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Piezo-Acoustic iPod Hack
jugander writes "nilss over at the iPodLinux Project (previously on /.) has performed one of the coolest and most bizzare hacks I've seen in a while. He was able to extract the bootloader from the 4G iPod by sounding out ticks with the iPod's squeaky piezo. With some tweaking and a makeshift recording studio, he was able to dump the 64 kb file at 5 bytes/sec. And yes, this means that 4G iPods can now boot linux!"
I thought the sound output trick was highly clever, bravo. I'm looking forward to having Linux on my mini.
/.ed already?
i know its cool to have a penguin on bootup, and play ogg vorbis, but is it worth 400$ and the possiblity of bricking it to get a less that ipod quality mp3 player?
does the motherfucker run *bsd?
that your tongue sticks to it!
According to an article, the iPod processor is too weak to run ogg. What is the point of running Linux on the iPod (besides saying that "we did it") if you one is unable to run a Linux application on it? Would not it be better to focus resources somewhere else?
Okay, I gotta admit; I'm impressed!
--
Toby
I was curious was a piezo is. I found this explanation:
Short for piezoelectricity or piezoelectric effect. Piezoelectricity is an electric charge that occurs in some substances when they are squeezed or otherwise subjected to mechanical stress. It is also possible to cause these materials to vibrate when a voltage is applied to them. Quartz is one of the better known piezoelectric materials, and is commonly fabricated into small pieces, called "crystals" that are used for frequency standards. A crystal of specific size and shape will vibrate at a predictable and very stable rate when a voltage is applied. This makes them ideal for use in things like watches or clocks for digital audio equipment. Piezoelectric elements have also been used various types of transducers such as phonograph cartridges, microphones and loudspeakers. Piezo microphones can be quite small and still have relatively high output at a low cost; however, their less than ideal frequency response prohibits use in critical applications. Piezo loudspeakers usually come in the form of tweeters, or very high frequency elements. They generally have very low distortion in the 5 kHz and above range, but haven't widely been used in sound reinforcement due in part to their relatively low output levels. It takes dozens of the average piezo tweeter to equal the output of one medium-sized compression driver
I'm still confused (and I did RTFA) how the bits of the bootloader were translated to sound. Anyone care to explain?
Google Cache
The Sound of iPod
I got an iPod for christmas. The ipodlinux project was one of the main reasons for my choice and so I started exploring the iPod as far as I was able to. I patched the bootloader and got some basic code to run but there was no way to access any hardware other than the two CPUs yet. To get the LCD, Clickwheel and the harddisk working we needed to reverse engineer the bootloader in the flashrom. But to do that we first had to find a way to get that code. Seems quite impossible without any knowlegde about the IO-Hardware but I found a solution...
The whole idea started last week when leachbj gave me a piece of code that caused the piezo in the iPod to make some *squeek*-sound. I played around with that code, changed some values and somehow was able to produce different sounds. Just for fun I came up with the idea of using this different sounds for transferring data. Some minutes later I dropped the idea because I thought that just won't work and I won't be able to write a decoder for that. Two days later I woke up and somehow just tried encoding a 32bit value into different beeps. It worked so made a loop around it to dump about 4kb of memory.
The problem with that idea was that I could only transfer 8bit/s. Anyway, I tried writing a decoder and it seemed to work. Well, it didn't really work but it decoded about the first 256 bits correctly. The decoder was some Perlscript that loaded the whole audio into RAM and used about 1GB RAM for a 20MB audio file. It worked ok with some tweaking but still the RAM usage was way to high because if I wanted to dump the whole 64kb I would have an 1200MB audio file or something.
Some ideas came to my mind after thinking about the problems I had. The first one was to use compression so the transfer won't take too long. It would have taken about 45hours with the code we had. With compression maybe only 22h. To solve the memory problem I decided to rewrite the decoder in C that only reads about 96bytes chunks of audio data and then decodes that. Davidc_ helped me with that.
This was the first time I thought I this could really work. Again I played with the piezo code and figured out, how the piezo really works. I was able to produce some more unique beeps. Later I made the beep for 0 (the last bleep you can see in the picture) much shorter so it sounded more like a click. I even managed to make the first bleep shorter so I got about 5byte/s.
When we thought we got the encoder in the iPod with zlib and the decoder working, I decided to try recording the whole dump at night. So I put the iPod in the "iPod Recording Studio" and went to sleep. The iPod is just a cardboard box in which Samsung send me my laptop back. It has foam in it so I thought it would be ideal for recording the bleeping of the iPod. (Move your mouse over the picture.)
The next day I woke up quite early. The first thing I did was looking at the recording. I heard the iPod stopped bleeping so I thought everything went fine. In fact nothing worked at all. I recorded 8 hours full of zeros. Furthermore, the iPod's battery became empty though it was plugged into the USB port of my laptop the firmware wasn't loaded so it didn't request power over USB. So what you can see in the picture is the harddrive spinning down, then the iPod goes off for some minutes and then reboots. The harddriver was spinning during the whole recording session because there was no way to turn it off.
After this I was really disappointed and I dropped the project for the rest of the day but in the evening I tried again with a better decoder. It worked quite well but we weren't able to decompress the file. I concluded that was caused by the malloc() hack and zlib would allocate the same memory twice or something like that. Anyway, I haven't had much sleep that weekend so I was tired and just went to bed and thought about dropping the whole
UID 1000000 is just around the corner.
