Creative Zen Vision:M

[bgdwie]

say... technically, couldn't you make it so the rockbox software is stored in the flash, as well as the creative format partition as a hard copy (safetys sake) and end that partition,  then format the remainder of the drive as fat 32 for storing your music and data and other related files? this would allow a lot more user accessable space on the drive and amore user friendly method of putting songs on the player?

as for which core does what, yes, the dps does control the dac from what i remember, so to get sound we would need to use it anyway, and since it has better floating point power (i can't rememeber, this is going back through old memories) it would be wise to run codecs from their in the first place as in the longrun it would require less effort then going back and changing it all.

[Falafel]

Yeah, I didn't take the drive out, I'm trying to be more careful with my player. Seeing as how I've already lost a bunch of screws and the audio jack seems to have loosened a bit..

But what do you mean with the raw partition? Even if the ZV encapsulated the entire removable-part (At least this is the only thing I can imagine it would be able to do?) then, it would still be readily available to a OS-level driver..

[bgdwie]

But what do you mean with the raw partition? Even if the ZV encapsulated the entire removable-part (At least this is the only thing I can imagine it would be able to do?) then, it would still be readily available to a OS-level driver..

yeah, i see where your comming from, the partition would still be written like any other and be formatted as you specified so why would it matter?

edit: although, would the device also emulate a partition table for it, or does it already have one that is readable?

[mcuelenaere]

say... technically, couldn't you make it so the rockbox software is stored in the flash, as well as the creative format partition as a hard copy (safetys sake) and end that partition,  then format the remainder of the drive as fat 32 for storing your music and data and other related files? this would allow a lot more user accessable space on the drive and amore user friendly method of putting songs on the player?

Yes, that's what I'm trying to accomplish on a long-term base. But since now Rockbox heavily relies on the current flash bootloader, I wouldn't consider it wise to replace that one with a Rockbox-custom one; so for now I would store the Rockbox bootloader as jukebox2.jrm in the minifs partition (and perhaps the OF as some other file) and access all other needed Rockbox files through the removable partition part.

as for which core does what, yes, the dps does control the dac from what i remember, so to get sound we would need to use it anyway, and since it has better floating point power (i can't rememeber, this is going back through old memories) it would be wise to run codecs from their in the first place as in the longrun it would require less effort then going back and changing it all.

Indeed.

Yeah, I didn't take the drive out, I'm trying to be more careful with my player. Seeing as how I've already lost a bunch of screws and the audio jack seems to have loosened a bit..

But what do you mean with the raw partition? Even if the ZV encapsulated the entire removable-part (At least this is the only thing I can imagine it would be able to do?) then, it would still be readily available to a OS-level driver..

Indeed, they will have encapsulated it in their custom file system stuff, but it could be that they obscured it some way; since they didn't make it very easy to view the firmware (encryption etc.); but I suppose this won't apply to the removable partition part

But what do you mean with the raw partition? Even if the ZV encapsulated the entire removable-part (At least this is the only thing I can imagine it would be able to do?) then, it would still be readily available to a OS-level driver..

yeah, i see where your comming from, the partition would still be written like any other and be formatted as you specified so why would it matter?

edit: although, would the device also emulate a partition table for it, or does it already have one that is readable?

I believe so, as Falafel said he could repartition it to FAT and Linux partitions.

[Falafel]

But what do you mean with the raw partition? Even if the ZV encapsulated the entire removable-part (At least this is the only thing I can imagine it would be able to do?) then, it would still be readily available to a OS-level driver..

yeah, i see where your comming from, the partition would still be written like any other and be formatted as you specified so why would it matter?

edit: although, would the device also emulate a partition table for it, or does it already have one that is readable?

I believe so, as Falafel said he could repartition it to FAT and Linux partitions.

Yeah, but on the other hand, it could be a strange partition table in which there is space only for 1 partition? because I wasn't able to mount or format the second partition.. I think I'm going to try this again, but then with 2 FAT partitions. I'll report back later

Edit:
Okay it is possible to change the partition into 2 FAT ones. I now have a FAT16 and a W95 style FAT32  partition, which are both read/writeable.

[bgdwie]

can you (after formatting and partitioning the disks as a removable drive and makign them 2 fat partitions) can you take the hdd out and plug it in via zif-> ide and do they work on the pc?

edit: adding more info in devices hardware to the wiki, some things are weird, eg both models support fm radio (well, have the hardware for it)

edit2: added a scan of my 60gb one and labled the components on it, might be handly because of labled components

[mcuelenaere]

@bgdwie: Thanks for the information, I edited some as almost all components are the same as the 30GB.

