Creative ZEN Mozaic

[pamaury]

This is the development thread of the Creative ZEN Mozaic. Initial investigation suggest that it is very similarly the Creative ZEN, ZEN X-Fi /2/3 and others. It uses the well supported imx233 SoC (aka STMP3780). The firmware can be extracted from the installer using the ZEN Tools, exactly as for the X-Fi.
I have one myself and plan to do a port after or at the same time as the X-Fi port since they seem similar.

[richq]

That's great news :-) I look forward to trying it out.

[pamaury]

Hi,
I have some good news: I have a working preliminary port. It is still very early stage but all basic features work: lcd, backlight, buttons, storage. The downside is that Creative uses a proprietary file system so we have to come up with an elegant solution to this if possible.

[richq]

Nice work!

The mozaic only uses MTP, but in the original firmware there was an option to switch up to XGb to mass storage mode, which then mounts like a regular usb drive. Not all the storage can be seen like this IIRC, but the OF must be able to at least read fat? Perhaps there'd be a way to format all the storage to something non-proprietary?

[pamaury]

The fact that you can use a magic file as backend storage for MSC doesn't mean you have to read/write FAT. Up to my knowledge, the OF cannot read the files that magic file, which is good indication that it cannot read FAT.

[richq]

Oh right, it isn't a separate partition, it is a single file? That's a lot worse then. Bummer.

[pamaury]

Hi,
the port is now in beta test! You can find the instruction here: http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/CreativeZENMozaicPort. Don't forget that this is a preliminary version to it might be unstable and so on. I put a prebuilt version of the bootloader on my dropbox (see wiki link) and you can find the nightly build here: http://build.rockbox.org/data/rockbox-creativezenmozaic.zip.
A few important notes:
1) you'll have to reformat the storage to FAT thus you cannot dual-boot and you will loose all your file on the device
2) charging is not implemented, use the recovery mode to charge

[pamaury]

Hi,
just so you know, I created and committed a keymap for all the plugins. Please refer to the Creative ZEN thread for more information. For now it doesn't use any key which is specific to the Mozaic, but if someone is willing to try and propose some improvements, I'll be happy to implement them.

[RSZ]

Hi,
just so you know, I created and committed a keymap for all the plugins. Please refer to the Creative ZEN thread for more information. For now it doesn't use any key which is specific to the Mozaic, but if someone is willing to try and propose some improvements, I'll be happy to implement them.

Hi!
Unfortunately, my rockboxed Sansa Clip died  :'( so i got a second hand 4gb Zen Mozaic LX. The sound quality is really bad (compared to Sansa) and i´m not able to play my music via "folder" thus i see myself forced to play my music via "album" or "artist" and it rrreally sucks.

I found that Rockbox can be installed on Zen Mozaic but it has some issues: Battery not charging (we neet to enter in recovery mode before charging) , dual boot is not allowed, and the "battery metter" is not as good as it should.

I don´t mind if i lose the ability of viewing photos and videos, or recording sounds/voice, or even if i lose the Creative firmware (who needs it?). I only want to get a better sound quality and to have the ability of playing my music via "folder navigation".

Is a good idea to install rockbox on my Mozaic?

While i don´t care if i lose the hability of recording, viewing photos, etc... I don´t wanna risk my Zen mozaic to be forever dead, as long as it´s the only mp3 player i have. If i could pay a new Sansa Clip, i would do it! But i´m really out of budget

So, i´d like to know if it´s a good idea to TRY to install Rockbox on my Mozaic.

Sorry if bad english, i´m not a native english speaker.

Thank you very much!