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Rockbox Replaces Archos Firmware
bagder writes: "The guys in the Rockbox project have just released the first working firmware replacement for the Archos portable hard disk-based MP3-players. The software is all GPL. Every tiny bit was reverse engineered, disassembled and then re-written from scratch. You can go download your own firmware right now!"
Bless their hearts. gnupod, anyone?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I know, the hardware probably isn't appropriate... but it's always worth asking.
It thinks its an Ipod!
the purpose of portable mp3 players?
I thought that's what minidisk was for, years ago.
OOoh, maybe it can be added if the decoding hardware is generic enough? Wow.. that would ROCK!
Isn't there some sort of torque problem that needs to be addressed with these hard drive-based devices? Have they engineered the things so that they don't twitch in your backpack?
I have been pwned because my
Figured I might as well be the first to say this... but doesn't this count as reverse engineering?
The days of playing a single format; mp3, are over for the archos...and in a good way. Hopfully the archos execs won't slap the DMCA on these guys using the "reverse-engineering excuse". -Jay
Is that legal? I mean, I'd just hate to see something like that challenged under the DMCA in all its ridiculousness. Any thoughts or ideas?
Q17. I don't see you mentioning ogg files on your list of ideas. What about supporting those?
A17. At the current time we belive this is not very likely (though we are not completely closing out this possibility). The Micronas chip (MAS3507) decoder in the archos does not natively support ogg decoding and there is very little program space in the player to implement it ourselves. The alternative would be to write a software decoder as part of the RockBox firmware. However, as much as we love our players, the computing power of the Archos (SH1 microcontroller) is not fully sufficent for this need (Once again, this is not a definative no. The world is full of brilliant people. We just aren't hunting down all the ones not already involved with the project right this instant).
So, even if you rewrite the firmware under GPL, what is the point unless offers new features?
Oohhh, that's handy. Frequently asked questions like mine all in one handy place.
i own the 20 gig version of the archos jukebox, and i love it, it goes everywhere with me, the only problems are the relatively short battery life, about 5 hours between charges, and it only plays mp3 and wma and it only plays the most common bitrates, a big plus though is it plays winamp playlists, if i could replace the firmware, i would take the time to convert all my files and re-rip my cds to ogg vorbis, its a great format that hasn't really taken hold, plus its a lot more fun to say then em-pee-three
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
My 10gb iPod doesn't twitch....are you sure you've seen this w/an Archos?
Are there any similar projects for the RioVolt SP250? It has upgradeable firmware as well. A quick Google search turned up nothing.
How do they shield the inertia generated by the spinning drive? Lighter platters?
I have been pwned because my
The directory is waiting...
Lots of other people have mentioned that they want Ogg support on their player and a few others have pointed out the FAQ answer that says it's probably too hard to do on this device. What I would like to see is a portable device that can be easily extended to arbitrary formats. For example, my current audio format of choice is FLAC which has no portable hardware support (though there apparently is a car player that supports it -- rock!). I doubt that it will become very popular though, because it's a lossless codec and therefore must take up more room than lossy codecs. But that's beside the point -- if someone makes a new audio format that is truly cool and does some things that certain people like or want, it would be neat if you could carry around that music without custom hardware.
Just a thought...
Does anyone have one of these? I'm wondering if there's any 3rd party firmware for them, Riovolt has been on version 1.01 for almost a year now.
Yes, you can find the new firmware at the Diamond Multimedia FTP site. Its Version 2.00 BETA, with extra features such as a steroscope. Here's the link:
ftp://ftp.diamondmm.com/pub/rio/riovolt/sp250/
Download the "riovolt_sp250_200-firmware.exe" file (the firmware) and its corresonding text file (the readme explaining the new features). Note that in this version, some buttons will perform completely different actions than in the original firmware.
just tried the mod out, works great on my Studio 20, of course the UI has quite a bit till it's up to the current archos build, but it's good to see someone making progress.
the cool thing about these players it you don't have to actually flash the rom, they boot off of the internal rom for a second and immediately look for a file in the root for updates, if the file's not there they just continue to boot from hardware.
I can understand a corporation wanting to keep their source code to themselves.
