Rockbox General > Rockbox General Discussion
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 ;D...
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 ?? ;D
I thought hardware maker did not reinvent the wheel for each new players so they might be all similar
saratoga:
--- Quote from: frenchconnection on March 09, 2010, 12:57:23 PM ---So is there two parts for the rockbox devlopment ?
_one for the player (universal)
_one for the firmwares. (one team on specific player)
--- End quote ---
More or less.
--- Quote from: frenchconnection on March 09, 2010, 12:57:23 PM ---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 ?? ;D
I thought hardware maker did not reinvent the wheel for each new players so they might be all similar
--- End quote ---
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.
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