Rockbox via HaRET (Log)

[BenBrown]

I've begun working toward booting Rockbox on Windows mobile/WinCE devices with HaRET.  I'm just using this post to document the process, especially if anyone else has a device and wants to follow along/help out.  Rather than a RaaA via SDL built with mingw32ce, this approach explores a native port of Rockbox, attempting to boot it with HaRET. (Handheld Reverse Engineering Tool)

HaRET was used back in the day to RE the Axim and was expanded to other handheld targets eventually.
http://xdandroid.com/wiki/HaRET
http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/HaRET

Building the Mingw32ce Toolchain for HaRET
HaRET must be built with mingw32ce so it can run under the win32ce environment, which requires libmpfr-dev and libgmp-dev among other packages. Newer texinfo fails to build the docs and the sources of CeGCC haven't been officially touched since 2010.  So I took the liberty of cloning the latest available revision to github and adding fixes.  You can build the toolchain with...

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cd /tmp
git clone https://github.com/foolsh/CeGCC.git
cd CeGCC
mkdir build
cd build
sudo ../scripts/build-mingw32ce.sh --prefix=/usr/local

The docs build with a whole bucket load of warnings, but the binaries install to /usr/local/mingw32ce with links to /usr/local/bin/arm-mingw32ce-*, just like rockboxdev.sh's toolchains.

Building HaRET
HaRET hasn't been touched since 2011, and failed to build with a few errors at first.  The changes I made fixed the paths to the toolchain and a linker script.  I'm not sure it works yet, I'm still digging up chargers and targets from my storage boxes to test it on.
You build HaRET with...

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cd ~/work #Change to your working directory
git clone https://github.com/foolsh/haret.git
cd haret
make

The executable is in haret/out/

At this point (IF) HaRET runs correctly we'll pick a target to start porting Rockbox to.

TBC

[Strife89]

I have an iPAQ hx4700 and a Treo 700?? that I'll gladly test with. I'll set up to compile HaRET on my machine sometime soon (sorry, I know that's uselessly vague, but I am certainly interested in this).

[BenBrown]

\o

HaRet has it's own command set to poke around at the memory available on the device http://cs.ozerki.net/zap/pub/axim-x5/haret.html

Getting a TCP/IP  connection setup when the device is running windows will allow that connection to remain open up until the memory is wiped, the kernel is loaded and execution is passed to it.

I misplaced my com/usb cable _some where_ since my move to this apartment but I do recall it being here.... some where.  You can even talk to HaRet over wifi, if you're lucky enough to own a device with wifi.  But most I've seen only support WEP.

If your device has ever had linux ported to it, try to dig up the .config for your kernel.  It will have all the memory address ranges and what not you'll need to port rockbox.

Ninja Edit: I have a hx4700 to, its a solid little device, I'll dig that up instead of my dell axim x50