Creative ZEN information
About
Rockbox Installation on Windows
This has been verified using Windows 7, and devices that have and have not previously had a Rockbox installation. With a device that has previously had a Rockbox installation, some of the steps are redundant and some of the responses are different or absent.
NOTE: Using Windows XP, failure of Format has been
reported.
- On the device, power-on while holding down the Play button
- Select
Reload Firmware
- On the device, plug-in the USB cable to the PC
- Launch
sendfirm.exe =firmwarefilename= and wait (while for most of the time the PC says 100%) for the PC to say Firmware sent successfully!
- Unplug the USB. The device will say
*PANIC*
- On the device, press reset.
- Plug-in the USB.
- If the PC does not offer to format, launch format manually from Explorer
- On the PC, format the device, using FAT if available (for low-capacity devices) e.g. pic else FAT32 pic and wait for format to complete.
- On the PC, copy folder
.rockbox to the device.
- Unplug the USB
- Wait for the Rockbox main menu to appear
- If the display shows garbage or the Rockbox main menu does not appear inside a few seconds, press reset.
- If the device says
File not found, repeat the above from copying folder .rockbox to the device.
- Verify the device responds to up and down button presses.
Rockbox Uninstallation on Windows
This has been verified using Windows 7.
- On the device, power-on while holding down the Play button
- Select
Reload Firmware.
- When the device says
Start firmware download now!, plug-in the USB cable to the PC and launch the Creative firmware updater e.g. ZEN_PCFW_L22_1_21_03.exe
- When the PC says
Your player's current firmware is the same as this version. Do you want to continue?, answer Yes.
- The device should say
Upgrading firmware, then after ~1min, PC should say Player is now rebooting.
- When the PC says completed, unplug the USB. The device should say
Firmware problem.
- Power-off the device, then power-on the device while holding down the Play button
- Select
Format All and wait for completion
- Select
Reboot
- Wait for the Creative main menu to appear
- Verify the device responds to up and down button presses
For further detail on specific steps see
CreativeZENPort.
Rockbox Usage
- Operative buttons
- Menu/Back, Options, Direction pad (up, down, left, right), OK, Play/Pause/Record, reset, On/Off/Lock (two-way: down = On/Off; up (latching) = Lock)
- Non-operative buttons
- Snags
- If you set Settings, General Settings, Display, LCD Settings, Backlight to Off, you'll be unable to see the display image to turn Backlight back on. Connect to computer, open .rockbox\config.cfg, find the backlight timeout (sic) line, remove it and save the file.
Port Status
See
CreativeZENPort
Information about the Creative ZEN
OS
Nucleus RTOS
Device I/O
- Input
- buttons: (on front) Menu/Back, Options, Direction pad (up, down, left, right), OK, My Shortcut, Play/Pause/Record, (on bottom) reset, (on right side) On/Off/Lock (two-way: down = On/Off; up (latching) = Lock)
- microphone
- Output: display, charging light, headphone jack
- Input/output: USB port, SD Memory Slot
Recover from a bad flash
To recover from a bad flash, turn on the unit while holding the play/pause button. The Recovery Mode mode will start up, where you can erase your bad firmware, and from there, reload the original (providing you have a PC, and the update program).
Firmware format
Using
ZenUtils (see SVN for a newer version), I extracted these files from the updater program made available by Creative:
- ZEN_PCFW_L22_1_21_01.opt (this is a ZenUtils specific file)
- ZEN_PCFW_L22_1_21_01_rk.bin (this is the main Firmware)
Further file extraction, again using zen_utils, yields:
- ZEN_PCFW_L22_1_21_01_rk_0xa9544c20 (this is the actual main Firmware)
- ZEN_PCFW_L22_1_21_01_rk_CINF
- ZEN_PCFW_L22_1_21_01_rk_FRESC (this is the rescue mode firmware)
- ZEN_PCFW_L22_1_21_01_rk_HCreative_S.TTF
- ZEN_PCFW_L22_1_21_01_rk_HCreative_T.TTF
- ZEN_PCFW_L22_1_21_01_rk_HDeviceInfo.xml
- ZEN_PCFW_L22_1_21_01_rk_Hdevicon.ico
- ZEN_PCFW_L22_1_21_01_rk_Hdevlogo.png
- ZEN_PCFW_L22_1_21_01_rk_Hjukebox2.jrs
- ZEN_PCFW_L22_1_21_01_rk_Hjukebox.grs
- ZEN_PCFW_L22_1_21_01_rk_Hsplash.jbm
- ZEN_PCFW_L22_1_21_01_rk.mk (this is a ZenUtils specific file)
- ZEN_PCFW_L22_1_21_01_rk_NULL
TylerLaing
For more information about the firmware format, see
this.
Pictures
Components
Pins
Here is a list of all the pins used by the OF. Pins are of form BxPyy where x is the bank and yy the number within the bank. Direction only applies to GPIO.
| Pin |
Dir |
Comment |
| B0P01 |
ssp2_d1 |
|
| B0P02 |
ssp2_d2 |
|
| B0P03 |
ssp2_d3 |
|
| B0P10 |
OUT |
ssp1 power gate ? |
| B0P11 |
IN |
ssp1 write protect |
| B0P20 |
ssp2_cmd |
|
| B0P23 |
ssp2_sck |
|
| B1P00 |
lcd_d0 |
|
| B1P01 |
lcd_d1 |
|
| B1P02 |
lcd_d2 |
|
| B1P03 |
lcd_d3 |
|
| B1P04 |
lcd_d4 |
|
| B1P05 |
lcd_d5 |
|
| B1P06 |
lcd_d6 |
|
| B1P07 |
lcd_d7 |
|
| B1P08 |
OUT |
lcd power/enable |
| B1P09 |
OUT |
lcd SPI data |
| B1P10 |
OUT |
lcd SPI clock |
| B1P11 |
OUT |
lcd SPI chip select |
| B1P12 |
OUT |
backlight power |
| B1P13 |
lcd_dotclk |
|
| B1P14 |
lcd_hsync |
|
| B1P15 |
lcd_vsync |
|
| B1P16 |
lcd_reset |
|
| B1P22 |
ssp1_cmd |
|
| B1P23 |
ssp1_sck |
|
| B1P24 |
ssp1_d0 |
|
| B1P25 |
ssp1_d1 |
|
| B1P26 |
ssp1_d2 |
|
| B1P27 |
ssp1_d3 |
|
| B1P28 |
ssp1_det |
|
| B2P01 |
duart_tx |
backlight control (!!) |
| B2P03 |
pwm3 |
power button light |
| B2P05 |
i2c_scl |
|
| B2P06 |
i2c_sd |
|
| B2P08 |
IN |
button/hold detect (see (1)) |
| B2P12 |
IN |
? |
| B2P14 |
ssp2_d0 |
|
(1) The OF doesn't seem to make use of this pin but the ZEN X-Fi OF does and experiment shows that it works on the ZEN too.
Links
- SansaFuzePlusPort: existing port to another sigmatel 37xx device
- CreativeZVMPort: contains a lot of information some of which is applicable to other models in the ZEN line
- NewPort: contains information about starting a new port
- SigmaTelSTMP3xxx: information regarding the chipset
Copyright © by the contributing authors.
