porting RockBox to a Mp3/MP4 player with Manufacturer's cooperation

[portable]

Oh, by the way, the OS for this player is run directly from ROM (I think), definitely not from HDD like Ipod. Hence, it can basically "run" without the HDD.

Does it make it easier or harder to port Rockbox over?? If Rockbox only install on HDD, then nothing can go wrong with the player regardless what you do I guess. Since a simple format/re-partition will get rid of Rockbox. 

[Mascot]

that player looks pretty nice i wouldnt mind a 120gb player if rockbox was ported to it it would definetly look in to buying one.
i am interested though as how it would be used as rockbox is open source and free and for a company to make money off the code thats been writen by all the developes for free over the years is not very fair.

[portable]

that player looks pretty nice i wouldnt mind a 120gb player if rockbox was ported to it it would definetly look in to buying one.
i am interested though as how it would be used as rockbox is open source and free and for a company to make money off the code thats been writen by all the developes for free over the years is not very fair.

I would say that the company won't really earn money by "selling" rockbox, it is more like the company sell the hardware which is certified to use RockBox (depending how the porting turns out, maybe rockbox will be an optional feature rather than the default OS). Probably similar to Sun Microsystem offer their software as open source but sell their hardware to run the software to earn money.

Basically in terms of HDD capacity, it is dependent on the HDD manufacturer. The player itself is capable of taking any PATA HDD. However, the current player is limited to maximum of 3 FAT32 partition. And FAT32 had is limited to 32GB per partition. Hence, the usable space directly accessible by this player won't go higher than 100GB. However, other partitions, such as NTFS can be accessible on the computer as removable mass storage device, and can be used to store any files you like.

By the way, 2.5" HDD up to 200GB had been announced but the max in the market right now is only 120GB.... ...

[Bagder]

The 32GB limit is most likely just a firmware limit that Rockbox won't suffer from. FAT doesn't have such a limit and nor does ATA. It would surprise me if the actual limit (if there is any) is below 128GB in the same style the Archos has it - which is due to the ATA-USB bridge chip.

And there already are 160GB 2.5" disks available.

[portable]

The 32GB limit is most likely just a firmware limit that Rockbox won't suffer from. FAT doesn't have such a limit and nor does ATA. It would surprise me if the actual limit (if there is any) is below 128GB in the same style the Archos has it - which is due to the ATA-USB bridge chip.

And there already are 160GB 2.5" disks available.

Well, the 32GB limit is in reality Windows's inability to format FAT32 for anything >32GB. If you find a utility to format >32GB, then it won't be a problem. However, I have not found any open source or free utility to do this yet.....any pointers would be apprecipated..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAT32
This article indicates that FAT32 can in theory support up to 8 Terabyte partition.

As to 160GB HDD, as far as I know, it had not arrived in NZ yet....Maybe available in other countries which I am not aware of.

[Llorean]

Well, there's Swissknife which is free as in beer, I believe.

And if I recall the DOS format utility didn't have the restriction the windows one has, oddly enough. I could be wrong on that one though.

[portable]

Oh, a search online and I found a utility to format FAT32 partition >32GB

Here it is if anyone wants it.
http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/fat32format.htm

Good, now I can format the drive as one partition....

And I have tested the partition on the player and the player can access it, cool.

[markun]

If the HDD is connected to the Telechips SoC and not to a USB-ATA bridge, we would need to add a USB stack to rockbox, right?

[Bagder]

Ah, that's indeed a good little remark.

But it seems the Telechip 72x only supports USB 1.1 while these players boast USB2.0, which would indicate either a factual error somewhere or that there's another chip involved.

Edit: the brief info page on 72x actually lists "IDE Interface for HDD or USB 2.0 device (specially for CY7C68001)" which kind of sounds like some kind of bridge function.

[saratoga]

i am interested though as how it would be used as rockbox is open source and free and for a company to make money off the code thats been writen by all the developes for free over the years is not very fair.

Companies make money off of Linux.  Some make a lot of money off it, and very few people would argue this is a bad thing, so long as they're obeying the GPL.  The idea of an open source project is to share code, and to make sure code is available to people for free.  The GPL ensures this (well provided you follow it).

If people still want to pay for a product that is under the GPL, then its their choice.  IMO having companies start using Rockbox would be amazing.  It would save developers the time of reverse engineering firmware and drivers and let them work on more interesting things.  Plus users wouldn't have to buy outdate players just to have a stable Rockbox build available. 

[portable]

(I posted this this morning, but it disappeared....Strange..need to post again..)

Admin note: no it was moved to a separate thread. Do not post everything imaginable in the same thread.

[portable]

Update: Manufacturer interest confirmed. Waiting for manufacturer to supply more details. (eg source code, etc)

[Bagder]

Yay!

[bK_Coder]

That sounds pretty amazing, and it is certainly good news for all of us rockbox'ers. The more companies start using this firmware -> the more publicity -> the more developers -> the better firmware. And maybe other companies will follow...

If this thing succeeds, and my H120 gets stolen or destroyed, I will undoubtly buy one of these MP3 players (2.5"-disc - awesome)...

[that_asian_guy]

just wondering, will the devs get money for each player sold with rockbox? If so, they could do a lot more with money to spend on this project, such, and rockbox could be ported and optimized much faster on all of our targets.