Gigabeat flash conversion project

[scharkalvin]

Well I just bought a second Gigabeat player on ebay.
This one is an F10, and I intend to replace the hard disk
with a 16gb CF card.  I also ordered one of those CF flash
to Toshiba 1.8" disk drive converter adapters.  The only
problem may be figuring out which way to plug in the adapter
as those 50 pin connectors aren't keyed and you can end up
with the thing plugged in upside down.  The fact that the pinout
for the 50pin socket doesn't use 6 of the connections at one end
(it's really a 44 wire connection and a 50pin socket) might be
a clue if I can see how the ribbon cable on the player is setup.

I'll be back with more news on how this works out.  I'm sure I'll
have to modify the ata.c (or was that ide.c) file the same way that
was done for the ipod mini flash conversion.

[Phalangees]

I suggest looking here: http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=13408.0

You may find some things that can help you out.

[scharkalvin]

Thanks, I've seen that thread.  I got the F10 in the mail yesterday.  Although I've seen the web page on how to open the player up to get at the hard disk, I can't figure out how the top and bottom covers are removed.  I guess you just have to wedge a thin screwdriver or knife edge in there someplace and pop it off.  Anybody done this and can give me a hint?
Thanks!

As soon as I get the CF adapter I ordered I want to get to work on this.  Hopefully it will show up early next week (coming air mail from Hong Kong).  I hope it will fit in place of the hard disk, the F10 is thinner than I thought, but it's thicker than an iPod mini, and the type II flash drive in the mini looks like it's a bit thinner than the F10 hard disk should be.  I might have to shave the CF socket on the adapter card down a bit (if it's made to fit a type II card, I'm putting a type I sized CF card in).  

From everything I've read on the web this conversion should work, a 16GB flash based player the size of the Gigabeat F10 with a color screen running Rockbox should be a real iPod killer!

[Mad Cow]

To get the top and bottom covers off, just stick something sharp into the crack at each side, then just pull up while going along the front to the other side.

[scharkalvin]

I'm wondering.  Starting from scratch with the brand new Gigabeat player I could NOT get the player to appear as a USB disk (using Debian Linux) until I booted into the OF and changed the USB setting from MS Media player to Gigabeat room.  I'm assuming this enabled the USB storage mode.  It seems that the USB driver is NOT in the flash memory on the player but in the firmware, so if I start with a blank hard disk I might not be able to format it by plugging the player into the computer.

I might have to put the files on the CF card via an external reader/writer before I put the card into the adapter and the adapter into the player instead of the hard disk.
That's assuming that the file layout on the CF card is the same when the card is used in a USB/CF reader as it is as an ATA interfaced 'disk drive'.

Is the actual Gigabeat F boot loader sequence in the OF documented anywhere?
Does the original boot flash on the player even have a USB boot loader mode or is this in the OF and rockbox?

[markun]

If you insert a blank disk, the OF bootloader will give you an error and enter USB mode.

[scharkalvin]

If you insert a blank disk, the OF bootloader will give you an error and enter USB mode.

That's encouraging to know.  Still waiting for the adapter.  Damn slow airmail from Hong Kong! (at least the guy had perfect feedback on ebay).

If this works out I might want to add the info to the Gigabeat wiki page.

12/1/07  The adapter *finally* showed up from Hong Kong!  Later today I will attempt to open up the F10 and install the thing.  I found some drawings showing how to orient the connectors.  Will chime in later with the story.  I will have to make a custom build for the Gigabeat along the lines of the iPod mini with flash to remove the power down call to the ATA interface.

12/2/07 I replaced the HD with the CF adapter.  After power up and getting the "no system" error message I plugged in the USB and the device showed up under Linux as /dev/sdc1.  I ran fdisk on /dev/sdc and saw only one vfat partition but it was sized at 8gb not 16gb.  I created the correct sub directories and installed the bootstrap files and unzipped my custom build rockbox system onto the root directory (modified ata.c with the flash memory fix).
The CF adapter module is smaller than the HD so I folded a few business cards around it to keep it from bouncing around inside the player.

Well it worked for a while.  system info shows the disk as 15gb (correct value).  The problem is that after a while I started to get disk errors (checksum, bad directory sector, etc).  At one point it crashed and would not reboot.  I got either a checksum error from the bootloader or a file not found error.  

I tried to unzip rockbox.zip into the root directory but I got 'readonly file system' errors.  I finally ran mkfs.vfat to re-create the file system, and re-installed everything.  Now it is working again, with an occasional checksum error on powerup
(shutdown, restart and it works the second time).  I sometimes have to turn off the battery switch to recover after a failed start.

Maybe the CF disk is a tad too slow for the system?  Is there a way in software to add wait states?  The CF conversion shows some promise, the player is a bit lighter now (CF module not as heavy as the HD).  

[scharkalvin]

Picture of conversion.

[flinchbot]

Thanks for posting the update.

[Chronon]

It does sound a bit like some timing issues.  You might try the IRC channel for some advice on this.  You'll stand a better chance of getting some info from the developers.

[scharkalvin]

I'm going to open the thing back up and make sure that there isn't any contact between the adapter circuit board and the gigabeat circuit board.  I might have had an intermittent short causing the read errors.  I doubt it, but from the photo I see that the business card might not have covered the full width of the adapter card.  I'm thinking of using double sided tape to stick the business card to the GB pc and the adapter to the card.  Should also keep things from bouncing around.

The CF card I used is slow (40x whatever that means).  There are faster CF cards available, New Egg also sells a Transcend brand for about $25 bucks more than the A-data I used with a 133x speed.  Maybe the faster CF card would work better?

It does sound a bit like some timing issues.  You might try the IRC channel for some advice on this.  You'll stand a better chance of getting some info from the developers.

Well I tried setting the disk spin down time up to 255 seconds and this seems to have helped.  (but why, since I commented out the disk reset/powerdown in ata.c as was suggested for the ipod mini with a CF flash?)


If anybody else has the guts to try this, let me know how it works!  BTW the adapter card was purchased on ebay from 'linuxbeginner',  and I found that 'TRY2B BEST' also sells them (both in Hong Kong so shipping is a bit slow in transit).

[psycho_maniac]

How much did this all cost you?

[scharkalvin]

How much did this all cost you?

The CF flash card was $105 at Newegg.com.  The adapter was
about $13 including shipping on ebay.  I got the F10 player for $65
on ebay.

[Davide-NYC]

@ scharkalvin: How's it going? Any problems? Please report back your experiances.
Thanks!  

[johnson4]

really cool idea!!
is the CF card thin enough that you could modify the F10 case and have a thinner overall player?
keep it up !