)?
I'm guessing the answer is: Yes, get the code and do it. If that is the case, I'll simply say that I bet there are much more capable programmers here than me, so if you get an inclination to this, I'll bet it would be very much appreciated by the D2 Rockbox community.
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