:-). We need to stand up for our rights, and if they are denied, we need to fight back with the only weapon available to us, our own money.
I can understand a corporation wanting to keep their protocol documentation a secret from the public.
I can even understand that a corporation may not want people replacing their firmware.
But that is no &@$%ing excuse for reverse engineering to be illegal. If I buy a program, and it is delivered to me in binary format, I paid for it. They didn't give me the source code, but the binary is mine. Telling me that I can't read that binary myself, and that only my computer may read it is complete bullc*#$!!!!
The execs haven't slapped the DMCA on these guys yet, and I am glad for that. I think that we should start buying archos to fool around with. But if they do slap the DMCA around, I think that would be a call for a good ol' fashion boycott (or boston archos party
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
thats not really a similar project at all considering its done by the company that produces the hardware and not an independant third party group producing firmware for a commercial device they did not manufactor and sell
You guys, I can't believe what a monumental task this must have been. Kudos to the team.
Too bad they wasted their efforts on something so ghey. Almost as bad a Lun1sX!!!1~~~
I asked this myself before looking at the FAQ from the Rockbox site. Since the MP3 decoding is done in hardware, and (by the developers' own admission) Ogg Vorbis support is unlikely, I ask myself again: What's the big deal?
Maybe it's the engineer in me, trying to look for a practical value in such an effort, but I don't see the point in reverse engineering a perfectly working piece of machinery that has a well-defined purpose: To play MP3 files. Since the hardware is proprietary, what's the point in getting slightly better software for it, when it's likely that the vendor will release a patch themselves?
I believe that applying open source methods to software development must be done judiciously. The best times to do OSS is when the community at large will benefit greatly from the software produced, or when a vendor arbitrarily curtails some fundamental freedom in their software and we must find a workaround. I don't see either thing happening with this gadget. What's the advantage of going through all that trouble, when the alternative is probably a software patch or buying an iPod? Both options seem cheaper (time, $$) than hacking this little box. I honestly think that the developers could've made better use of their time.
Cheers!
Ehttp://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
This sounds wonderful. How much do these babies cost?
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
No news on 3rd party firmware though? I posted the exact same question, so I'm sure there's enough interest to justify such a project.
Actually if you understood elementary physics you'd not have asked that. The platters are gyros, the effect is not a twitch, but actually a slight resistance to being moved. They do, of course, 'twitch' very slightly when the power is turned on.
The real problem is that it's difficult to make the other parts move as close to those platters as they need to, without being so close they 'crash' into the platters when you bump something.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Sweden is a member of the European Union, and the EU has issued a directive.
The big deal is hopefully they can fix the bugs that archos is unable / unwilling to fix. And here is that bug: The damn think skips *all* the time ... even when it's stationary. Sometimes with CBR mp3's, but all the time with VBR mp3s. They have some workarounds, but they dont work, I know its not my player because all my friends who have one complain about the same damn thing. Other then that one HUGE problem its really a great little device
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
now can we PLEASE have OGG support? :)
Surely it cannot be both. Disassembly of proprietary code and rewriting same is not legal, is it?
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Slow down there big boy! Not a single one of those has actually been implemented! Calling this thing v1.0 is really misleading. These guys are like Microsoft, yeah, they got 1.0 out the door, call me when they get 3.11 for Workgroups, k?
They complain about the shuffle. Dandy, everyone knows that no matter how good an Archos product is, the shuffle is fucking ridiculous. Archos wouldn't know what random is if random bit them in the bloody ass. But Rockbox doesn't even have a shuffle feature yet! And if they do, it's not mentioned in the release notes or available via the menu.
I'm sure these guys will do something great with this project, but call me when they add even one of the features on that list.
[o]_O
I just hope the Archos legal dept. isn't friends with the people over at Blizzard, or they might just pull out that DMCA whore and trick it out. I smell another bnetd.
--
Disclaimer: The above statement probably includes half-truths, because real truth is too complicated.
You will have to look pretty hard for a jukbox6000, I don't think they are on the market any more. Check E-bay. Considering one of it's capabilities is a 6G USB hard drive, street value is proably under $200 now.
