Will my shitty player ever be able to use Rockbox?

[frenchconnection]

Hello All

For my first post i would like to thank you all, for delivering an open source jukebox firmware to the world.

To be honest with you I was wondering if by chance Rockbox was developping a firmware for all or just developping for the few main players?


I have received as a gift from my bank one of those shitty player from China. The strange things is I do not want to throw it away because it works and i do not see the point of buying a new player as i said it works   ...
Radio...
Voice recorder
4Gb
8hrs will playing

Of course it's not the best player ever and i will understand that you do not want to support all the crap but if rockbox could support those players i think it will increase the number of users and reduce junk in the bins...


So my question is. Are you looking for a way to create a universal firmware like coreboot is doing for the bios or just improving some firmware that we ve paid quite a lots of money which were half finished?

Sorry for being quite controversial, but i am really looking forward to use Rockbox, shame that i will have to wait until my player breaks  :'( to buy a player which is supported by rocbox.

Thanks for all your hardwork

Frenchconnection

[AlexP]

Rockbox is a complete replacement firmware, it doesn't "improve" any other firmware as that suggests that we modify them.  We don't, Rockbox is written from scratch and is quite distinct.  Of course we think it is a big improvement!

Ports to new players are not done by a Rockbox team, they are done by interested owners.  Existing developers will of course help where they can.  Have a look at www.rockbox.org/wiki/NewPort.

[torne]

If it's a generic cheap Chinese-made MP3 player the odds are it's based on a very simple microcontroller and a DSP chip, because most of them are. We can't run on these platforms; almost the entirety of Rockbox would have to be rewritten (and we would not be able to include nearly as many features) - they are far, far less powerful than the players we do support.

As for your question it's neither; Rockbox is not really a universal firmware, only the actual music-playing part is somewhat universal. The underlying kernel/drivers/etc, the "OS" part of Rockbox, is anything but universal and large parts must be written new for each CPU type, and smaller parts modified/extended for each MP3 player's different hardware. As AlexP says, though, we are also not an "improved" version of the original firmware. Rockbox is comparable to Linux in this regard: some parts of the system are the same for everything, other parts must be completely unique for different hardware, but all of it is our own code.

[frenchconnection]

So is there two parts for the rockbox devlopment ?

_one for the player (universal)

_one for the firmwares. (one team on specific player)

I was hoping  (Sorry for my ignorance on IT) that with the growth of coreboot/flashboot you might use it to create like a generic rockbox which might/should work on multiple platforms. And with help of users testing different hardware (without dismantling there players) could report bugs like no sound or no screen but with the  help of some log file you might be able to detect it. Or am i totally out ?? 

I thought hardware maker did not reinvent the wheel for each new players so they might be all similar

[saratoga]

So is there two parts for the rockbox devlopment ?

_one for the player (universal)

_one for the firmwares. (one team on specific player)

More or less.

I was hoping  (Sorry for my ignorance on IT) that with the growth of coreboot/flashboot you might use it to create like a generic rockbox which might/should work on multiple platforms. And with help of users testing different hardware (without dismantling there players) could report bugs like no sound or no screen but with the  help of some log file you might be able to detect it. Or am i totally out ?? 

I thought hardware maker did not reinvent the wheel for each new players so they might be all similar

It works like every other computer system out there.  Each CPU can only run code complied for it, and each hardware device needs a driver before an OS can talk to it.  For instance, you can't take a driver for you GPU and use it for Network card.  Same idea here.

[torne]

I was hoping  (Sorry for my ignorance on IT) that with the growth of coreboot/flashboot you might use it to create like a generic rockbox which might/should work on multiple platforms

coreboot only works on a couple dozen PC motherboard chipsets, and has only just started to work on PowerPC systems. It is no more generic than Rockbox is (in fact, less so; we support more architectures).

I thought hardware maker did not reinvent the wheel for each new players so they might be all similar

Actually, we already support four entirely different types of CPU architecture, and numerous different models of each architecture, and numerous System-on-Chips for each architecture, and quite a few different DACs and USB chips and storage devices and so on, *just* to support the players we run on now. They most certainly *do* reinvent stuff all the time; successive models from the same manufacturer are *often* similar, but even the iPods (not even counting the Touch) cover three or four different kinds of processor...

[frenchconnection]

Will it be possible to use coreboot when it will be more usable and supporting more hardwares ? or its something totally different

[saratoga]

Will it be possible to use coreboot when it will be more usable and supporting more hardwares ? or its something totally different

I get the impression that you skipped this link before:

 www.rockbox.org/wiki/NewPort

Stop what you're doing and read it now or I'm locking this thread.  Note the steps involved and how they really have nothing at all to do with what coreboot does.  We don't need a BIOS replacement.  We don't use a BIOS. 

If you take the time to read through that you'll note that the goal is to develop drivers for the disk, DAC, buttons, display and other hardware.  Having something like coreboot (which is none of those things) doesn't make a huge difference because it does none of those things.

If you want to have a generic rockbox build what you'll need is either:

1)  All hardware platforms except one to stop existing and furthermore, all devices using that platform to be exactly identical.  Basically only one MP3 player being made.
2)  All hardware platform manufacturers to port rockbox to their devices and then merge the code into rockbox SVN so that we have drivers for all possible hardware.

Technically #2 isn't quite what you want since you'd still have to recompile, but its close enough I think.