From: Lars Goldschlager <lars.gold_at_gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2007 09:19:01 -0400

On 8/3/07, Will Robertson <aliask_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> As far as I could see, there aren't any firmware updates for it
> online. Is there any method of upgrading the firmware mentioned in the
> manual (or in the firmware itself)?
> Without a way to upload your code, a rockbox port becomes much more
> difficult - you'd have to start searching for buffer overflows and the
> like.

With the ammount of data shown on the player so far this would look
terribly close to one of these cheap chinese players that rely on a
hardware mp3 decoder, and whose firmware is basically flash control,
fat, lcd control and hardware decoder control in one simple 8bit
processor, if it wherent for the fact that the ac97 wont decode any
file format and will need a higher ammount of code to process stuff in
the cpu... whithout seeying more on this, and more info I'd say this
player is doomed for now to be reflasheable only by owners with no
fear of opening it, and a flash programmer (btw you could easily read
the chip with any simple flash programmer I bet, (altough we don't
knwo the flash number yet, share that with us if you can). but as will
says, even if you make your own device upgradeable from HDD with a
custom bootloader after reflashing it (a couple of times I predict),
it would take a flaw, error, or hidden upgrade routine in the original
firmware to allow others to do this as well...

I think this should be predictable once we have the spec sheet for the
flash and you follow the traces for the leads. if all leads required
to flash the chip in situ (and the chip is serialy flashable) are
correctly wired to something, there IS a possibility the manufacturer
intended the device to be upgradeable somehow in the future for
emergencies or something... otherwise we're screwed.

Btw if it was intended to be reflasheable, I think discovering how to
do it will require dissassembly of the original firmware and examining
the assembly source line by line... a wold of fun...
Received on 2007-08-03