SmartQ T5-II

[karth500]

I am new to Rockbox, and this is my first post here. So be gentle on me

I own the SmartQ T5-II, a PMP from Smart Devices in China. It's a few years old and was given to me as a gift last year. The software for it is bloated and slow, and is really annoying to use. The battery life consequently is terrible. I only get around 4 hours on a full charge doing nothing but playing music. So earlier today, I decided I would do something about this! I have played around with Rockbox in the past and thought it might be a fun project to try and port this over to the T5-II. Not too many people seem to have the device, so I might be on my own here.

What I have found in taking the part apart and doing some digging online today -

1) Processor - At the heart of the SmartQ T5-II is a Analog Devices Blackfin BF547 600 Mhz DSP. It is a pretty powerful DSP and one that I am pretty familiar with. The data sheet and the hardware reference are available online.

2) Firmware - The T5-II runs uClinux. My suspicions were aroused when I was backing up my SD card, and I found the SYSTEM folder on it with a .bin file and a number of .gpkg files. A few google searches later I confirmed that it in fact is running uClinux. I am guessing that the on board flash just contains a boot loader (probably u-boot) that loads the uClinux image from SD card after booting.

3) Firmware Upgrade - Consequently, doing a firmware "upgrade" is as simple as putting a new uClinux image in the SYSTEM folder and plugging it back into the device! I wish I had realized this before taking the thing apart, but it was helpful to look at the internals anyway.

4) Some useful links -
http://www.playsmartsg.net/blog/?p=19
http://www.playsmartsg.net/blog/?page_id=168 (seems to have had pictures of the internals at one point. Pic links are dead now)
http://www.playsmartsg.net/blog/?page_id=134

http://asia.cnet.com/product/smartq-t5-ii-43440572.htm (pictures, review and run down of features)
http://www.b4tech.com/mp4-players/smartq-t5-ii.html (detailed specs and more info)

BONUS - The BF547 has an USB OTG controller. With a changed firmware, we can add USB host capability to the device! The USB circuit might have to be messed with to ensure proper handling of the ID pin, but it should be doable.

I am still learning, and I haven't even check out the Rockbox code yet. But I wanted to start the thread in case there is any interest in trying to port this to a new platform such as the Blackfin. Also, I want to know if anyone on the board has experience putting Rockbox on uClinux.

[saratoga]

We don't currently have any blackfin devices, and given that its basically a DSP I'm not sure how suitable it would be.  Generally rockbox runs on traditional 32/64 bit processors like ARM, Coldfire, MIPS and x86.

[karth500]

I don't think porting it to the Blackfin will be a problem per se. It is a 32-bit processor, and there are C compilers for it. Is your concern performance? I see that most of the targets ported to are ARM7/9/11. The Blackfin would do about as well as the ARM 11 when it comes to control tasks, and I would guess it would be at least 50% better when it comes to DSP type tasks (decoders etc). So I don't see a problem from a performance standpoint. If you have any other concerns please let me know.

[pamaury]

I don't know much about the blackfin architecture but as long as it has good enough toolchain (and preferably the GNU one) and a flat 32-bit memory it should be doable. Of course, if you plan to port rockbox, you'll have to rewrite all the low level assembly stuff. The other "hard" part will be to optimise the codecs. Depending on the processor speed, C code might or might not be sufficient to decode mp3 but if you want to achieve a useful battery life, you'll probably have to write it in assembly (or find someone who did it for you

The good point point is that if it runs ucLinux you can probably reuse code from it.