This is a truely clever hack, I'm glad I donated money to these guys for a new 4G ipod.. now my ipod can run linux !
Sweetness !
Its a php file
Nothing for you to see here, Please move along.
Does this mean the ipod will support ogg-vorbis now? And they said it would never happen.
Dude, he extracted the bootloader using the piezo! It's bloody brilliant.
I'm even looking forward to the dupes of this article which will probably be posted as soon as his server recovers!
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Could you please stop being silly and instead try and do something worth while.
/. submission on charity.
O, bollocks - we could all do 'better' things with our time. Including stopping posting on this infernal website. You could have donated the time you spent reading this
Some people have fun doing things like this. Sounds useless to me as well, I'll grant, but I'm sure a lot of stuff that we all do seems useless/stupid to others. Like watching Star Trek re-runs.
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
Ooops...I meant
: ip odlinux.org/stories/piezo/+&hl=en
:)
http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:9dT24A15Kf0J
I think that mistake deserves negative mod points
The sheer creativity and resourcefulness of some Hackers is just mind-boggling.
If Apple / NASA / (et all) had any sense at all, they'd be beating down this guy's door to hire him into a think-tank.
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
THIS is why I read slashdot. News for Nerds Stuff that matters.
All in favor?
Mod me down.
.sig
The irony of insulting the ipod with a free ipod link as the sig...
oh.. wait a sec.. isnt my... crap.
P.S. The ipods, at least the 4G's have TWO cpus.
[n/t]
'If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.'
I didn't even get a chance to view the website before it got /.'d.
From the article headline though, it looks like a pretty kewl hack. Maybe when iPOD gets bigger, it'll be a usefull software cary-around tool.
My Thoughts, Kyndig
Yes, D00d, I'm aware it's bloody brilliant.
But the hack has been up for, oh, a WEEK on hackaday, with people already having linked to it previously on here. It's old, redundant news.
It's like reading a newspaper column a week after the Challenger disaster about how nice the clouds in the pictures a week ago were.
I don't know about you, but I'm gonna run the Apollo emulator on it and have it land on the Moon. I'm already there.
Yeah, they were real bastards for coming over to your house and forcing you to install it on your iPod, weren't they?
Could you please stop being silly and instead try and do something worth while. We're still looking for a cancer cure, aids cure and countless other things we need today.
Fuck You.
He doesn't work for you.
If you care about those things, get off your lazy ass and do something about it yourself, or pay someone else to do it for you. Don't expect any of us to give a rat's ass about your agenda when we're working for free, on our own time.
But of course, I doubt you're one tenth as capable, or creative, as this guy is.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Only if you've been reduced to making nothing but clicking noises.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
And if ipod is integrated with a camera? Imagine where you can leave the device and records all that things you always wan't to known. But this is a feature that is soo far away to be realized.
http://www.michel.eti.br
Could you please stop being silly and instead try and do something worth while. Says the man posting on Slashdot...
You must think in Russian.
We're still looking for a cancer cure...
Then what the fuck are you doing here wasting time on slashdot? Get out there and cure cancer already.
What cures are you working on? That is, when you're not wasting precious time reading iPod stories and posting on Slashdot.
--
make install -not war
How about this?
but I remember seeing a Google application form somewhere with "What's the coolest hack you've ever done?" on it. Can you imagine putting "Dumping an 64k firmware chip through a piezo sounder" on that?
Who cares if it's not that useful, it's lateral thinking for you...
Yes it is, but php has nothing to do with whether or not a character is legal in a url.
"Could you please stop being silly and instead try and do something worth while. We're still looking for a cancer cure, aids cure and countless other things we need today. Even if you're not smart enough to work on that sort of thing, you could always do charity work or earn extra money to donate."
Out of curiosity, do you have any hobbies? If so, you're wasting valuable time you could be using on cancer research you frickin clown.
"Derp de derp."
This is slick, everything old is new again ? Reminds me of loading Adventure on my Apple II
Data transmission via acoustics is certainly nothing new, but getting something OUT thats not meant to be exposed on a MODERN device this way is just too cool.
Right now there are MANY P'o'd execs at Apple, and a bunch of engineers going crap (but quietly thinking man is this cool)
I wonder how many other things this can be applied to , for reverse engineering of bootloaders, roms, etc.
I would have fried a dozen gamecubes 2 years ago trying this method had I been given the idea then, (Yeah I know all the goofy bootloader stuff NOW in the last 6 months ) for GC is out,
KUDOS, now I might actually buy one.
That would be 2.2 in RFC2396
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I have fiddled a little bit with similar stuff.. Transmitting data via sound.
Basically I made a program that analyzes(FFT-ish) whatever comes in through the mic.
The sent data was beeps at 375Hz(zero) and 1500Hz(one). I was able to recieve data from a range of ~5m at around 50bps. In real-time no less.
As an added bonus it annoyed the hell out of my roommates(beepbeepboopboopbeep..)
Couple of the coolest things so far:
Tetris
viP (text editing)
In the pipeline:
Doom
GameBoy Emulator
If you have any problems with the apple firmware, linux-on-ipod is the place for fixing that.
