Sony NW/NWZ series: analysis of the OF and Linux configuration

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This page documents what is known about the Sony NW players that use linux. This information has only been verified for a handful of players, it may be inaccurate. most of this initial information comes from SonyNWZE460Analysis.

Framebuffer

Linux exposes two framebuffers devices: /dev/fb/0 for the LCD and /dev/fb/1 for the TV output. The LCD device uses the usual framebuffer interface. The TV device seems to have a few proprietary ioctl (the kernel source provided by Sony contains most of the framebuffer driver and some headers with ioctl values).

Input (keys)

Sony abuses the linux input system. When the icx_keys drivers is loaded, a device is created under /dev/input/event0. Its description does not match what the device supports and as such is useless. Furthermore, the events are not encoded using the standard linux event structure. Instead, Sony reuses the standard struct input_event but the input_event.code is split into two parts:

bits	meaning
4-0	Key changed
5	NMLHP (Attached/Detached) (5)
6	NCHP (Attached/Detached) (?)
7	HOLD (On/Off)
8	NC (On/Off) (?)

Sony uses the following key codes. It appears that the top bit (bit 4) reflects which analog input is used (AD0 or AD1) but it is unclear if this information is really useful or not.

code	key
0	PLAY
1	RIGHT
2	LEFT
3	UP
4	DOWN
5	ZAPPIN (?)
6	AD0_6
7	AD0_7
16	VOL DOWN
17	VOL UP
18	BACK
19	OPTION
20	BT
21	AD1_5
22	AD1_6
23	AD1_7

-- AmauryPouly - 01 Oct 2016