Cowon S9

[apoelstra]

As near as I can tell there a port for the S9 has not been started yet.

The basics:
Processor: TCC7901 (tcctool works)
RAM: Hynix HY5S7B2ALF 512Mb
Flash: K9HCG08U1M 8Gb
Power: PCF-50633
Codec: WM8750L
Bluetooth: CSR-41814

To brick/unbrick it use tcctool. Setting the SDCFG to 0xa1102800 and flashing the Cowon firmware let me get the player back but I made some mistakes calcuating it so I'm not super confident in it.

Edit:
I have setup a wiki page:
http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/CowonS9Info

[apoelstra]

I have successfully compiled a S9 bootloader and can program the S9 with tcctool. Right now I simply have a copy of the D2 firmware with SD support disabled. I am using the arm-eabi toolchain.

Using mktccboot to create a "dual-boot", I find that the S9 is completely dead - it will not show up in lsusb and doesn't read the lock status correctly to boot into the manufacturer firmware.

Writing the bootloader directly to the S9 with tcctool is interesting: it locks up my USB driver, so that if the player is plugged in, lsusb (and usbmon, and usbdev, and ...) will simply hang until I unplug the player.

There is a thread on iaudiophile about this (I am posting as joeyg). It looks like nobody else has gotten this far - others have bricked players that they cannot get back. If you have any information about bricking and unbricking S9's, please let me know.

Thanks
Andrew

[raoof]

hi
I know this topic is 3 years old  but I really like to install linux on cowon s9 and wanted to know if you could help me
there are somethings that I don't understand completely

1. where does firmware written to ? does s9 has a internal flash memory apart from 16 GB flash memory ?
2.how reset button work ? where the backup firmware stored ?
3.what is the size of internal flash memory ? if there is one .
4.can u-boot bootloader install instead of firmware and then boot linux from 16GB flash ?

thanks

[saratoga]

I don't even think its possible to read/write the internal storage without first reverse engineering the flash translation layer, so I don't think the answer to those questions matters too much.  If you want to port something to that player, get ttctool, which lets you load binaries into RAM.  Since you probably can't use storage, you'll have to make do with just that. 

[raoof]

thanks for reply

"get ttctool, which lets you load binaries into RAM"
does tcctools write to RAM ? I thought it somehow load firmware to internal/external flash.

according to this page [http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/CowonS9Info]
I can program s9 with the help of tcctool and scramble utility

my question is could I load linux image or some bootloader ( u-boot for example ) to s9 without breaking it ? I'm afraid it might break

[saratoga]

Well seeing as you can't use the devices storage, pretty much anything you screw up would be undone by rebooting.

I think worrying about a u-boot is a little premature though when you have no way to use the screen, buttons, USB, or storage.