Rockbox Development > New Ports
Rockbox Player - Project to design and build a Free/Open hardware audio player
spark:
i think we'll rather start work on the hardware. Some features may have to be added/removed as the design progresses.
The most critical component is the CPU. There has already been a vast amount of discussion about this, and we had finalized the AT91SAM9620/9621. This CPU has 200MIPS of power.
The selection of this CPU was done considering a number of points such as long term availability, features, open community support, documentation.
We have already started research & development using this CPU, so it may be a difficult to go for a change now.
FYI: Gigabeat F/X uses Samsung S3C2440 CPU which is hard to get in small quantities, and no much documentation available.
markun:
--- Quote from: spark on April 28, 2008, 09:26:29 AM ---FYI: Gigabeat F/X uses Samsung S3C2440 CPU which is hard to get in small quantities, and no much documentation available.
--- End quote ---
I'm not saying you should use the S3C2440, but I think the documentation is quite good:
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/pub/Main/DataSheets/um_s3c2440a_rev10.pdf
casainho:
--- Quote from: markun on April 28, 2008, 11:55:16 AM ---
--- Quote from: spark on April 28, 2008, 09:26:29 AM ---FYI: Gigabeat F/X uses Samsung S3C2440 CPU which is hard to get in small quantities, and no much documentation available.
--- End quote ---
I'm not saying you should use the S3C2440, but I think the documentation is quite good:
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/pub/Main/DataSheets/um_s3c2440a_rev10.pdf
--- End quote ---
We can read on Samsung web page of that product:
To download the product information, go through the registration process and log in and then ask for the file you want.
You can ask for information on products we provide all at once through "request", and it will take a maximum of 24 hours for your request to be confirmed. We will let you know whether your request is confirmed through your registered email and you will be able to download the approved file through "download".
I don't see any application notes, codes, for that MCU on Samsung product page.
In Atmel product page for the AT91SAM9620, we can immediately and directly download the datasheet, application notes examples, codes and even Atmel stimulates a Linux port. Thats why I think Atmel gives good information for the AT91SAM9620 and others Atmel MCUs.
spark:
Samsung is not that friendly to people with small volume requirements. They don't even provide appnotes and sample code freely. On the other hand Atmel is very good in terms of support. See the list of appnots that are available
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/app_notes.asp?family_id=605
Again, i cannot find the Samsung part on digikey/mouser. If i contact Samsung to send me a sample, they will just ignore me cause i'm not from a big company. So i guess we should avoid using such parts.
I hope there is no problem with at91sam9260/61. Casainho has already purchased a dev board.
* 12Mbps USB is a problem here, but there is always scope to add an external Hi-Speed OTG controller (NXP's ISP1761)
* 200MIPS is sufficient i guess. (we are talking about a decent rockbox player and not some high end video processing engine or game console)
I'm skeptical about providing video out option. It shouldn't be a priority.
casainho:
I agree with ZincAlloy, when he says:
--- Quote ---just being designed for Rockbox IS a unique feature in my humble opinion. just take a look at the unsurpassed set features that Rockbox has to offer.
add to that a digital input, great audio quality, a decent screen, a large capacity hard drive and put it into a sturdy casing and you've got an Ipod killer. The audiophile crowd will love it for sure - and not only them. A player that focuses on great music playback is what many music enthusiasts are looking for.
I DO think that it is worth spending time, effort and money on this idea. And I'm sure you will be able to sell far more than 100 players.
--- End quote ---
Another advantage of this player would be an open and standard hardware, long life. In my guess, Sandisk did change the hardware to Sansas v2 just to cut prices and that is bad for us consumers, because we don't have Rockbox for V2 and we don't know how many times Sandisk will change hardware. Sandisk is like the others that change hardware to continue to have "good" prices and add new neat features - as example, what Pasen said about their new products every 2 or 3 months.
If we see Arduino, we know that the base hardware should not see new versions just to cut prices or all the code and hardware available on internet made by communities and companies will not work with new versions.
Arduino is made with Atmel 8 bits MCU because(my guess) Atmel have a lots of information, example codes, application notes and stimulates de GCC-AVR and AVR-Libc.
About my work
I am being very busy, putting a lot of my free time, life, in the project and I am learning a lot, as I pretended in the beginning.
I made a simple ¨flash LED¨ program for the development board, however I could not test it because I do not have, right now, the necessary tools. I quickly created a project page in code google, as I pretend to use that svn for share the first codes to having the hardware working until be able to launch Rockbox firmware. http://code.google.com/p/rockboxplayer/
A short list of technologies that I had to learn, read some tutorials, etc:
- jtag cable -- I bought the USBprog and I am setting up it in hope to use it to program the u-boot on the dev. board.
- dev. board -- I had to search and read information about u-boot, put the dev. board to work. I bought some USB <-> RS232 serial cable + null cable modem.
- u-boot -- I did some reads about u-boot and using stand alone programs with it, also find a way to upload programs, TFTP, USB, serial kermit...
- make -- I did read some tutorials about making files, compiling and ELF files... I did a simple make file for the flash LED code.
- SVN -- I am reading bout SVN and I want starting using it for sharing all the code.
- I bought a cheap, ultra portable pc, with Linux, the eee pc -- I can and I am now reading and coding while on the train (going and backing to/from work) or on the lunch times, as I am doing right now ;-)
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