Surfans F28

[schatteneis]

Hello, iam new here and was intreseted in learning more about the my Surfans F28, i saw the F20 getting support already so i was wondering if its possible to rockbox the F28?

[speachy]

Hello, iam new here and was intreseted in learning more about the my Surfans F28, i saw the F20 getting support already so i was wondering if its possible to rockbox the F28?

A quick look shows that this is based on the X1000E SoC and surprisingly, they provide a firmware updae for the unit.  Poking into that it appears to be built on the same HibyOS platform as their F20 player (and several others rockbox already has ports for)

It probably wouldn't take that much work to produce a hosted port to this thing -- we'd need to patch the firmware update image to enable adb, and start poking around.  Once we get some basic operational parameters (mainly screen resolution) a bootloader binary can be generated, and from there, the complete rockbox applicaiton will just require mappings for buttons and audio interaction.

[schatteneis]

Sounds good! How can I help?

[schatteneis]

there are already some things i can report, pressing power and previous track flashes the firmware update thats on the sd card, and pressing power and next track puts the device in an black screen mode, dont know for sure what thats for though

[schatteneis]

Hello, iam new here and was intreseted in learning more about the my Surfans F28, i saw the F20 getting support already so i was wondering if its possible to rockbox the F28?

A quick look shows that this is based on the X1000E SoC and surprisingly, they provide a firmware updae for the unit.  Poking into that it appears to be built on the same HibyOS platform as their F20 player (and several others rockbox already has ports for)

It probably wouldn't take that much work to produce a hosted port to this thing -- we'd need to patch the firmware update image to enable adb, and start poking around.  Once we get some basic operational parameters (mainly screen resolution) a bootloader binary can be generated, and from there, the complete rockbox applicaiton will just require mappings for buttons and audio interaction.

ok, so, the power + next track key combo is usb boot, however after getting a linux usb and installing adb and booting it with the erosq/jztool method i only got a black screen with the backlight on

[vitt13]

installing adb

What do you mean "installing adb"? It has to unpack *.upt firmware, then extract system.ubi content with ubireader_extract_files utility, then rename /etc/init.d/K90adb to S90adb and rebuild back the firmware. It looks similar to HiBy R3Pro2022 fw that I have.
The steps are similar to this https://www.head-fi.org/threads/hiby-r3-pro-portable-bluetooth-dap.916299/post-17496314

[schatteneis]

installing adb

What do you mean "installing adb"? It has to unpack *.upt firmware, then extract system.ubi content with ubireader_extract_files utility, then rename /etc/init.d/K90adb to S90adb and rebuild back the firmware. It looks similar to HiBy R3Pro2022 fw that I have.
The steps are similar to this https://www.head-fi.org/threads/hiby-r3-pro-portable-bluetooth-dap.916299/post-17496314

I had to install adb on Ubuntu for the next track + power button mode to work so I could use jztool, else it would complain about missing drivers

[schatteneis]

installing adb

What do you mean "installing adb"? It has to unpack *.upt firmware, then extract system.ubi content with ubireader_extract_files utility, then rename /etc/init.d/K90adb to S90adb and rebuild back the firmware. It looks similar to HiBy R3Pro2022 fw that I have.
The steps are similar to this https://www.head-fi.org/threads/hiby-r3-pro-portable-bluetooth-dap.916299/post-17496314

I had to install adb on Ubuntu for the next track + power button mode to work so I could use jztool, else it would complain about missing drivers

but yeah, i can confirm that this works one to one, expect that its all lowercase and there is an extra file in the upt, i have uploaded the adb enabled firmware to google drive https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1XzRtyR7ESuYpipRFmwS5KvdVJI2C4O6r?usp=sharing

[schatteneis]

Hello, iam new here and was intreseted in learning more about the my Surfans F28, i saw the F20 getting support already so i was wondering if its possible to rockbox the F28?

A quick look shows that this is based on the X1000E SoC and surprisingly, they provide a firmware updae for the unit.  Poking into that it appears to be built on the same HibyOS platform as their F20 player (and several others rockbox already has ports for)

It probably wouldn't take that much work to produce a hosted port to this thing -- we'd need to patch the firmware update image to enable adb, and start poking around.  Once we get some basic operational parameters (mainly screen resolution) a bootloader binary can be generated, and from there, the complete rockbox applicaiton will just require mappings for buttons and audio interaction.

also to get back on this, poking around a bit the screen resolution is 320x480 and can be either 50hz or 60hz

Code: [Select]

cat /sys/class/graphics/fb0/modes
U:320x480p-60
U:320x480p-50


[schatteneis]

Now, with ADB enabled ofw in hand, how can one go about with making a hosted port? Are there any resources I can follow?

[amachronic]

There are some pages that explain this on the wiki but they're quite outdated.

Some knowledge of C is good but not strictly necessary.

You need to clone the Rockbox source code, and install a MIPS hosted toolchain (just follow the rockboxdev.sh method).

PortingHowTo seems about right for actually adding a new port to the build system and getting something compile-able. Since your target is similar to the existing ErosQ hosted port you could use that as a guide. I think the F20's hosted bootloader is bootloader/rocker_linux.c, and you could probably add support for the F28 with minor tweaks.

[schatteneis]

MIPS hosted

did you mean mips-linux in rockbox.sh?

[schatteneis]

also hey, bug in the rockbox.sh. zlib 1.2.13 is no longer hosted so i switched it to 1.3

[schatteneis]

yeah, i am probably gonna need some help for this iam not very good at understanging the porting process, however i can offer hardware specs by poking around the system with adb

[speachy]

also hey, bug in the rockbox.sh. zlib 1.2.13 is no longer hosted so i switched it to 1.3

Unless zlib 1.3 is ABI-compatible with 1.2.13 (and uses the same SONAME), this will result in the toolchain creating stuff won't work properly on the actual target.