Rockbox General > Rockbox General Discussion

Rockbox ipod development in retrospect

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g00ey:
The discussions of the development of contingent versions of rockbox for the 6G ipod classic makes me wonder how the discussion went when the 5G and 5.5G ipods were released. How well documented was their hardware when they where new? The firmware of the 5Gs is also encrypted, how did they manage to get past that?

soap:

--- Quote from: g00ey on December 16, 2007, 06:06:38 PM ---The discussions of the development of contingent versions of rockbox for the 6G ipod classic makes me wonder how the discussion went when the 5G and 5.5G ipods were released. How well documented was their hardware when they where new? The firmware of the 5Gs is also encrypted, how did they manage to get past that?


--- End quote ---
Comparisons between porting Rockbox to the 5th generation iPod and porting Rockbox to the 6th generation iPod (Classic) are not going to tell you what I think you want to hear.

The 6th generation iPod is largely new, mostly undocumented, mostly unknown, hardware.
The 5th generation iPod was very similar to the 4th, was very similar to the 3rd, was very similar to the 2nd, was very similar to the 1st.

Encryption:  (as I understand it)
On the iPods there are two or three firmware images - The flash image, the OS image, and the "resource" image (found on the Video / Nano on up).
After the third generation they (Apple) started to encrypt the flash image.  This was broken, as Apple hid the key in plain sight.  Don't expect them to make the same mistake again.

A very important distinction needs to be made regarding the 6th generation.  Since the Nano 2nd generation Apple has encrypted not just the flash image - but also the OS image.  This means (amongst others things) that now you have undocumented hardware  without even a readable firmware to use for reverse engineering.

g00ey:
Well, it's quite obvious that they don't want firmware such as Rockbox on their devices. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that they were using this community to exploit potential security holes so as to prevent community developed firmware to find its way into their devices.

soap:
I see nothing supporting such a high level of paranoia.

ZincAlloy:
I'd like to use the opportunity to say "hi" to Big Brother, though: Hi!

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