Also, another aim is to encourage people to look into their 'closed platforms'.
Unlike yours, right, Coward?
In case it might help you understand, child, the original post was whiny not because the story is not fit for Slashdot's audience, but because this is old news.
Run along now, there's a good lad.
isn't this what we usually call a modem ?
http://ipodlinux.org.nyud.net:8090/stories/piezo/
Look like his server is running the same code.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
Off then to Africa to get me a member of either the San or Khwe tribes who talk by making clicking noises. Maybe I can install linux on one of them!! Either that, or maybe a dolphin...
Honestly, I can think of a hundred valid reasons to run Linux on an iPod. I plan on doing it soon, now that this very creative hack has been accomplished.
We know the ipod CPU power and abilities (in the 4G ones and up) is might higher then what apple is using it for. I would love to see an alternative music/playlist browser, as the one they have sucks when you have thousands of songs that all have different artists, albums, etc. All my songs are in mp3 (sorry ogg) so I'm not really concerned about playback of other formats. I know the ipod linux team has a long way to go, but you think with so many hundreds of thousands (millions?) of ipods, at least a few people would be interested in hacking it to do more then what apple wants.
Look at the TI calculators. They might be intended for mathematics functions but people have written thouands of programs that do a ton of different things. Some are pretty stupid, true, but some do some helpfully tasks. And if you bought the hardware, why should you not use it to its fullest extent?
I read the Googlecached story, karmawhored into this thread. It seems he kept the Apple bootloader, but rewrote the iPod "OS" with Linux. Then wrote a program to cat the stored bootloader to the piezo speaker, recorded that, then decoded the audio back to its bits - revealing the bootloader bit image.
Clever, but necessary? Does iPod Linux not give HW access for sending data over the iPod Firewire? If he can strobe the speaker, can't he strobe the headphone jack, for better fidelity and bandwidth? I understand the esthetics of this goofy, clever hack - worth doing even if just for the sake of weirdness. But was it necessary?
--
make install -not war
They figure out how to run Linux on an iPod... so they install Linux, and Apache.
I don't think their iPod server is capable of withstanding a slashdot yet.
You're forgetting to imagine what a Beowulf cluster of these babies could do!
For me, its because the software on the iPod browses by ID3 tag, when I'd rather use filenames.
Sure but can it run linux?
Wait, umm....
Oh!
Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these things!
The preceding message was based on actual events. Only the names, locations and events have been changed.
... that is one of the most impressive pieces of lateral thinking that I have ever seen. I am thoroughly impressed.
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
The iPod process is seriously too weak to run ogg? That's bizarre. My less expensive iRiver plays ogg, and has a battery life that is on average about 25% longer than that of an iPod.
Could the profit margins on iPods be WAY higher than we're lead to believe?
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
An emulator would probably only be useful for iPod developers. I think right now, the iPodlinux guys are the only non-Apple iPod developers, since there's no published way to run extra code on the Retail OS (native iPod OS.)
Unlike a GBA emulator, for example, there's no content for an iPod emulator to play that you can't already just play in your native desktop OS.
Yes, my colon is legal.
But I bought my kidney very hush-hush from the back of a gray van.
in otherwords, you want the hardware to do things for you because you're too lazy to maintain proper id3 tags.
Combining this story with the previous one:2 9/1815242&tid=217&tid=14
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/
and I for one welcome our new iPod overlords.
All your Sybase are belong to us.
Playing around and exploring is how science is done man! Most nobel prize winners were actually trying to find something other than what they found. All science is beneficial.
-Nathan
trip11(at)hotmail(dot)com
You say there have to be a point?
Jeez, you're not a geek!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I read the Google cache, and Google should hire him. If he doesn't already work there. This type of thinking is what Google is all about. I think. I'm not smart enough to be sure.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
No shit. But this isn't anything new. Slashdot is pretty much always behind on stuff like this, be it a few days or a week.
/. is your only source of news like this, you never know you're behind. Or, if you a wee bit smarter and read engadget, hackaday, osnews, etc you usually get the news when it comes out. And you thusly get to actually go to the site before it gets slashdotted.
It works out well- if
It's complex ecology, but it works. Slashdot it always behind, and I hope it stays that way. Otherwise, I won't be able to download the source, see the specs, etc etc without waiting another week.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Then you could play music from you desktop instead of you iPod, and play the iPod version of solitaire.
It's not about Linux, music, or the iPod.
It's about hacking.
It's like when an artist draws something on a napkin. Creative energy expands in every direction.
no, actually, the ipod browses its own little small database, which had ID3 data imported into it. i think thats how it works anyway. either way, it doesnt go file by file. it has a database itunes creates on it.
CLICK click CLICK CLICK
click
click click click
click click
CLICK
click CLICK
click CLICK click click
CLICK click CLICK
CLICK click
CLICK CLICK CLICK
click CLICK CLICK
Never let the lameness filter get in the way of a good joke, OK Taco?
...or those soon to be:
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20020616.html
Leave it to some meth-head to figure this crap out. :-P
Only because you are too stupid to realise that iPods running Linux cure Aids and cancer (but only in Penguins).
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Perhaps they can compile one that knows how to spell "kernel."