8 &cat=538&scat=539
My recollection is that I saw a Studio, or Recorder version with a 20G drive for approx $350 last month at either Micro Center, or CompUSA. BestBuy currently has the Archos Jukbox Recorder 20, listed at $319 (my purchase price was listed at $299 when I put it in my cart) URL is http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=11101124&m=48
Prices apparently have come down. BestBuy also has the recorder in a 10G capacity, so you might find that workable instead. Price given for that is $259. Free shipping on all portable mp3 players.
Then again, I have relatives who either do or have worked for BestBuy. If you can find a better price somewhere else, and I think you probably can, go get it at the better price.
-Rusty
You never know...
Even if they posted trade secrets, the DMCA wouldn't apply. Other intellectual property laws would apply, but not the DMCA. To be clear, reverse engineering is still legal, except where the intent of the referse engineering is to circumvent a copy protection or content access management control mechanism. Sunce Archos has nothing to do with e-books, SDMI, or any other access rights mechanism, anyone bandying about DMCA violations needs to learn the difference between the law and the latest meme.
Kevin Fox
Jukebox came before iPod. Apple made a copy, it does less, but costs more. You maccies just can't deal with this recurring syndrome, can you?
Aaah, but it's SHINY, I know.
I wish we'd call it "analysis" or "research".
Reverse engineering is starting to take on a negative connotation, like "hacker" did. The "Reverse" thing sounds, retrograde, sinister, unconventional, at odds with the status quo.
From the site:
The archos.mod file is scrambled, but luckily not using encryption.
Each data byte is inverted and ROLed 1 bit. The data is then spread over four memory segments. The two least significant bits of the address is used as segment number and the rest as offset in the segment. So, basically:
* segment number = address % 4
* segment offset = address / 4
* segment length = imgsize / 4
A 6-byte header is added to the beginning of the scrambled image:
* 32 bit length (big-endian)
* 16 bit checksum
The Rockbox people have written and made available a descrambler/scrambler for it.
How is this any different from the DECSS program that is illegal? Not that I really think DECSS should be illegal, but this seems to be near the same to me. Why isn't this deemed encryption, even if it's not a really hard tough form of encryption?
It is indeed true that Rockbox 1.0 lacks most of the feature every sane user wants. No one said it is more feature-complete or better in any way than the original firmware at this early point.
Still, this is a proof that our effort is going in the right direction, that it works and it helps getting attention and more developers onto the project. We meant the 1.0 release to be this.
Adding the missing features is now only a matter of time. If you join up, we'll have them available even faster.
I understand your frustration with how austere the features are now. Consider what they are trying to do, however. Their idea of 1.0 is to make it work, bug free, and at least play some mp3s. That in itself is a huge accomplishment. Sure 2.0 will be the version that everyone loves. 3.0 will have everything but the kitchen sink (and perhaps vorbis). I think we should commend what an accomplishment its been just to get this far. They just baked a cake, and now its time to frost/decorate it. They just cooked roast beef, now pour on the gravy. Pick your analogy, or suggest your own.
"Reverse engineering is starting to take on a negative connotation, like "hacker" did. "
This is a good point. Most of science is 'reverse engineering' of the natural world. It'd be interesting if the scientist who supplied his own genetic material for the genome project turned around and sued the labs for reverce engineering him.
Kevin Fox
Excuse me, but why do everybody refer to the piece of sh*t law DMCA? Isn't these guys Swedish?
A bit better of a hack (loose use of a term, that) seems to be to download iriver's firmware instead, from here:
;)
http://www.iriverhk.com/English/downc.htm
This will revert a RioVolt SP-250 back to its roots by making it be an iRiver iMP-250.
IIRC, the menus are prettier, and there's a few extra options. I like the iRiver boot logo a bit better than Rio's. Also, the version number is higher -- iRiver distributes 2.2, whereas Rio is still at 2.0.
Kid-proof tablet..
I'm sure these guys will do something great with this project, but call me when they add even one of the features on that list.
:
you dont get it do you?
this is Open Source. If you have ideas and help that you can bring to the party then bring them. What peopl *don't* need is some smart alec standing there watching and saying
"what's the point, it's rubbish, you're wasting my time!!"
