Creative Zen X-Fi 2

[AndrewT1989]

My previous post, as I have been informed, was devoid of useful information.

To my knowledge, there is no online evaluation of the X-Fi 2's PCBs. A take-apart of the original X-Fi (no idea how useful to a dev) is at http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2008/07/creative-zen-xfi-disassembled.php, and the predecessor is supposedly pretty similar to the X-Fi 2 under the hood (sans touch screen). The device can not simply be unscrewed, and I lack the willingness or technical ability to open the unit without irretrievably damaging it.

Official firmware: http://ccftp.creative.com/manualdn/Drivers/PDE/11153/0x1D33185B/ZENX-Fi2_PCFW_L22_1_10_04.exe I am not a programmer and thus don't know what to make of it, but perhaps someone has the skills to reverse-engineer it and find out something about the underlying hardware.

I ask that any moderators that read this thread to forgive any ignorance of policy on my part. I HAVE read both the NewPort and DeviceStatus pages, and the sticky thread.

[mcuelenaere]

This applies to most of the Creative Zen series devices: information regarding the file format and its encryption is at the CreativeZVMPort wiki page; you can use trunk/utils/zenutils/ from SVN to decrypt/extract it.

[AndrewT1989]

If anybody here owns an X-Fi 2, it would be great help if you would take hi-res scans of the PCB and post it. Even the original X-Fi would be helpful to an extent. I don't even have a scanner.

One question: would it be helpful at all for me to upload the firmware files that are sitting on my player?

For reference, the firmware appears to consist of 9 files, all located in the parent directory:

APQ.TXT
CDARTTHN.DAT
CTSTORE.DAT
MATADATA.DAT
PREVIEW.DAT
SETSTOR.DAT
thumblnail.dat
wallpaper.dat

When I try to open the .txt file with gedit, it says it doesn't recognize it, which I assume means it's a binary?

[CoreDuo]

Pictures here.

There's also some useful details there about the innards. Appears to be similar (if not the same) CPU that's in the X-Fi.

Also some additional information about the firmware

[pamaury]

This thread has been dead for a long time now but since the Fuze+ port is now quite advanced, I'm considering the possibility to to a Zen X-Fi2 port since they have the same SoC. I had the opportunity of getting a very cheap one so I opened it and already can say it has a recovery mode similar to the Fuze+. I've also been able to extract three firmware for the updater executable although it was by hand. The format is of course the same as the fuze+ and I've been able to extract the code using the same tools. By the way, it uses the same encryption key: 0 !!

My priority is to finish the Fuze+ port but then I can have a look at this one, or someone can already start doing some reverse engineeering of the firmware if he/she has the skills

[kugel.]

The format is of course the same as the fuze+ and I've been able to extract the code using the same tools. By the way, it uses the same encryption key: 0 !!

Haha, awesome!

[pamaury]

Hi all,
today I had a little try and I manage to make the screen work, as you can see here: http://amaury.pouly.free.fr/Images/SSL23036.JPG. Since this device is so similar to the Fuze+, I'll try to port it, or at least do the basic stuff so that if anyone is interested, he/she can build on top of that.

[pamaury]

Hi all,
I have started a port for this device. Bootloader is working, main binary too (there are few quirks but that's still early stage). I've not yet tried to play music with it. I have a working touchscreen driver but currently the menus look ugly because there is no theme and big fonts. The FM chip is a new one and bertrik will try to work on this. There is currently no driver for the speaker. Finally it seems from my works that there are two versions of the Zen X-Fi2: one using NAND flash as storage and one using SD/eMMC. Since we do not have a nand driver yet and the FTL format might not be completely documented, the current code is booting from the micro-sd card (so it has hotswap as main). It also features an accelerometer which is documented (but has no driver yet). The good point is that we know pretty much everything about the device except for a few pins which need to be figured out and the nand flash which will be a big part.

[pamaury]

Hi all,
some news after a very long time. After some work done on the updater, I have finally found more or less how to update the firmware without Creative's tool. So basically the situation is:
- On Windows: one can send an arbitrary firmware by putting Creatives's updater AND a file called "firmware.sb" in the same directory. Then Creative's updater will send "firmware.sb" instead of the embedded firmware !!
- On Linux: I've developped a tool which can send SCSI commands to the device. When finished, it will allow to read/write any partition, uncluding the firmware's partition, and thus to do a firmware upgrade.

The first option already works and has been tested. There hasn't been any X-Fi 2 specific improvements recently but the port has greatly stabilize thanks to the general work done on imx233. I will update the wiki soon to detail the upgrade procedure so people can test Rockbox on the Zen X-Fi 2.

[pamaury]

After some investigation and tests, it seems that the port is basically working but really slow because the memory clock is too slow. Chaning it possible but complicated, I'm trying to make it work based on the linux port since it is not very well documented. It also prevents USB and cpu intensive codecs from working.

[pamaury]

Hi all,
I have written the installation instruction here: http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/CreativeZENXFi2Port. Please note that this very early stage although Rockbox runs fine for several reason:

• No internal storage: you need to install everything on a micro-sd card
• No Rockbox Utility support

The second point will be easy to fix but the first one will require much more work. Still, Rockbox works very well with a microsd card only, provided it's big enough to contain all your music.

[pamaury]

Hi,
Give the difficulty of building the bootloader currently, I have uploaded two completely built bootloaders. You can find the links on the wiki page http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/CreativeZENXFi2Port. Follow the "Windows with prebuilt" section. Remember that you need to install the bootloader only once and then you need to install Rockbox by copying it to a micro-sd card, see "Daily builds" in the wiki page.

[cela]

Just got a Creative X-fi 2 Dap.

Code on the back is DVP-FL015 , which seems to contradict the information on the Wiki as it's got 8GB on board memory plus a microSd slot..

Tried both the nand and sd bootloader version but unable to get the updater to recognize them, it just shows version 1_23_01 to be updated, the firmwares are in the same folder as the updater.

Do I have an incompatible hardware revision? Is there another way to get the bootloader on there?

Got it sorted now, sorry, the downloaded version was named firmware-sd.sb I just needed to rename it  to firmware_sd.sb.

[pamaury]

Hi all,
Several people have reported that the Creative updater doesn't work when the device is in recovery mode. This is indeed embarassing so I have written some instruction on the http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/CreativeZENXFi2Port wiki page on how to do this by hand. This is a bit tricky, because there is no Linux-only version currently and the Windows way need to download a tool from Freescale. This should improve in the future when Rockox Utility knows how to deal with the ZEN X-Fi2 but currently there is no simple way.

[Nohajc]

I'm running rockbox on DVP-FL0012 model using 32 GB kingston class 10 card and the problem is it freezes very often.
Usually, when I start playback it works for several seconds and then it stops leaving the player completely unresponsive. At this point I have to reset it. It happens almost everytime I try to play any music.

Any ideas what could be causing this?