Tetris - I have a tiny dedicated Tetris keychain that cost me $15 eight years ago.
Text Editor - WORSE than cellphone keypad text entry.
DOOM - Ya, like that's gonna go. The iPod occasionally gets choppy sliding levels of the menu.
Gameboy Emulator - One button + scrollwheel does not a GB emu make. Also, go scrounge up an original Gameboy for $10 at a flea market or something.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
http://volcanokit.com/volcanokit3/recognition/
I'm sure plenty of users here have used WinAmp over the years. You've probably also used any number of different "plugins" for it. Some of my favorites are the ones that do "AGC" (Automatic Gain Control) on the playback audio. The better ones have settings for attack/release, min/max gain, etc. This process works to keep the playback volume relatively constant: Quiet passages are brought up, loud ones reduced.
It would be cool if the iPod/Linux software could incorporate such functionality, along with some of the other features of WinAmp, like the M3U playlists, etc. Imagine dumping your entire MP3 library AND WinAmp playlist(s) into the thing, then calling up the WinAmp emulator in Linux, and enjoying the crossfaded,random,volume-equalized music until the batteries croak.
Willie...
The iPod effectively has 5 buttons and a scroll wheel. Seems like a fine platform for a GB emu to me.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Get the program EasyTag for Linux, or run it in Mac with dports or fink. If all your songs conform to a filename standard, you can use EasyTag to automatically id3 tag your whole collection.
It works the reverse too. You can have it automatically rename files based on id3 tags. And unlike iTunes method of doing this, you can actually pick the folder/filename layout instead of their crappy unchangeable default. It's a sweet app.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Ya know, I damn near jumped on the "What the hell is it useful for?!" bandwagon. But the truth is, it's all in fun. Nothing wrong with enjoying something for what it is instead of for what it's not.
Besides, having Tetris on your iPod when it's all you've got isn't the worst thing in the world. I usually carry just my cell phone around even though I've got a GBA etc. Okay, my cell phone isn't going to replace my GBA or a PDA with 802.11, but if I don't carry those with me anyway, my cell phone is > 0.
"Derp de derp."
Haha, no. They're paying out the nose to the guy who came up with the 'white rounded box' idea.
Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. -Anonymous
Instead of sitting by idly for 213 minutes while the data transferred, he could have taken some of that time to implement compression, thus increasing throughput and decreasing the overall transfer time. :)
5 15142
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=137702&cid=11
On a serious note, that was an admirable (and true) hack. Although there were several potential routes to extract the bootloader (FireWire, iPod's normal file transfer mechanism, analog data out the headphone jack), he took the path of least resistance (and simplest implementation).
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Depends, I suppose, on what, if any, measures Apple took to prevent the ROM from being read out. I'm not sure that just putting software on a ROM qualifies as a copy-protection device. Now, if the ROM were encrypted and he broke the encryption ... that might be different. But I'm not a lawyer so there.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
They have some kind of communication channel which they used to get Linux on the iPod, but can't use that one to transfer the bootloader data to the PC?
Huh?
It might be worth trying FEC to help improve this kind of technique. I'm sure the processor could handle it at those kind of data rates.
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're not.
Why do people engrave the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin?
Sometimes doing something difficult but pointless is extremely satisfying.
Now, I must admit I'd be even more impressed if he managed to get Windows running on an IPod, but this is only the second article I've seen in a while that would even approach Slashdot's self proclaimed audience of hackers.
I would have thought it was obvious why he used Linux - to understand how to build a boot loader you need to either reverse engineer the OS, or have the source code. The former is rather more difficult for those of us who have not attained your god-like status.
I saw that at MCP a few years ago. Was pretty nifty, but it was during an opening so the space was too loud for the pictures to come through clearly.
You're forgetting to imagine what a Beowulf cluster of these babies could do!
In Korea, only old people imagine Beowulf clusters of Linux booting iPods, while in Soviet Russia, iPods linux boot you, and some iPods can even show pictures of Nathalie Portman and hot grits... in Japan. But all I wanted to know is if it will run NetBSD, you insensitive clod!
in case anyone hasn't seen it yet: http://www.albert-feller.de/mirror/piezo/soundofip od.htm
The Sony PSP...can't wait to see linux on it...
http://chrono.posterous.com/
there's a mirror: http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=137708&c id=11516682
Why didn't he use JTAG?
"Could the profit margins on iPods be WAY higher than we're lead to believe?"
What were you lead to believe? The retail price of the ipod is more than any other player in its MB range. Most iPods are purchased directly through apple. (some at BB, some through HP and its distributers. However I know for fact that HP distributers are required to sell it wholesale for no less than $270)
Either way, even assuming that the minimum price apple sells the ipod for is 270 for 20gb, that is still more expensive than the most expensive competitor's wholesale price.
Now, add to the fact that apple is also making money off iTunes, and apple sells more than any other individual competitor. and add to that that the iPod uses cheaper parts then their competitors... And you might get a reasonable picture of the order of margin apple sees in the ipod..
Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
is it worth 400$ and the possiblity of bricking it to get a less that ipod quality mp3 player?
You can't see it now, but the iPod linunx site states clearly that, to their knowledge, no one has bricked an iPod due to installing iPodLinux on it -- even since the long-ago development days.
