Creative Zen Vision:M

[imfloflo]

I have 2 PC  ( 1 XP & 1 Vista with cygwin install) and 1 MacbookPro(dualboot vista&cygwin / Leopard) ,can i use my MBP to format my player? and to set up a Rockbox build environment just for this 3 commandes?

Code: [Select]

losetup -o 52429312 /dev/loop0 /dev/XXX
mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/loop0
mount -t vfat /dev/loop0 /mnt/XXX

[mcuelenaere]

I have 2 PC  ( 1 XP & 1 Vista with cygwin install) and 1 MacbookPro(dualboot vista&cygwin / Leopard) ,can i use my MBP to format my player? and to set up a Rockbox build environment just for this 3 commandes?

Code: [Select]

losetup -o 52429312 /dev/loop0 /dev/XXX
mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/loop0
mount -t vfat /dev/loop0 /mnt/XXX

Oops, maybe I had to specify it a bit: you'll need an 1,8"->3,5" adapter or external enclosure to connect the HDD to your macbook. Without direct access to the HDD, it won't work.

[imfloflo]

ok so i can't sync my ZVM directly by USB and format it. :s i'll wait a new method maybe with the CreativeWizard or with the modifier installer.
Too bad.Thx.

[Falafel]

Meh, I wanted to test the nice new rockbox, but it seems I have lost my zifconnector when I moved :'(..

But, How do you acces the FAT partition?
Because there is still the extra->USB disk function of the OF that we could use.. Although I can no longer check if it is accesible on a hardrive level (although I suspect it is, because I could nicely repartition and format it in linux). Could you look into that mceulenaere? (or anyone else with a zif connector?)

[mcuelenaere]

Meh, I wanted to test the nice new rockbox, but it seems I have lost my zifconnector when I moved :'(..

But, How do you acces the FAT partition?
Because there is still the extra->USB disk function of the OF that we could use.. Although I can no longer check if it is accesible on a hardrive level (although I suspect it is, because I could nicely repartition and format it in linux). Could you look into that mcuelenaere? (or anyone else with a zif connector?)

That was what I was originally going for, but as this required a good understanding of the CFS filesystem (which I don't have); I went for plan B and now I ended up at this stage

This means the second "partition" is deleted and replaced by a FAT one, which currently works although it requires either a ZIF connector or a working ISP1583 usb driver to access it..

[Falafel]

Couldn't you, to find it or something, make a file with a specific pattern in it. put it on the "removable disk"  and then search for that pattern in the connected disk with 010?

Edit:
As I'm obviously overlooking the fact that you can't find the partition when you connect it, consider that a not-so-useful-post . Unless I'm mistaken of course..

[mcuelenaere]

Couldn't you, to find it or something, make a file with a specific pattern in it. put it on the "removable disk"  and then search for that pattern in the connected disk with 010?

Edit:
As I'm obviously overlooking the fact that you can't find the partition when you connect it, consider that a not-so-useful-post . Unless I'm mistaken of course..

Even if I did, the place where the file would be stored differ a lot between all the ZVM's off all users, so this wouldn't be an ideal solution.

+ there's the fact that the file is spread across several clusters which are described in the cluster bitmap (if I understand correctly), which makes it even more harder to track down the whole file.

[mitch04]

hey mate good work mcuelenaere there no way yet to put rockbox on without takeing it apart yet? just wondering You have done a great job.

[mophead740]

just what would be required to get rb working on the zvm with a cfs partition?

coding, reformatting of the code, changing of drivers, im not sure i understand what this involves.

im sure if it was anything you could do then you would have done it, but maybe its something i can research.

btw, wen i say reformat the player i mean, plug in your player and go to the media explorer.  then select settings and information, click tools and then there is an option to format the player.

so, anyway to backend this app to format it as fat or not.

i think not because it seems to me as if the software simply sends the instruction to the player to format the drive and the player reboots and does it, in which case its not likey that the players fw would have instructions to format as fat.

but it was just an idea.

edit: would it be smart to try and run the original fw on a fat partition.

i assume it couldnt have any permanent effect (as you could simply plug in the drive and reformat it if it didnt work). What says it couldn't run fine?

[mcuelenaere]

just what would be required to get rb working on the zvm with a cfs partition?

Understanding of the CFS file system (I believe it is based on BFS; quetzalcoatl on nomadness.net found out a lot of interesting stuff and he even made a fully working read-only driver for the first (minifs) partition, but unfortunately the site is now online and most of his information on the forums is lost (except in google cache, archive.org) + there seems to be no way of contacting/finding this person

I tried contacting the website owner, but failed. I also contacted a guy who he spoke with on the forums (and who is a main developer at libnjb), but he doesn't have any contacting information.

coding, reformatting of the code, changing of drivers, im not sure i understand what this involves.

im sure if it was anything you could do then you would have done it, but maybe its something i can research.

btw, wen i say reformat the player i mean, plug in your player and go to the media explorer.  then select settings and information, click tools and then there is an option to format the player.

so, anyway to backend this app to format it as fat or not.

i think not because it seems to me as if the software simply sends the instruction to the player to format the drive and the player reboots and does it, in which case its not likey that the players fw would have instructions to format as fat.

I think you're right on this one.

but it was just an idea.

edit: would it be smart to try and run the original fw on a fat partition.

i assume it couldnt have any permanent effect (as you could simply plug in the drive and reformat it if it didnt work). What says it couldn't run fine?

I could try it, but I'm pretty certain the OF won't recognize it and will crash or something like that.

hey mate good work mcuelenaere there no way yet to put rockbox on without takeing it apart yet? just wondering You have done a great job.

I'm sorry, but no; not at the moment.
The only thing you could do is compile the bootloader and find out how the USB chip works.

[mophead740]

could someone try running the OF on a fat partition?

just if it isnt too much trouble.

if i'm not mistaken the OF is based on windows CE, which would (in its entirety) support fat. it is somewhat likely though that this component/driver was removed (along with a lot of other things) in order to make the fw smile smaller. but i think its still worth a try.

I would do it myself but I dont have a zif connector.

[JamesL]

The firmware OS is NucleasRTOS

http://www.mentor.com/products/embedded_software/nucleus_rtos/index.cfm

Apparently the source code is available but i'm guessing you'd have to go through treacle to get it

Again, I am pretty sure the firmware wouldnt work on a FAT32 partition and if it did, im sure it would have some major issues, and the whole point of keeping the original firmware is to keep its capabilities, in this case for me it would be the video codec support

[mophead740]

its still my opinion that it is worth trying this.

as i pointed out earlier it cant exactly hurt the player.

just for the sake of actually knowing for certain whether it will or will not work, i still think someone should check. as explained i would do it myself but i dont have the right adapter, etc.

[Falafel]

Hmm, I was thinking we maybe could use gnomad? it can acces the player, but I don't what more it can do.. I'll look into it, more later.

[mcuelenaere]

Hmm, I was thinking we maybe could use gnomad? it can acces the player, but I don't what more it can do.. I'll look into it, more later.

AFAIK gnomad just uses libmtp, so this won't work.

AFAIK there's no software solution for getting raw hdd access to the ZVM trough the OF.