Rockbox Development > New Ports
Rockbox Player - Project to design and build a Free/Open hardware audio player
spark:
[[V1 requirements]]
[1 or 2 outputs?]
1 stere o/p should suffice. you can anyways plug a Y splitter externally to have 2 headphones.
[wireless connectivity?]
Bluetooth is a good option. For hardware all we may need is a SPI bluettoth chip. i dunno how r we gonna implement the bluetooth software stack on the player. It will be challenging.
[Built-in storage]
The main purpose of built in storage is to hold the firmware. But it doesn't hurt if we have some more space here to accomodate some media files.
(available options NOR, NAND, SPI)
SPI is not an option as it is restricted to a few MB's with very high price/MB.
NOR is expensive whhen compared to NAND. Again restricted to less than 64MB
NAND has lowest price/MB.
the AT91 supports NAND bootloader. NAND is cheap and available in higher capacities with lowest price/MB. in fact the 8GB SD card we r talking about also uses NAND chip/s iniside.
1GB internal NAND is the best value for money for now. by the time we're in production, 2/4GB should be appropriate. Nothing changes in the hardware. just need to solder the cheaper/bigger chip.
[CAD tools]
gimme an option to use Orcad Layout and i'll get the PCB done in a week's time. we can later re-design using kiCad. atleast we'll get the concept proven. ;)
jokes apart. maybe we'll have to learn kiCad(PCB).
casainho:
--- Quote from: Bagder on February 11, 2008, 10:10:43 AM ---The Sansa e200 you use as comparison has both internal NOR and NAND, so I'm not sure this clarifies anything...
--- End quote ---
I didn't know that - I were at IRC asking about that and also did read the TWiki page about Sansa E200 hardware. Bagder, so, Sansa boots from NOR? where is the RB bootloader? on NOR flash or in NAND flash?
[[V1 requirements]]
--- Quote from: spark on February 11, 2008, 02:07:50 PM ---[1 or 2 outputs?]
1 stere o/p should suffice. you can anyways plug a Y splitter externally to have 2 headphones.
--- End quote ---
Ok with 1 input.
--- Quote from: spark on February 11, 2008, 02:07:50 PM ---[wireless connectivity?]
Bluetooth is a good option. For hardware all we may need is a SPI bluettoth chip. i dunno how r we gonna implement the bluetooth software stack on the player. It will be challenging.
--- End quote ---
If Bluetooth is interesting but we don't have RB code for that, we can put that on V2...
--- Quote from: spark on February 11, 2008, 02:07:50 PM ---[Built-in storage]
The main purpose of built in storage is to hold the firmware. But it doesn't hurt if we have some more space here to accomodate some media files.
(available options NOR, NAND, SPI)
SPI is not an option as it is restricted to a few MB's with very high price/MB.
NOR is expensive whhen compared to NAND. Again restricted to less than 64MB
NAND has lowest price/MB.
the AT91 supports NAND bootloader. NAND is cheap and available in higher capacities with lowest price/MB. in fact the 8GB SD card we r talking about also uses NAND chip/s iniside.
1GB internal NAND is the best value for money for now. by the time we're in production, 2/4GB should be appropriate. Nothing changes in the hardware. just need to solder the cheaper/bigger chip.
--- End quote ---
So, let's go with the cheaper NAND flash knowing that as minimum we need 8MB.
--- Quote from: spark on February 11, 2008, 02:07:50 PM ---[CAD tools]
gimme an option to use Orcad Layout and i'll get the PCB done in a week's time. we can later re-design using kiCad. atleast we'll get the concept proven. ;)
jokes apart. maybe we'll have to learn kiCad(PCB).
--- End quote ---
If we can do that first in Orcad and later in Kicad, why not? :-) - but we have time for working, first there will be the PrototypeB, I will learn a lot with that proto :-)
Bagder:
--- Quote ---Sansa boots from NOR? where is the RB bootloader? on NOR flash or in NAND flash?
--- End quote ---
But it's no point in discussing how the Sansa boots. When we write bootloaders for Rockbox for whatever target we work on, we adapt that method to how the original system is designed and how it works.
When you create your own player you can decide yourself how to boot and you don't have to inherit any weird systems you can see Rockbox use on existing players.
The Sansas boot first from NOR, then it loads a bootloader from NAND and then that bootloader loads the firmware from NAND. In Rockbox's case, we replace the firmware with our bootloader which then loads Rockbox...
casainho:
--- Quote from: Bagder on February 11, 2008, 05:53:19 PM ---When you create your own player you can decide yourself how to boot and you don't have to inherit any weird systems you can see Rockbox use on existing players.
The Sansas boot first from NOR, then it loads a bootloader from NAND and then that bootloader loads the firmware from NAND. In Rockbox's case, we replace the firmware with our bootloader which then loads Rockbox...
--- End quote ---
I am new to this systems, I am trying to learn looking at other's work.
From what you said, I assume that in Sansa E200, RB bootloader is in the NAND and the firmware is in FAT32 on other part in NAND. RB have 2 parts, a bootloader and a firmware? both in the same NAND ic but in different parts, partitions?
With the choosed MCU for RB Player, it bootloades from a NAND flash, so we just need to write RB bootloader + firmware for FAT32, as in Sansa E200 NAND flash ic, we don't need to use one more flash IC, the NOR, as Sansa use, thanks to bootloader that already resided on choosed MCU for RB Player. This is my thoughts :-) - I am learning a lot in this process :-)
Bagder:
If I were to design a NAND based played with this MCU, I'd certainly have an internal NAND of 1 or 2 GB and then there would be a partition of that saved for the bootloader. I would then also try to make that bootloader to be u-boot, as that would make a lot of development easier.
And yes, that excludes the need for a NOR flash since the at91sam thing can boot off NAND.
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