current status on Linux loading

[mce2222]

the good news is that Linux can be loaded from the IPTV bootloader. it does start up correctly and it is fully usable.
network works, usb works... dvb-t does not work due to missing drivers.

the bad news is that the uCodes (the internal CPU programs that manage the audio/video decoding) cannot be loaded.
the error is always "input/output error" without any more hints.

without the uCodes, it is quite useless to run Linux on the box, unless you want to use it as a router or NAS. however that is not recommended because the box has very bad network performance   and even worse HDD performance.

the only chance that is remaining is to prevent the IPTV bootloader from starting and upload and start YAMON/Linux from JTAG.

The bootloader start-prevention is easy to do, as it only needs a small change to the flash so that the signature breaks.

however the starting from JTAG is not so easy. I tried to do it, but for some reason it does not work as expected.

[jimjack]

Thats looks like interessint.

Can you explain the flash modification? Do you have a little docu about that?

Thanks.

Steffen

[Herman]

apols for jumping straight in but are the ucodes available which you cannot load correctly or are they locked away with the nix sdk for people willing to pay for access to them ?

seems something of a catch 22 at present.  a nix build would be legally sound but significantly more effort but run much better in time, whereas modding c# is easy(er) but remains under the cloud of bt(n the uk) ownership regarding copyright

[mce2222]

the ucodes can be extracted from firmware updates of SMP based media players.. like the PopcornHour or Dune HD

so technically those files are not licensed for your device and therefore illegal.
modding the current software that is on the box anyway is the more legal option

actually a new c# application can be created from scratch, so there are no copyright problems at all.

its a bit paradox that using Linux causes licensing problems.. but thats how it is.

[Herman]

hmm kinda ironic then.  I'd seen that a few devices seem to have the same smp cpu with linux os and that the main video drivers were the only parts not covered by the gpl and seen you posting regarding this on a few places i was looking yesterday.

With that in mind then, it makes sense that a common decision is made for which direction dev work is going to take as i think its going to be very hard and be a while for any results can be seen which can resemble a media player platform from scratch.
Least then, as many people who are playing with this hardware can be all working in the same direction.

[mce2222]

I still havent figured out how the wince platform sets the uCodes, or how it accesses the DSPs. otherwise it would probably be possible to use the wince uCodes also for Linux.

anyway. all that hardware access is done be the dlls, and those dlls can be reused with a new c# application.
so that simplifies the developement a lot, but it also restricts the flexibility.

before a new application can be created, it would be a good start to analyse all the DLL functions.

[mphilipp]

This sounds at least like a plan.

Using the WinCE libraries on Linux with some wrapper around. Or did I get it wrong?

Would also be legally not that complicated as of using the software from e.g. NMT without being licensed.

If this is true, what would be the next steps or how can I / we help?