Rockbox Technical Forums

Rockbox Development => New Ports => Topic started by: sinless on July 09, 2018, 11:28:37 AM

Title: Build a open hardware motherboard to resurrect iPod video
Post by: sinless on July 09, 2018, 11:28:37 AM
Hello guys,
As I know there're already somebody want to build a custom rockbox player..
http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,6751.0.html (http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,6751.0.html)
Being a old rockbox fan and a hardware engineer myself, I really want to make this come true.
so i decide to find a cheap & easy buying player, and then replace the old hardware with modern one.
here I come the idea of resurrection an ipod video, which means to use all the part of it, case, LCD,clickwheel,etc...also to save the BOM cost of the custom player
the general idea is to remove hard disk, and use EMMC or micro SD instead.
I did some search myself and found 2 partforms maybe suitable:
1. NXP i.MX6ULL 900MHz cotrex-A7 with BGA272 package,only 9x9mm / DDR3 512MB/ ESS9018K2M codec
2. NXP i.Mx233,same as some of the rockbox project/ mDDR 128MB/ESS9018K2M codec
other ideas for hardware are welcomed~

If you guys interested in this please provide some help~
here i found the pinout of click wheel and LCD, still lacking headphone ribbon pinout, and the specific part number of all the connectors.
https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/39038/Pinout+of+the+Click+Wheel+or+LCD+to+logic+board+ribbons (https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/39038/Pinout+of+the+Click+Wheel+or+LCD+to+logic+board+ribbons)

Last question, anybody know if this would cause legal problem..thanks
Title: Re: Build a open hardware motherboard to resurrect iPod video
Post by: saratoga on July 09, 2018, 06:52:23 PM
Use a SOC like the imx233 that is already supported so that you don't have to spend months or years writing code.  You will still have to do a lot of work to write new drivers for any hardware you introduce. 
Title: Re: Build a open hardware motherboard to resurrect iPod video
Post by: FlyBoy on March 01, 2020, 11:12:15 PM
sinless,
Have you made any progress on this? Most of the dedicated RB hardware threads are pretty old and yours is the newest. I'm kicking tires on running RB on dedicated HW and have been diving through these old threads to see where everyone left off.

Best,
Scott