From: Matthias Wächter <matthias_at_waechter.wiz.at>
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 13:33:22 +0200 (CEST)

On Wed, 14 Aug 2002, Benoit Midy wrote:

> Could you say what exactly do you expect to do :
> - increase the MP3 buffer ?
> - decrease the battery consumption ?

The second by the first. :-)

With 8 MB you just have to fire up the drive once every 4-7
minutes (depending on bit rate obviously). I don't know what amount of
power consumption we spare reducing the spin-up to about 1/4th to 1/6th.

At least it'd give us more space to play with _long_ directories and
playlists...

> And do you have any idea of how hard it'll be to modify its archos ?

Yes, but I don't think that it'll be that hard. Of course, it's a lot more
effort than just mounting two wires to have a serial interface on the
LINE-IN... but the benefit would be enormous, I think.

The main issue is unsoldering the currently-mounted 44-pin ISSI/Samsung
chip. This is only possible with suited equipment. Compared to this, the
re-soldering of the new chip is as easy as sucking milk from mother's
breast :-)

> It will be nice to make some photos of the RAM that could be used in the archos m, to
> see how big they are ?

I don't understand your question. The chip itself has the same size as the
current chip (it just has 6 pins more in the middle to make a TSOP-II-44
into a TSOP-II-50). Look at the photographs in the 'internals' section at
http://rockbox.haxx.se/internals/bjorn.html

At http://rockbox.haxx.se/internals/archos_bottom.jpg you can even see the
6 unsoldered pins of the current ISSI/Samsung chip.

> I'd like to get more details about the aim, finality of such hardware modification, but it is
> always interresting to see how a such device could be improved ?

Isn't it like Open Source? I open my AJB and put something in there wasn't
before and was not intended by the primary developers but of use for the
snoopy explorer.

Maybe once we change the main CPU into something smarter, faster or
whatever. Any suggestions/volunteers for this job? :-)

Sehr Wus,
- Matthias

-- 
                    "To get control over people, make them trust you.
                                            To make people trust you
                      don't try to tell them the truth about history
                 but make happen what you told them about the future."

Received on 2002-08-14