From: Barry Wardell <barry.wardell_at_gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007 21:20:47 +0000

On 3/2/07, Dave <promisedplanet_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> I guess my question should be rephrased ... I wonder what's different about
> the new hardware.

The main difference is that all older iPods were based on the same
family of chips from PortalPlayer (the PP502x and PP5002 series').
This is the main chip in the device and contains the CPU, and USB
among other things. So, basically, work done on getting things working
on one model of iPod usually also benefits all other models (and also
iriver H10 and Sansa e200 which share the same chip).

The chip in the new nano is totally different. It is Apple branded,
although I think Samsung actually produce it. This chip is completely
different hardware wise to the PortalPlayer chips, so everything we
have learned before goes out the window and we have to start from
scratch.

A further problem is that starting with the 2g nano, Apple are
encrypting the whole of their firmware. This encryption makes it far
harder to gain access to the hardware and firmware and figure out how
it works.
Received on 2007-03-02