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
This is what we call reusability for the free software (as in GPL) community, not for the others. What is the point? Ah, I see, free software cannot be reused by everybody, that aims at producing software for the consumers/public.
For everyone else, 20G is what's needed.
Its like my kids...they don't mind listening to the same music over and over, but adults like a little variety.
More importantly, the Rio v2.0 firmware is actually the iRivier v1.05 firmware. Hacking iRiver firmware is a much better solution than accepting updates from RioVolt. And it probably violates the warranty, but you should be able to downgrade the firmware should you need to bring it in for repair.
t ml
For more information on hacking the iRiver firmware so it works on your RioVolt (there is no negative effect from this, i've done it many times, they are virtually identical devices), check out this unofficial FAQ:
http://www.geocities.com/cryophil/RioVolt_FAQ.h
The mp3.com hardware boards are where I go to stay updated on this; there's not that much of substance there unless you scan the topics for firmware news and/or troubleshooting if you've got an issue.
I wish someone were working on an open source firmware upgrade for the Rio 500.
Ultimately, I would like to see all portable music devices have the ability to run open source software a la Linux. Then, we could freely build a firmware with the audio formats that we want.
... has a security product named the "Rockbox". Doh! Hopefully no naming problems will arise.
http://www.rocksteady.com
Rockbox: Didn't Al Gore start this company?
They reverse engineered a product. That's 100% legal.
What the DMCA makes illegal is reverse engineering mechanisms that either control copying or control access of copyrighted material for the sole purpose of circumventing that control.
Or if it simply has nothing to do with a copy control mechanism. Remember, reverse engineering is not illegal.
The DMCA deals with copy control mechanisms, DRM type stuff. Region coding & CSS, etc. Not software in general.
Reverse engineering softward and hardware is expressley allowed for any reason.
As for trade secret, you could be in shit for releasing trade secret information. If it's trade secret. A proprietary file format is NOT trade secret information, neither is a proprietary protocol.
Trade secret information is information they are protecting. Like the formula to Coca Cola.
But that reverse engineering for interoperability is tricky.
IF the DeCSS guys had a) reverse eingineered it and
b) produced a binary-only player
they could have claimed that it was for interoperability.
THis is one place where the DMCA is not compatable with open-source stuff.
Why would Archos would have a problem with this? They're way understaffed and the firmware is beyond them, so why not open up their own firmware source?
Has anybody talked to Archos about it?
I understand what you're trying to say, but my original understanding was v1.0 was "done". If they said, "yo check it, we got v0.1 and it works" then I would have been less angry. But I'm definitely feeling you.
There won't be any vorbis support because there isn't enough CPU power, but I'm looking forward to everything else.
[o]_O
> There won't be any vorbis support because there isn't enough CPU power, but I'm looking forward to everything else.
There could be Ogg support if they can figure out how to reprogram the other chips. Yes, using the CPU is impractical, but there are other ways.
Does anyone know if this will work for the Archos 5000? Also, is this the only utility that allows Archos devices to be accessed by Linux, or are there other programs out there?
Keep in mind, Archos is the same company that did the following:
Somoene writes Linux drivers. They post a link on their web site so you can download them.
Someone puts up a web site detailing how to install a larger hard drive. The site states that such activity will void the warranty. Archos offers 10 and later 20 gig devices so you can have the larger capacity without voiding the warranty.
I'd be shocked if Archos cared if people were hacking their firmware. All it does is create a developer community and expanding uses for the hardware, which they are still selling.
If you want to mod an Archos, you still need to get a hold of one, which means buying it.
This is a win-win for Archos, unless some jackasses start calling Archos demanding tech support for the Open Source Firmware. Then it becomes a nuisance.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Their tech support tried to tell me today that when "HD ERROR" flashes on my screen it means tha my battery is low. I've only used the Jukebox 20 something times. A few days ago i was using it and there was a burning rubber smell coming from it.. I hope they replace it it cost me $300 bucks.
Does it make any sense to defrag the drive when you get a healthy bunch of mp3s on it?