vibe 500 Packard Bell

[sis71]

Hello,
i have got the vibe 500 and I'm searching for an alternative firmware.
So i found your page.
The question, can i use any rockbox FW for the vibe 500.
Is there other mp3-player identical in construction ?
thanks for answer, and help.

[Febs]

No, Rockbox does not run on that player.

[markun]

The question, can i use any rockbox FW for the vibe 500.
Is there other mp3-player identical in construction ?

Do you know what hardware is inside that player? If not, can you look for that information or otherwise open up your player to take some pictures of the chips?

[sis71]

hopefully i can open the player, i have to look for it. And i will take some pictures it it is possible

[zajacattack]

If you want to get the ball rolling on a port of rockbox to this player, you should read
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome?topic=NewPort
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/PortingHowTo

[b0hoon]

Hello developers, everybody,

I'm locally porting this player. Currently everything works except:

- RTC (i don't know yet where it is connected - GPIOs or I2C bridge)
- Record (i don't know which GPIO switches it to the line in or MIC or activates it)
- Plugins (for obvious reason - keymaps).

Before i'll be asking for adding it to SVN i must resolve my local problem with my linux and the wifi network. Currently i'm forced to stick with Mandriva 2007 (which has an older and improper version of SVN) because on the never distributions with the never kernels (no matter what distro it is: Mandriva, Gentoo etc) my wifi card simply don't work because of bad drivers for rt2500.

I think that this player is better with Rockbox on the board, than the Iriver H10 .

[torne]

Congratulations on the porting success!

You don't need svn to post patches to the bugtracker, which is where your new port should go for now. Commit access is given by invitation after we've had a chance to see someone's work.

[b0hoon]

Congratulations on the porting success!

You don't need svn to post patches to the bugtracker, which is where your new port should go for now. Commit access is given by invitation after we've had a chance to see someone's work.

Yes, i know but i was porting it through the last month or two, and a lot of things has changed since my version, so i'm forced to resync it somehow to the possible latest version, before i'll commit any patches. I don't want to access to svn directly yet. And in the moment my local svn version don't want to operate with the source, so i'm getting "unknown-date" version of Rockbox, i can't resync it and probably creating patches in this situation is impossible.

I must have a distro with a new svn and the working wifi driver, but that is what i must resolve myself and it not belongs to this forum .

[b0hoon]

Ok, the source is ready and now i must learn how to give it to you. It is a lot of code so may i just simply pack it (zip) and post it on the bugtracker as a patch? (directory structure with a new and changed files). Or do i have to do patches (diffs)? But what with the directory structure then?

[pyro_maniac]

Ok, the source is ready and now i must learn how to give it to you. It is a lot of code so may i just simply pack it (zip) and post it on the bugtracker as a patch? (directory structure with a new and changed files). Or do i have to do patches (diffs)? But what with the directory structure then?

I think an svn diff to post on bug tracker is the best way.

[torne]

svn diff is the best way, if you have svn working. If you still can't do that, then diff -ruN olddir newdir will create a suitable patch. The directory structure is included.

[b0hoon]

Thank you for advises. It saved me a lot of time. Svn diff was the best solution - perfectly.

The patch is on the Flyspray: FS#10912. I hope i did it properly.

Instalation:

1) connect the player in UMS mode:
a) turn off the player (OF)
b) connect it through the USB cable to PC
c) Press and hold the Power button for about 2 sec.

2) make the build
a) configure it as a normal build (../tools/configure)
b) make
c) make zip

3) copy it to the player through the UMS mode
a) copy the content of the zip file to the player's root dir (.rockbox dir)
b) in the System directory rename Jukebox.mi4 to tester.mi4 if you want to have OF at Power+OK combo.
c) copy the jukebox.mi4 from the .rockbox dir to the System dir.

The new port is against r24225.

Warning:
If the files: BLUPD.mi4 and boot.rom exists in the System folder i suggest you to delete them. They are used to update original bootloader in the flash (Power+C combo) and are not needed once you've done it in the past. But messing with them may be very dangerous. For example - if you change the name of the Boot.rom file (or erase it) and fire up BLUPD.mi4 image through the Power+C combo, you will erase the bootloader and you will have a nice brick like i have. There is a beautiful JTAG connector on the mainboard, but the method of recovering from a bad flash is unknown.

By the way, i've red somwhere that someone (developer) has ability to recover an iriver from a bad flash, i suppose that in this case it would be similarly. So if someone knows how to talk with the Portal Player through the JTAG i will be more than happy to write the recovering tool in vc++ (one brick less).

[tomers]

Terrific work! Thank you! 

[tomers]

I don't want to access to svn directly yet.

Hi Szymon (b0hoon), can you please introduce yourself to other developers in #rockbox IRC channel?

People are impressed by your work, and would like to know you better. I think that following your good work, you are in an excellence position to be granted SVN access and become a Rockbox committer. It would only be fair that you will be the one who commits this port

Besides being a committer, I would like to emphasize the importance of having people who are committed to the effort of further maintaining a port, especially for a player who have small number of users (I don't know if that is the case here). Such involvement includes taking care of having a proper installation method for Rockbox on that player, getting the manual done, setting up the simulator, etc. A port that is not well maintained gets obsolete over time, and doesn't progress into becoming a stable port.

[b0hoon]

Hi.

Hi Szymon (b0hoon), can you please introduce yourself to other developers in #rockbox IRC channel?

People are impressed by your work, and would like to know you better. I think that following your good work, you are in an excellence position to be granted SVN access and become a Rockbox committer. It would only be fair that you will be the one who commits this port

Ok, i will do it. As you can see i'm not a native english speaker, so it may be hard for me :S, but we'll see.
Thank you for giving me such a credit, but in fact it's not a big deal i think. It would be much harder to port something on a new SOC for example (from the scratch), but here a lot of code was already and i had to simply look at it (what's going on) and write (or rewrite basing on someones work) the missing elements (parts). The hardest part i think for me was dissasembling, i thought sometimes that i will create a beautiful fractal from mouth on my lcd . I just wanted to have this great piece of software on my DAP. But anyway thank you and i really appreciate that.

When it will be available in the trunk, i would like to focus on the RTC and the keymaps. I will be trying to add as many feautures as i can, of course if the time will be favourable to me.