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This has been a really difficult project for me, but to sum it all up, here is what i want to do:

I have a BMORN BM888 MP4 player, and i want to install Linux + FireFox (maybe just XUL Runner) to it. This is so that i can write custom DHTML applications (Client Side DHTML apps) which do not require a network connection.

I am more than certain that this can be done, however it will be a bit tricky.

This is what we know so far:

it has:

CC1600 CPU (it's ARM9)
TF Card (up to 32 GB)
8 GB Flash Disk
7 inch Touch-Screen

So far nobody has managed to hack Linux onto this device. However...after doing a lot of research and nearly endless Google web searches, i think this actually could be done without so much effort (big maybe).

I found something called a Cube B53WiFi which interestingly enough, seems to be vVERY similar to all of these CC1600-based PMPs with touch screen on the market now.

the B53WiFi has the following hardware:

4.2 inch Touch Screen
CC1600 CPU
8 GB flash disk
TF card
WiFi

etc..

From what i can tell, the hardware is nearly identical to the BMORN BM88 MP4 player, except that the Touch Screen on the BMORN is bigger, and the BMORN doesn't have a WiFi inside it.

SO i was thinking.....if they both have a CC1600 CPU, and we know that all the CC1600 based devices use a HXF firmware image, then that would mean that it should be possable to use the HXF extraction tool to Extract, modify, and Repack the HXF firmware to work on other CC1600 devices.
So, i downloaded the firmware from 51Cube.com and OMG!... i found there was an HXF file in the b53wifi.rar firmware file.
Unfortunately that day, i forgot to bring my tumb-drive to work, and....that particular office computer was scheduled for removal from our office that day. So i figured,...ok i'll just go home and redownload it.
When i got home to redownload it....the file is still there on the 51cube.com website, however the contents inside the b53wifi.rar file were completely different. It seems to be an updated version of the firmware, which is cool. But...all of the USBsys.inf files are having headers of the JZ47xx.inf and so on inside them. Nothing about ChinaChip. S**t!

So, this kinda sucks....now i have all of these .BIN files, and no HXF file....

After a lot of googling and testing, i found out that the Firmware.bin file in the b53wifi firmware file is a SquashFS file.
I managed to find a copy of SquashFS Win32 tools, and uncompressed the Firmware.bin file. It yields a very common looking Linux System *grin*

However, i'm not exactly sure how to get this 28 MB SquashFS file into the Firmware. I also know that there is a Initial Program loader and Secondary Program loader binary files that also must be loaded into HXF based devices. I'm not sure how to identify which ones are which. Just browsing through the RootFS directory, i can see a LOT of things that could be stripped out of the Linux system to make it a more lean running OS. For example, because there's no WiFi hardware in the BMORN device, all of the networking components could be taken out of it. And so could a lot of the binaries for configuring hard disks and so on.
Although, if the OTA funciton in the BMORN is capable of being a USB Host, then maybe we could get a WiFi dongle working on it (compile in some USB support *grin*). Just some ideas though.

So, i think as soon as we can figure out how to do this, we can begin to Mod these CC1600 MP4 devices for Linux. And i know there are LOT of them out there. For example, i think the best looking ones are the Onda vx797hd and the Ainol v9000hdx.

If we can get a very basic Linux system on to these, and FireFox (or some other compliant browser) we can make these things VERY very extendable and useful devices.

For example, i've written a very highly-functional Flashcard App in DHTML (firefox code) for studying Chinese Language (could be adapted to european languages or other complex-script languages also) and i'm currently working on a DHTML app that will replace a papernotebook. Sort of like TiddlyWiki's (tiddlywiki.com) Wiki software, except it has a Text-Formatting Toolbar, and an integrated Picture drawing app (like MsPaint) so that you can make use of the touch screen. To be useful, it really doesn't need a Network connection. It just needs good software

So, for a basic system for this MP4 device, i want to put a very minimal system, stripped down to almost nothing, except for what is required to run FireFox.
I'm more than willing to use my BMORN MP4 player as a guinea pig
^_^

more importantly, we know that this is an ARM9 CPU, so.... getting a Linux ToolChain for ARM9 isn't difficult *grin* So porting an app to this linux distro won't be difficult at all.

Hello, welcome to MP4nation! This is basically the most awesome forum there is. And, you have just made my day ( That would be awesome if we could have Linux on these devices. Absolutely awesome). That's two good things.
OK, I first of all I am no where near where I could be in understanding this post but I will try to help as much as possible.
There is a guide somewhere (Don't know off the top of my head) that will help you on this site. If you ask Maderin1 nicely it is very probable you will get some help. There is also an HXF packer on this site.
I'm not really being much help right now ( If it weren't so early in the morning I would have gotten the links), but there are numerous people on this site who could be.
Good luck in all your endeavours!

