From: Jens Arnold <arnold-j_at_t-online.de>
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 01:00:43 +0100

Hello player owners,


it's finally done - the player flash package is available :)
If your player is flashable, you can now flash it, and enjoy
faster poweron (just a tap of the ON button needed) and
significantly quicker boot. Unfortunately it seems that only a
small fraction of players is flashable out-of-the-box, most
likely the newer models (Studio).

You can check if you go to Info->Debug (Keep Out!)->View HW info
and then go through the pages with "-" or "+" until the lower
line displays "Flash:". If it is followed by hexadecimal numbers
"BF,D6", your player is flashable, if question marks are
displayed instead, you are out of luck.

While you are at it, you should also note down the ROM version
from the appropriate HW info page - you will need this later to
estimate the risk of flashing.

Please read and think about the whole mail, and as well the wiki
article about flashing (which will be updated by me with player
specific info) before you go ahead with flashing.


WARNING ! WARNING ! WARNING ! WARNING ! WARNING ! WARNING !

Although there are no known bugs, the flash package is only
tested on *exactly* *one* player - mine. There is a slight
chance that it refuses to work on others, although I believe
that the risk is rather small.

Unlike the other packages, the player firmware binary does
contain two images to start with, the first being the archos
firmware as usual, the second being rockbox built from current
cvs. This is to lower the flashing risk - hopefully at least one
of the images does work on your hardware.

How high will your personal flashing risk be? This depends on
your ROM version (you should have noted this down earlier) and
your archos firmware version. (This is the version displayed by
the archos firmware at boot. I does not always match the ROM
version.) Here are the "risk classes", from lowest to highest:

1) Players with identical ROM and firmware version as mine
   (ROM: 5.06, Archos: 5.08)

   lowest risk.

2) Players with different version(s), but both being 5.0x
   (ROM: 5.0x, Archos: 5.0x)

   almost the same.

3) Players with older ROM, but new lcd (still newplayers)
   (4.50 <= ROM version < 5.00)

   slightly higher risk.

4) Oldplayers and veryoldplayers
   (ROM version < 4.50)

   considerably higher risk.

   These players do have the old lcd, which needs a different
   init sequence. The biggest risk here is that the init
   sequence is not fully tested, so it may happen that rockbox
   started from flash does not manage to properly initialize
   the display -> you won't see anything.

You can always start with the archos image by holding "-"
while powering on (same as F1 for recorders). As a side effect,
you will have the latest archos ROM firmware version available
(5.08). Please note that you will have to hold ON for at least
a second to power up the archos firmware - it checks the power
button status itself, and immediately shuts down again if it
finds the ON button released.

All other safety measures available for the other platforms
(minimon, and uart boot as a last resort) are also available
for the player ("+" while poweron activates minimon - same as
F3 for recorders).

I'll remind you again to read
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/FlashingRockbox
as well before continuing.

WARNING ! WARNING ! WARNING ! WARNING ! WARNING ! WARNING !


Now, if I still didn't manage to scare you off, get the flash
package here:

http://arnold-j.bei.t-online.de/Rockbox/flash_player.zip
(_at_Jörg: Feel free to mirror this)

and follow the instructions in the wiki article. Do not flash
an .ucl file made from a rockbox build before 2004-12-16
22:40 UTC! Chances are that it won't work properly.

You may of course flash RomBox as well, it's available for the
player and saves around 130 KB of RAM for MP3 buffering. The
rockbox build contained in the player firmware binary however
is not a RomBox build, simply because the make_firmware tool
does not allow this, and I was too lazy to correct that.
(Jörg?)


Now, hopefully have fun!


Jens

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Received on 2004-12-17