@all:
This is my current state of port, DSP is working but as said before there hasn't been anything implemented for it. My intention is to port the Neuros' arm-dsp bridge to Rockbox, so a more convenient way of compiling will be embedded.

[notice]
As I'm leaving for vacation, I'm not going to be around the following week.
[/notice]

[Falafel]

Hmm, I was just planning on opening up my ZV to scan/photograph the internals and to hook up the disc to my computer when I found out a tiny problem.. I have misplaced my tiny screwdriver and now I can't open it up.. So that's not going to work, I'll see if I can buy one somewhere this week, but for now it's gonna have to wait.

@mcuelenaere: have a nice vacation!

[bgdwie]

Yeah, there was a few components i found on mine but couldn't identify on the 30gb, i was unsure so i said that i had only found them on the 60gb, but i thank you for changing the chip that i said was lucient tech lol, my bad, also, i noticed that they are pretty much the same, accept for the usb controller and the power regulation ect around the dock, thats probably for powering usb devices. not a bad idea about porting the one from neuros, i'd say it would be some near perfect code there lol. have fun on your vacation, oh, and it looks like you found yourself a zen vision m 60gb mainboard to play with, was way too expensive to fix.

falafel, what kinda ZV do you have? because it may be unessecary to dissassemble.

[Falafel]

I have the original Zen Vision, but I just discovered my screwdriver. And I still have to check if the partitions work on my pc, so I'll still open it up somewhere today.

[quitte]

Hi. I recently bought a Zen V (Video) and the first thing I did was open it. Unfortunately this thread is _very_ long, and the wiki isn't the newbie friendliest,either. But so far I was able to get the nk.bin from the firmware updater and successfully flashed it with sendfile from svn. Next I tried flashing a few random nk.bins but that didn't work. I hope you can help me flash something else than the creative firmware. Preferably a linux kernel, but seeing it crash after the bootloader would be a great start 
Jonas
Edit: Slowly I'm learning. in creative wizard the 3rd data block with about 1,5M is probably the actual firmware? and that has to be encrypted somehow with zen-utils?

[Falafel]

The (TL(C)) block is the actual firmware, mceulenaere has been working on figuring out what it does. but it's way too complex so he turned his attention to FRESCUE which is the rescue screen you get when you mess up your firmware. It contains the same essential functions as TL(c) but it's not quite as bloated, you should be able to find the IDA-database somewhere in the wiki or the thread.

Edited for spelling

[mcuelenaere]

I posted an update in Flyspray for the ones who are interested.
The biggest change is a (not-functional yet) USB driver.

I also got a FAT partition to mount on the device, but the problem is that it requires (currently) a 1.8" -> 3.5" adapter so you can format the HDD.

To mount the FAT partition on your pc, I recommend this way (on Linux):

Code: [Select]

--------------------------------------------------------------
losetup -o [OFFSET] /dev/loop[X1] /dev/sd[X2]
mount -t vfat [MOUNTPOINT /dev/loop[X1]
--------------------------------------------------------------
with:
[OFFSET] = the offset in bytes to your FAT partition,
for this I replaced the cfs partition (to find out where this is located you'd have to read 0x24->0x28 and multiply this number by 512 (sector size))
[X1] = a number ranging from 0 to ?, mostly this is 0 but if you already have other loop devices,
you'd better pick a higher number
[X2] = the letter assigned to the HDD
[MOUNTPOINT] = pretty obvious :)
(Of course you first need to format it. WARNING: this will erase all your current data from your Zen!)

[mcuelenaere]

So currently, I'm still stuck at the USB driver although I've put a lot of work into it..

That's why I'm requesting for help, if someone with a working development environment and a ZVM or Zen Vision(Falafel?) could test the patch and see what it results to on their devices; maybe it would give me some useful information.

The patch is available at the tracker.

[ancalag0n]

Hello,

I'm following this forum for a long time and I see that you encounter difficulties. Perhaps that I can help you to do something. I have a Zen Vision M and I use Linux (ubuntu 7.10) very regularly but I am initial in programming. Maybe I could help you to test your work or something like that (if you ensure me that the dangers to my player are tiny).

By hoping that my assistance will be useful for you.