In fact, iPodLinux's installer sets it up so you can dual boot into Linux and the Apple firmware, and you can make one the default. I installed this on my 1G and the other day, and it indeed works very, very easily. It is one of the more underrated hacks going on today, IMO.
Its sweet but does it ahve a point?
To satisfy your slashdotty interests: imagine you and a friend have iPods, and imagine you connect them with a firewire cable. You both boot into linux, transfer files, and reboot (back in to the Apple firmware). The use is left as an exercise to the hacker.
isn't using a cache REDUNDANT by definition?
Just asking.
Meh, not really because he isn't doing any modulation or demodulation. He is simply playing one sound if the bit is on, and another sound if the bit is off. This is very slow, but in this case it was the "The right tool for the job".
A true modem encodes data somewhat differently.
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem
— darco
How about using a scanner (or O-scope) to listen to the higher frequency signals.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
Thank you for your interest in the project! This is a temporary page until the Slashdot flood wears off. We love publicity, just not all at once.
(No, this site is not hosted on an iPod)
iPodLinux does not currently run on a 4g/mini/photo/U2.
To read nilss' story about decoding the 4th gen's flash using a beeping piezo, click here!
In the meantime, visit us in IRC on irc.freenode.net #ipodlinux! Ask davidc__ about 4g support, we dare you!
That free iPod in your sig, is it free as in beer or free as in running Linux?
There's no 'on' position on the Slacker switch!
Yes, BUT... to get Tetris onto your iPod, you're gonna have to kill the iPod OS.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
This isn't reverse engineering. This is hacking the system to get an output method and then dumping the bootloader, not reverse engineering the bootloader. To reverse engineer it would involve figuring out what must be in it indirectly. That doesn't take away from the coolness of the hack though.
Lasers Controlled Games!
What about "easily" playing aac files? I haven't tried the DRM breaking tricks. What if I just played a "fake" ipod on my linux box? I like the I-tunes store, I like my powerbook, I would like my Ipod on my linux laptop.
Looks like you could use it for other purposes as well, like an audio variant of a stealth mode steganography-like crypto file transfer.
Actually, there were two costumes.
In the first, some friends and I dressed up as adenosine tri-phosphate. I was the ribose part. We had lots of fun hurling the people dressed up as phosphors at people and saying that we had phosphorylated them. :P
My other costume was the "physicsphairy." I had a "wand of power" (dW/dt) a skirt with a bunch of hydrodynamics equations written on the back of it, a bikers jacket with a GIMP-ified physics phairy symbol, and a tiara with still more physics equations on it.
As sad and disturbed as that might sound to people who aren't as weird as me. . . .
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Get your iPOd Boot Loader here!
"WTF? I can't see anything on that shitty picture. It might be some not-Linux OS just as well. This is news? You are smart enough to port Linux but not smart enough to make a decent picture? This is fucking stupid, isn't it? Well, never mind, I think I'm gonna post it on my blog anyway, because it is related to Apple.
-CmdrTaco."
Is this really Taco?
the last comment on the page regarding the hack seems to come from someone we know.
WTF? I can't see anything on that shitty picture. It might be some not-Linux OS just as well. This is news? You are smart enough to port Linux but not smart enough to make a decent picture? This is fucking stupid, isn't it? Well, never mind, I think I'm gonna post it on my blog anyway, because it is related to Apple. -CmdrTaco. Comment by CmdrTaco -- 29/1/2005 @ 7:19 pm
If this comment is real, it's really flippant and immature. How can your site link to another site that has one your comments on it that sounds as if it came from a retarded l33t h4X0R.
Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity!
This is reminiscent of certain payphones and CC Whistles.... Kudos for thinking outside the box - I am honestly more impressed with this than just about any hack I'v seen in recent months. And as for functionality - Who cares? Doing it for the sake of doing it - thats where things like Linux and the whole open source movement are founded.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
Then please name one valid reason... Not some stupid reason..
And not something that could be done by simply opening up the EXISTING firmware..
Its a damned music player, it really doesnt need a 'real' OS shoved in it..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Linux-heads are always getting Linux to run in odd things like game consoles, phones, and now an MP3 player. But how about something REALLY amazing. Remotely installing Linux on Bill Gates' personal computer!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Why do people engrave the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin? Sometimes doing something difficult but pointless is extremely satisfying.
The head of a pin is not pointless...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
And presumably, you could play your iPod music on Linux and *BSD desktops. Seems like a cool and worthy goal.
The 'program' people might want to play on an emulated device would be that 'software' that makes music come out the headphone jack.
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
I'll have that young whippersnapper know that those of us who loaded up our home computers from cassette tape recorders could tell by the volume whether we would get a good load and even learn to tell when the load was about done for specific programs.
You're just making it more attractive for me to flash some plastic at the Apple Store, ya know...
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
The hardware should always do exactly what the Hacker wants it to do, so long as it's physically possible.
Are you new here??
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
- MusicBrainz
- MoodLogic
- QuickNamer
- MusicMagic Mixer
- UltraTagger
- FixTunes
- Tag&Rename
I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones I've heard of so far.MusicBrainz, MoodLogic, and QuickNamer (and maybe some others), actually take "fingerprints" of the music itself and compare it to an online database, just in case all the tag and filename information is wrong. MusicMagic Mixer automatically creates custom playlists of similar songs based on fingerprinting data.
