Surfans F20 w/ v2.7 firmware: Clarification on state of support?

[Abscissa]

On this page: https://www.rockbox.org/wiki/AIGOErosQK
It says "newer Surfans F20 units which ship with firmware 2.7 appear to have audio hardware changes, and line out functionality does not work in Rockbox yet on these specific units."

So obviously, if I get that version of the device, I can't expect the line-out to work right now, but I'm unclear on one detail:

In comparison to the other AIGO EROS Q/K devices: Is that statement saying that there are ALSO OTHER things besides the line-out that aren't working yet? Or is it just simply saying that line-out not working IS the one and only limitation currently caused by these audio hardware changes?

[dconrad]

Sorry, that definitely could be clearer. My understanding is that yes, the line out functionality is the only thing on the 2.7 firmware units that doesn't work.

(from this thread)

[Abscissa]

Thanks!

[Abscissa]

A follow-up question (apologies, I'm not sure if maybe this one should go in "New Ports", "Starting Development" or "General" instead...)

Regarding the line-out issue, the page I mentioned above says "This may just need changes to the GPIO pins, but the changes are unknown until someone investigates it." I'm wondering if anyone could tell me a little bit more about what may be involved in this (I mean like, is this just a matter of someone just doing basic legwork of guessing some pin numbers and blindly trying them, or something more involved?). Or point me to the relevant source file(s)? It's been awhile, but I DO have background in low-level C development, although I'm currently unfamiliar with rockbox's codebase - I have used rockbox before though, on a Gigabeat F.

I just wanted to gauge whether this is something I might be able to help with if I do get a Surfans F20 (I'm currently deciding between that and the HiFi Walker H2. Leaning more towards the F20 because, from the pictures, it looks like the shell and buttons might be a somewhat higher quality, plus I really don't need the line-out anyway. If I happened to have it I'd probably use it, may as well, but I'm not an audiophile: I have zero objection to just connecting a headphone port to my car's aux-in and fiddling with the device's volume level to not be too terribly high or low for the car's stereo, just like I'm accustomed to doing anyway.)

[dconrad]

No worries, I'm glad someone is interested in this issue! It's certainly possible to get this working, it's just that it's a bit of a mystery at the moment.

The hosted and native ports handle the line-out a little differently in the code, since the hosted port has the linux layer it calls to do hardware changes. For the hosted port, I guess we just need someone to patch the 2.7 firmware to boot rockbox (and cross our fingers that all the interface stuff hasn't changed!).

For the native port, we would need to figure out what the audio circuit changes are and implement them. Depends on whether you feel up to a challenge - the fix should (hopefully) be straightforward once we know what the hardware changes are. The difficult part is finding out what has changed.

At a high level, it seems to look like this, at least on the Hifiwalker/2.5 F20:

Code: [Select]

/* Audio path appears to be:
 * DAC --> HP Amp --> Stereo Switch --> HP OUT
 *     \--> LO OUT
 *
 * The real purpose of the Stereo Switch is not clear.
 * It appears to switch sources between the HP amp and something,
 * likely something unimplemented. */(from  rockbox/firmware/target/mips/ingenic_x1000/erosqnative/audiohw-erosqnative.c in the source)

Also relevant would be  rockbox/firmware/target/mips/ingenic_x1000/erosqnative/gpio-target.h, which defines all the GPIO pins;
 rockbox/firmware/drivers/audio/eros_qn_codec.c has audiohw_set_volume(), which does some muting of the headphone amp. Might be relevant?

My gut says that maybe they switched around the Stereo Switch and HP Amp, and the LO Out comes out of the Stereo Switch as well now? I have nothing to base that on, though. My hope would be that they left all the GPIO connections the same, and we just need to unmute something.

Originally I found the GPIO pins by disassembling the original firmware as documented in this thread: here. That was quite a task!

[Abscissa]

Thanks for the pointers! (sry, no pun intended, although I'd be willing to pretend otherwise...)

Sounds interesting. Obviously I can't promise anything, whether it be results, having the time to even dig into this at all, or just receiving a v2.7 unit in the first place (although it seems unlikely I wouldn't get one, I would think.) But I'd like to try my hand at it if I can get the chance... (Been awhile since the last time anything technical happened to intrigue me.) As this discussion seems to be taking a technical lean, I'll be sure to direct any further follow-up to the "Starting Development" section of the forum (unless otherwise directed).

