Creative Zen Vision:M

[mitch04]

hey i emailed Creative about this, and all the guy would say was that he'd "hand over the request to the firmware team. so if someone from rockbox could email them they said they will release you codes

[Bagder]

if someone from rockbox could email them they said they will release you codes

I seriously doubt that is what they said, or at least that they truly meant it.

Then, since Rockbox is not a formal company nor group, there is no strict membership nor any strict organization so everyone involved who consider themselves a follower and believer can consider themselves "from Rockbox".

So go ahead and mail them I say.

[Hoffmann]

I'd like to participate as well.
Is there a Wiki with information about everything that allready happend (project status), a mailinglist, an irc-channel? Any kind of collected infos or ways of communication?

Hope we will Rock it!

[AlexP]

Is there a Wiki with information about everything that allready happend (project status)

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/NonArchos#Zen_Vision_M

Seems to be it for now

a mailinglist

http://www.rockbox.org/mail/

an irc-channel?

http://www.rockbox.org/irc/

Hope we will Rock it!

Good luck

[saratoga]

I'd like to participate as well.
Is there a Wiki with information about everything that allready happend (project status), a mailinglist, an irc-channel? Any kind of collected infos or ways of communication?

Hope we will Rock it!

There are rockbox mailing lists and an IRC channel you're welcome to use.  All the info about the Vision:M specifically is in this thread.  There is some info on the CPU here:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/TexasInstrumentsTMS320

Establishing a Wiki page would be a good idea so that you have some central place to put information.  I believe you can get write access to the Wiki by asking on the IRC channel.  And of course, this is always good to read before you do anything:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/NewPort

[jhulst]

I am working on getting the stuff together.  The biggest thing right now is the scans of the inside of the player.  If I try to take apart my player, I think it's going to break and right now I can't afford to get a new one or donate that much money to a project.  I asked for write access in the IRC Channel but so far have had no luck with any replies.  As soon as I get the access, I will make the initial port page.

jwh

[toxi]

Hi guys,
I'm very interested in this rock box port for the zvm.
Are you guys still needing a zvm as a test machine?
If so I have 1 thats in pieces at the moment.
I think I had some dust or something in the buttons as they were not working right, so I took it apart, but kinda screwed up the electronic ribbon for the screen.
The buttons appear to be working fine now but the screen doesn't work.
I'm planning on buying a new one pretty soon but this old one will proberbly just sit there.
I'm thinking this might help the project roll forward.
What do you guys think?
I currently live in Ludington, Michigan, USA and the only thing I would ask for in return is a reimbursement for postage.

[toxi]

I had better mention its the Creative Vision: M 30 gig model and everything appears to work......just a dead screen.

[jhulst]

That would be great.  I live near Grand Rapids so shipping wouldn't be too bad at all.  Would anyone else rather take it apart and scan it?

jwh

[toffe]

Hi,

I don't have a zen , but perhaps I can help you.
I work on the gigabeat F and S.
what I did was to take off the components of the board to trace all the signals.
I am going to buy a special tools to take off the component like cpu or memeory from the board.
If somebody has a broken zen , mother board not working, I can do the job to take off all the main components so
you can trace the signals on the board .

Just let me know

[Hoffmann]

As written before, there already have been some scans, if someone really wants to mess around with the hardware stuff, thats fine, but we don't need sending around an zvm just for scanning purposes.

If someone has a new status (what is with the ppl that tryed to understand the firmwareupdate?), please tell me, I will update the wiki-page.
If someone wants to participate, I'm also collecting the contact-data

Please take a look at the wiki-page

03/01/07 8:00PM EST = 2.03.2007 2:00 (AM) CET (sorry, we know, it's late)
(corrected transcription)

[jhulst]

We will be having an informal meeting in the the IRC Channel irc.freenode.net #rockbox at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on 3/1/07. Anybody even remotely interested in the project is encouraged to be there. We will be working on getting a plan together to go forward and see what we are working with.

jwh

[saratoga]

The archopen people are hosting the data sheet for the tms320dsc24:

http://www.archopen.org/tiki-list_file_gallery.php?galleryId=3

Here is the TI docs for the DSP core itself:
http://focus.ti.com/lit/ug/spru131g/spru131g.pdf

Since it looks like the device can boot even if you screw up the hard disk, the next step is to figure out how to run stuff on the device.  Based on the comments above, it seems like the firmware is unencrypted, and protected only by a simple checksum.  If someone figured out how the checksum worked, we could run whatever we liked on the device.  Cracking the checksum will probably involve figuring out where it's computed, and stealing their algorithm.  

[nickqueen]

Keep in mind I'm by no means a programmer, but I do wish to help if I can. I went on a scavenger hunt looking for any info i thought might be useful. I'll list it below:

Programming Spansion S29GL032M-TA-R2 by a ChipProg+ device programmer
http://www.chipprog.com/spansion/s29gl032m-ta-r2_3tsop.shtml

29GL032M - 256,128,64,32,Megabit 3.0 Volt-only Page Mode Flash Memory featuring 0.23 ¥ìm MirrorBit Process Technology - SPANSION Datasheet
http://www.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/pdf/164984/SPANSION/S29GL032M.html

Philips ISP1583 Datasheet
http://www.chipcatalog.com/Philips/ISP1583.htm

Finally, this is the most I could find on Infineon datasheets
http://www.datasheetcatalog.com/infineon/1/

Are we sure about that model number?

Hope this helps!

Nick

[AlexP]

03/01/07 8:00PM EST = 1.04.2007 2:00 (AM) MEZ (sorry, we know, it's late)

Sorry, I'm a little confused about your date.  I assume by 1.04.2007 you actually mean 02.03.2007, i.e. 2nd March given 03/01/07 is in US speak 1st March?  [off topic] I swear I'll never understand why the USA does month/day/year rather then either day/month/year or year/month/day, both of which are so much more logical  [/off topic]

Back on topic, just a point about the 2am CET (I think MEZ is the German abbreviation for Central European Time), but most of the core devs are in Europe, so if you wanted their input to your ideas, you may want to consider moving your gathering earlier to a time when they are likely to not be in bed.