I've never tried any of these programs myself, but just found out about them while web surfing. I don't really know how well they work. I found out about them initially when I came across this discussion and this article online a while back.
Given that his e-mail address ends in ".de", I'd say Apple is pretty much up the famous creek without the even more famous paddle. It's a little hard to enforce US law over there, although I can't say we don't try occasionally (which is, IMHO, dumb).
The head of a pin is not pointless...
Yes it is, Bunky. It's the other end that is not pointless.
Infuriate left and right
I hate it when I go to sites that /. has linked to and cant do anything because of the /. effect (Which is basicly a DDOS).
I remember a few months ago when Slashdot was talking about how Coral would stop this effect, yet still I have not seen one artical use Coral to save sites from the colossal bills and site shutdowns that /.ing causes.
http://www.scs.cs.nyu.edu/coral/
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/28/233025 2
Would one of the uses be playing OGG format music files now? Is that possible?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Good. I'm sick and tired of reading about DMCA abuse (and corresponding people abuse.) This guy pulled off what I consider a legitimate bit of reverse-engineering, and Apple can just go pound sand. If you don't want someone to figure out how your product works ... simply don't sell it on the open market and don't make any patent applications.
And, actually, we are trying to adjust the world scene so that we can effectively enforce U.S. law (or U.S.-derived law) "over there". It's called "harmonization" and I feel sorry for any governments (you listening, Australia?) that swallow the line we're feeding them. Europe, with the exception of Poland, has decided to go ahead with such stupidity all on their own.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Yeah, I use easytag. It's a great little program, but I'd like to just browse with the filesystem so that I don't have to mess with making an iTunes database. Gtkpod kinda bugs out a lot, and when it crashes, it will leave me with a phantom few gigabytes used (it writes tracks to the iPod and then updates the db after all of the tracks are written), and there is no real way to get rid of it short of reloading the whole iPod. This is usually really annoying, because when I update my iPod is usually when I'm about to leave anyway.
If this project would let me load a better program to play music (specifically a cue up feature, where while I'm listening to one song I could pick the next 3 or 5 or 10 and slide it back into my pocket) I'm on board. I hate making playlists, but I ride a train everyday for an hour and I'd like to just choose my next few songs and not have to hold my iPod in my hand and keep picking them.
in otherwords, you want the hardware to do things for you because you're too lazy to $PERFORM_X_TASK This is the reason that all programs are written. This is what computers are for. So yes, I do.
I heard a rumor of some guy out there hacking some version of Logic software onto his iPod and connecting it to a MOTU 828 firewire recording interface. Sounds dubious to me... but could we see something like this running Audacity?
A portable high quality recording setup this compact (maybe with the MOTU Traveller instead) would be awesome.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
I suppose if you're running a platform with no iTunes support. Seems like it might be more productive to clone iTunes or remove the DRM.
Hm. Sounds like it's transmitted AM instead of FM.
:)
That's one thing I learned is very prone to background noise. Neat no less.
What if each column was coded so that frequency = y-position, amplitude = intensity and entire columns were transmitted at a time? Would sound very weird at least
how can you blast someone that's obviously creative and doing some tinkering in their spare time. why not go after 99% of the globe that sits on their ass drinking beer watching sports on TV. maybe if some of them had some motivation the world would be a better place.
don't pick on someone that has a hobby that exercises their mind. go after all the people wasting their brains.... or the ones that take financial aid to go to college just to drink and fuck off for 4 years and end up doing some worthless job shuffling papers.
Imagine a D pad diagram at the top of the screen, taking up a small amount of space.One of those arrows would be highlighted, indicating which direction is selected. To go in that direction, press and hold the center button. To change your direction, simply rotate the scroll wheel.
Then the back and play buttons are the A and B respectively. The most comfortable way to play would be to hold the iPod with your left hand. Place your left thumb on play and your left index finger on back. Place your right index finger on the middle button, and use the scroll wheel with your right thumb.
Of course it's nowhere near as nice as a real gameboy, but it would DEFINITELY be playable on some games. Especially games that don't require all the controls at once.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
I found gtkpod buggy too, but ever since I upgraded to whichever version is currently in Debian unstable, I haven't had any problems with it.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Cool, I'm running sarge with sid pinned, i'll try the one in sid.
No, if you actually read documentation instead of trolling, you would find that the iPod has two processors, one of which decodes mp3, aac, etc, in hardware, which linux currently cannot access. What they're doing right now is running an mp3 software decoder on the non dedicated cpu.
Saying that the iPod is too weak then, is sort of like not having a video driver for a geforce 9 in linux and claiming it's too weak to run doom 3.
Tired of legitimate data sources? Try UNCYCLOPEDIA
To quote from the site, which I somehow managed to get into:
They do say they are working on it, and I'm sure this was a big help. Here's what they say they have done so far:
So, you can boot Linux, but they're still a ways away from "running" it.