[speachy]

A couple of months ago I occidentally blew away my "rockbox stash" which included my collection of hiby-based firmware files and the scripts I used to patch everything in one go.

I'm not sure if this will successfully update or not, but give it a go and let me know what happens:

   https://www.shaftnet.org/~pizza/rb-F20-v27.upt

[Abscissa]

A couple of months ago I occidentally blew away my "rockbox stash" which included my collection of hiby-based firmware files and the scripts I used to patch everything in one go.

I'm not sure if this will successfully update or not, but give it a go and let me know what happens:

   https://www.shaftnet.org/~pizza/rb-F20-v27.upt

Works for me!!

Just tried it. Flashing it seemed to work fine. The OEM "Hiby" (non-rockbox) player reports v2.7. I can successfully boot into either that, or rockbox, or the "tools". And both the headphone AND line-out jacks work and output music in both hiby and rockbox! Whoohoo!

[therealrtz]

Sorry to flog a dead horse, but is it possible to send a new link for
 
https://www.shaftnet.org/~pizza/rb-F20-v27.upt

I'm just getting around to flashing my F20 and that link is dead. I tried flashing with

https://download.rockbox.org/bootloader/surfans/F20-v27-patched.upt

but I must be doing something wrong as RockBox doesn't load. I also tried searching for the original firmware for the F20 but am not having any luck there as well. I'm leaning more to
me doing something wrong....

Thanks!!

[dconrad]

Sorry to flog a dead horse, but is it possible to send a new link for
 
https://www.shaftnet.org/~pizza/rb-F20-v27.upt

I'm just getting around to flashing my F20 and that link is dead. I tried flashing with

https://download.rockbox.org/bootloader/surfans/F20-v27-patched.upt

but I must be doing something wrong as RockBox doesn't load. I also tried searching for the original firmware for the F20 but am not having any luck there as well. I'm leaning more to
me doing something wrong....

Thanks!!

Just a wild guess, when you start up the player, do you get a selection screen asking if you want to boot Rockbox? If so, you did everything correctly so far but it's not finding the .rockbox folder on your SD card to load from - Grab it from here https://download.rockbox.org/daily/aigoerosq/rockbox-aigoerosq-20230124.zip and extract the zip file to the root of your SD card. (You might need to enable "Show Hidden Files" in order to see it.)

[therealrtz]

Wow, thanks for the quick response!
When I boot the F20 (firmware 2.7) I do NOT get the screen giving me a choice to load RockBox. I'm pretty sure it hasn't successfully loaded the boot-loader, my reasoning
is when I load the .upt file using the RockBox utility it closes the program after I select the file to load after prompting for original firmware. I am attempting to use the
F20-v27-patched.upt file from the download page. I do not have the original firmware file and can't seem to find a link for it anywhere including the Surfans site/google drive.
Perhaps my "google fu" has grown weak? I'm guessing it can be loaded as I've seen posts saying people have successfully loaded it. I'm thinking about trying to use jztool
to flash the boot-loader, worried about bricking my device And not having the original firmware on hand is very troubling as well. Any suggestions?

Thanks again for the response!!!

[amachronic]

Have you tried manually installing the .upt file? These are the relevant instructions from the wiki:

• Rename the patched firmware file to update.upt and place it into the root directory of the SD card.
• Grab the latest daily build for the player and unzip it into the root directory of the SD card.
• Go into the settings menu and select firmware update.
• Upon reboot, select rockbox from the initial menu.

[therealrtz]

Argh!!! Just what I needed!! Forgot to rename file to update.upt. I feel soooo stoopid  Now I just need to figure out how to change the font so I don't need a magnifier to read, lol!!!

Thank you so very much!!!

[dconrad]

Glad you got it sorted out! In case you haven't found it already, the font size can be changed by going to Settings --> Theme --> Font.

[therealrtz]

For some reason I couldn't install the fonts through RockBox utility (error about not enough space) so I downloaded and extracted to my computer and transferred to F20.
All good now!!! Thanks again dconrad and amachronic!!