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interesting project - good luck in this
look also at the linux projects for the onda vx777 player as that has been done, that player is based on ingenics CPU and as you have seen the CC chips point references to the ingenics stuff, this is what the JZ means, ingenics use JZ47XX names for their chips and it has been long thought that CC are getting their chips from ingenics but never been proved, indeed the vx777 players firmware was done by CC anyway, so anyway you may find something useful in that poast as both rockbox and linux have been ported to the vx777

not sure about the new Ainol though (v9000), ainol are sochip player and thei latest uses the latest version (agaiun we dont know where sochip chips originate from)

good luck in this

_________________

• Phone: Samsung Galaxy Mini / Huawei G300 (just ordered)
• Fav App: Strava, IMDB, Jewels
• Portable Audio: currently none
• Headphones PC: Brainwavz HM5

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your very welcome ^_^

i think maybe mandarin1 and i are in the same country - haha.
i live here in Shenzhen (near HongKong)..i don't know about him though. And yes, if he's chinese we both speak the same language *grin*. I'm not chinese though, i'm from america....just another tech-geek in asia i suppose

Anyways, yea, i already have the HXF packer. I also have SquashFS tools for Win32.

inorder to update the firmware on a CC1600 device you need 3 files:

Firmware.HXF (the main Firmware image)
IPL.bin (initial program loader)
SPL.bin (secondary program loader)

Oh, and just as something to make you a little more excited...
I took my BMORN apart, and i found the manufacturer of the Touch LCD pannel. And yes that company ALSO makes a 10.2 inch touch screen. We can probably guess that company uses the same chipsets for all of their Touch-Resist LCDs.

So another idea is to try to mod my MP4 with a 10.2 inch Screen *grin*

umm..yea, that would make it a Linux TabletPC, right?

mm .. i am in UK not hongkong but raz is in hongkong and maybe you can work for him he is putting together a new player and good programmers are hard to find, he goes to Shenzen alot to the factories ... never know - cant be much help im afraid, all a bit above my head nowadays but i will help all i can

_________________

• Phone: Samsung Galaxy Mini / Huawei G300 (just ordered)
• Fav App: Strava, IMDB, Jewels
• Portable Audio: currently none
• Headphones PC: Brainwavz HM5

-------------------------------------------------------------

• MP4nation webstore: Here

Well...one thing that would help me a LOT.....would be as much information about the CC1600 cpu that i can. I guess this is sort of a research project though.
For example, ... where can i find a CC1600 Device Emulator? If i had that, it could really speed things up a bit.
I suppose right now, i would need to know some more about the IPL and SPL of the MP4 player...
For right now, i think that if i can get the correct IPL and SPL put in there, getting linux to boot will just require me to upload the Firmware.bin file directly to the Device, in the same place where the DeviceName.HXF goes.
I'm usually on MSN or Yahoo if anyone wants to chat with me about it there (i like realtime ^_^)

One thing that might be interesting to note is that.... If you really want to trim FireFox down, you can get it down to about 1 MB...which i think is quite impressive. In terms of performance, it will perform quite well.
Actually, it's not firefox, but it's MiniMo (built for Win32).
The linux system for the b53wifi is 28 mb total.


I'm going to spend the rest of tonight analyzing the files in the b53wifi firmware archive. I'll be putting the results at google documents here:

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgp7xg46_260hhh6pbcq

Daomingjin nice you want to do something with the cc1600 chipset and Linux, but you want for Linux a touch based player so the VX535/545 and 797 are not going to work out

_________________
In the pocket....
- Cowon C2 / Pasen Touchmusic / Mobiblu DHH-100 / JXD 300 / Ramos T13 / Cherry M-728
- Fiio E3 / Fiio E6
- Brainwavz B2 / Teac ZE-1000 / Soundmagic Pl-50

... and as a gift received Apple Ipod Nano (Gen. 6)

why not?

the Cube B53Wifi has the CC1600 chipset in it and has linux.
Why not some other CC1600 devices.
I don't need it to have an internet connection.
It just needs to be able to load a web browser. Which doesn't take much CPU power at all.

any reasons would be well complimented ^_^


Also, as the BMORN BM888 can be picked up in Shenzhen for about 300-400 RMB, it would make a very Cheap Linux toy. I don't know about the other Onda players though. I did see the Onda VX797HD, and i think it would be amazing with Linux and FireFox on it.
I read somewhere that the CC1600 CPU is around 400 Mhz, so it should be capable of displaying DHTML apps (clock, calender, notebook, HTML ebook reader..etc..)
I've already tested these apps on my WM6 device with XUL Runner, and they run quite well..However the 3.5 inch screen on my PDA phone is too small to make full use of those apps that i developed.

Here's a quick question for someone though...What exactly is a "Flash MP4" player.
Is the whole interface a .SWF file or something?
I would possiably consider recoding my apps in Flash, if the MP4 could actually run the new Flash App.
It's a pain in the f***ing a** but...it's do able. Maybe more simple than putting Linux on it.
Though...putting linux on a MP4 is a WHOLE lotta bragging rights ^_^

hehe