R.Mo
Sorry, but:
What exactly is wrong with the browser they have? I have about 5000 songs, probably 400 or 500 different artists. I have no problem using their browser at all. I'm curious what your grief is with it.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
I am sure we would be more likely to come up with a cure for cancer if the barriers to entry for research weren't so damn high. Last time I checked, you can't buy a person in the US to expirement on. Much less buy a person for $400. Even if you did have a brilliant drug idea, you would need millions to be able to try it out because of the FDA. So I say to you, if you want a cure to cancer, find some biologist in his mom's basement and let him do experiments on you.
"brxref
Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are all thinking about how this might affect the PS2, Gamecube and Xbox. Ok... Microsoft is probably NOT thinking about it in any useful way, they're probably trying to contact their legal staff to see what this means, and then they're going to go yell at all their subcontractors.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the DMCA. Reverse-engineering, undermining security, hacking. I wonder when the IpodLinux webserver will be confiscated by the FBI?
-- No sig for you!
That's what you get for running a server on a Mac mini :)
Apache on iPodLinux!
put windows ce on it.
This sig is o Unfunny o Funny
Free as in beer, but even beer isn't free since it requires time to acquire it.
Obviously!
How do iPods & Linux have ANYTHING to do with medicine?
They don't.
Are you retarded?
Absolutely!
A little screen, lack of searching, no playlists in playlists, and no listing of file names, to name a few. For almost all my thousands of MP3s on the device I have a different album, song, and artist. Try looking though your song list of 5000 for one song. It takes a long time and I find it annoying.
For most people the browser they have is great. For me it isn't. On my computer I still use a directory structure for my songs. I can see 50 directories at once and can have directories in directories. I also use a database for ID3 tags that allows searching and will show me the file names.
Sure, I could edit all the ID3 tags of all my songs, but not only would that take forever, I like the info they currently have. For most people the apple iPod Browser is great but not for all. If the ipod was an open platform for development then people could "scratch their itch" without resorting to running Linux, but Apple has made it clear that you should be happy with what they give you and if you are not, then you are doing something wrong. Well, I for one paid a lot of money for my ipod and it fails to do what I want well so I'm going to support people that can change that for me.
Anyway, that is my issue with it in a nutshell. For your sake, I'm glad you don't find the browser as annoying as I do. I just wish apple would open the platform so we could both be happy.
One thing is it doesn't handle compilations correctly - it creates a new artist for every song on the album.
I reckon apple will fix it one day, but until then something else would be a good stopgap.
Actually, that was it. Finding software for the TS on those days was almost impossible for us living outside of the US, so we tried to "backup" the tapes using regular audio tape to tape methods, but somewhere in time tapes started to come up "protected" and couldn't be copied that easily.
:-) that method proved to be more reliable than anything else to backup tapes.
After taking many tries to backup the Frogger game, I remembered the CPU frequency was in the range of the short-wave receiver on my boombox, and it kind of sounded pretty much like the program tapes. So I said "what the heck" and recorded the CPU sound while loading the original tape.
To my surprise, the backup tape worked perfectly
I used to drool for hours looking at the TS ads before my dad went to the US and bring me not one, but TWO!! (it's a bargain! just $99!! keep one, sell the other!)
That little black thing taugth me to program. I even did some z80 assembler before jumping to the all-mighty C64.
Those memories and feelings are with me forever...
I remember reading somewhere that the new iPods and the Rio Karma have very similar CPUs made by the same company etc. If the Karma can play OGG than theoreticly the ipod (newest) can as well. Then again, this may not have been a reliable source of information, and I can not provide a link.
It would be awesome for people like, say, Creative, who want to be able to play Fairplay files, or synch to iTunes, wouldn't it?
GPL Deconstructed
harmonization = everybody agree on a common way to do things.
But in practice, the USA military-industrial-entertainment complex says to foreign lawmakers: "You make your laws just like our laws, or we stop selling our products in your territory. How would your citizens like that?"
Just make the artist for the entire disc "Various", make the track titles "Bandname - Songname" and make the compilation title the album title.
I'm on top of my game like I'm standin' on Xbox.
On an old computer 15 years ago (it was not really a PC yet), I had no sound output and wanted to experiment with sound processing. so I used the 5" floppy drive's LED which I could blink up to about 100 kHz, in front of which I put a photodiode connected to my amplifier's input. I had to turn of the lights to remove the 50 Hz background noise, but then I could hear the sounds really well. I even played using a PWM code to be able to output analogue levels.
It was funny to do all this when computers were not as equipped as they are today. Now we're just users and nothing more.
I assume someone's going to try this with the iPod shuffles.
I guess they'll have to use the LED lights to blink the signal out. Hell, they'll probably have to use the LEDs to blink the interface out too.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Just because something works in a way acceptable to you doesn't mean that it works in a way acceptable to everyone. I have a friend who, the minute he gets a new computer, changes the window title font to this absolutely unreadable thing. Why? He likes it.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
Compare device size/weight and size of the hard drive (I'm assuming you have a HD-based player) to the Ipod. Consider also that the Ipod was not designed to run ogg. The proc in your player may have been. Your comparison completely inept.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
Not entirely true, I've seen third party voice recorders for iPod, devices that let you copy digital camera film to the iPod HD, and some nifty tool that lets you use your iPod as a TV remote.
I give up, whats the sig?
Hey, maybe you can hack a dolphin.
Fork bomb. Brings *nix systems to their knees real fast.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Jay: Silent Bob's an electrical genius. He won the science fair in eight grade by turning his mom's vibrator into a cd player using chicken wire and shit. Mother fucker's like MacGyver! No, mother fucker's better than MacGyver!
The guy could have got a far higher transfer rate if he'd used an error-correcting code - he would have been able to recover from the occasional bit error, so he could have turned the bit rate up much higher.
He doesn't even mention using a checksum, but I guess there are checksums built into zlib...
Xenu loves you!
Color me troll, but this guy sort of makes me not want to cure cancer or aids... just in case he might get it.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
That's amazing! Does that mean that any ROM on any device can be read this way?
This was not a hack for reading data from the ROM. Apparently, he already had the code for that, so this was not a problem.
What he was missing was a way of transmitting the data to another device. The piezo hack solved this problem.
This hack will consequently only be useful for other devices if you:
- have already found a way of reading the data from the ROM.
- have not found an easier way of transmitting these data to another device.
- have an option of creating a sound output from the device through software.
I don't know how frequently this scenario will occur. My guess is "very rarely".
The only thing I want to do with my iPod is play music -- but the iPod software is nowhere near as usable as I'd like it to be.
(I've written about it -- it's something of an obsession.)
I'm keeping an eye on iPod Linux because I think eventually Podzilla could become a better MP3 collection browser than the Apple firmware. Apple aren't going to fix it: they already have my money.
There's a difference between "Normalization" and "AGC" (or "Compresion"). Normalization scans the entire audio file, looking for the highest peak. It then reduces (or increases) the volume *evenly* over the entire file. It is the same as adjusting the volume control, then not touching it until the next track.
"AGC" or "Compression" is different. It adjusts the volume dynamically as the file is playing. It makes instantaneous adjustments, up or down, to keep the overall average volume constant.
Now, back to the original idea: With the Linux OS on the iPod, users won't necessarily *need* to go to iTunes. They can upload/download files from their own PC, including their own, already edited, M3U playlist files that they've already been listening to in WinAmp. They won't have to "reinvent the wheel".
Willie...
iPods ignore the fairplay DRM on iTunes .m4p aac encoded files. There are already methods out there to get around the encryption, but with the iPod firmware the possibilities are rendered much more elegant. In other words, the iPod firmware contains a backdoor to apple's DRM: a backdoor now in the hands of hackers.
Also, I suspect the above will make Apple a little peevish, and might incur the wrath of Apple legal. The legal status of these actions under the DMCA is unclear to me, but I suspect it's not favorable.
when the thing runs xp so I can use that wonderful mediaplayer thing...
flinging poop since 1969
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
totally crazy, but a great idea and a great hack.
Maybe beeing this creative could push Steve into the direction to give us the ROM binaries because we'll get them anyway...
No you don't -- you can dual-boot. And yes, you really can.
The 4G iPods have two processors -- with just the one processor of the 3G and below, you can nearly play OGG. Therefore, I conclude that yes, you will be able to.
A little screen
Although I am all for installing Linux to an iPod, somehow I don't think installing it will change the size of the screen.
before doing something like this will get you sued 9 way to hell or basicly slamed in jail for bypassing a copy protection system?
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
I have a suggestion. How about changing the Genre (or Composer) of each song to the first letter of the Artist or Album. That way you'll have an alphabetical sorting method available. If you're on a Mac, you could write an Applescript to automate the process. Even without Applescript, would be simple enough to select all the Artists beginning with 'A,' get info and then change the Genre to 'A.'
Out of curiosity, why do you have thousands of different artists and albums?
A screenshot of an iPod Shuffle with Linux on it! Or, imagine Linux on the Shuffle with text-to-speech to do everything. An image viewer "red pixel, zero comma zero" or just anything and typing with however many buttons there are.
Make your computer faster: rm -rf
And sometimes you only know if something is physically possible if you try it.
Without that spirit, no DVD playing on Linux, to name only one thing.
Go hackers.
What would the "correct" behavior be?
As far as I'm concerned, compilations should be filed as Album: Comp, under each and every artist appearing on the compilation - exactly the behavior iTunes provides.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
I think that's the correct behavior, myself - what do you think the correct behavior *should* be for compilations?
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
I WAS CURIOUS WHAT HIS ISSUE WAS.
This is not saying "There is no issue". It is saying "I don't see issues; what do you see as an issue, because I would like to know, because maybe I would run into it someday". Jesus, way to be an asshole when someone asks an honest question.
I like the browser. Other people may not. I am curious *why* they don't like it. Is that a fucking crime? No. Maybe you should give me a "I don't like it *because*" answer, not a bullshit "It sucks".
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
I'll agree - if your MP3s are not fully and properly tagged, it doesn't work very well at all. This is why I do full and proper tagging; it's worth the effort, as it makes the browser work that much better.
However, even if you just have song name, artist, and album in the tag (all you really need) - why scroll through the full song list when you can drill through Artist->Album->Song to locate it? It seems like you're intentionally making this harder than it needs to be. Unless each and every one has a different artist and album, which seems unlikely, there's no reason to go through the Songs->All list to find a specific track.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Nilss made some OGG files of the dump: "rather a test" and one "recorded in the iPod Recording Studio".
$ echo "ceci n'est pas une pipe" | sed -Ee 's/(eci n|pas )//g'