I'm back... With a little request.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Hey everyone, i haven't been here for quite a while. Hey Admin, hope you're doing fine. I like the new look of the site, great job!

I'd need a little help here. I just grabbed about a dozen 1.8" chipods for $2 a pop. The batteries are dead, i'll see what gives after recharging them, right now only one powers on and it stays stuck on the famous hourglass. I'm sure they are V9 devices so i would appreciate some firmware... The guy i bought them from said he would swap flash chips between devices and some would start afterwards, so i'm sure they are all the same version.

I have a bare board in front of me and it says: 0712 K131H2V1M 0UT070316, chipset is ACU7513, screen is QSC018-02 REV B ROHS. I'll post a picture of the actual devices if needed... I would really appreciate if you could tell me what utils there are for those players nowadays, maybe obtaining the firmware from one and just reflashing all the rest with that dump is possible. After i recharge their batteries i'll come with updates.

Thanks for your patience and keep up the good work.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Okay, update. I have three chipods that do power up. Two are stuck on the blue hourglass, the third lights up with a black screen (backlight on but nothing on it), then after about 30 seconds it shuts down. Oh and there's a 4th that lights up briefly then goes back to sleep, but that's a different board inside and i don't feel like messing with it.

Let's hope i'll be able to find some FW.

[lolita]

The only connectivity I know that is close is K138H which has display on CE5, reset A1, A0 for cmd/data, and A2 for the backlight. That CE5 display is going to be a slight problem as most have it on CE3. Check with s1giveio whether you can turn the backlight on/off via A2, and we can proceed from there to figure out the rest and find what firmware load you'll need.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Originally Posted by lolita

The only connectivity I know that is close is K138H which has display on CE5, reset A1, A0 for cmd/data, and A2 for the backlight. That CE5 display is going to be a slight problem as most have it on CE3. Check with s1giveio whether you can turn the backlight on/off via A2, and we can proceed from there to figure out the rest and find what firmware load you'll need.

Thanks. Some of the players have different screens, there's two main types of screens across the lot and a third solitary one. The other common type of screen reads: 015-ATC-BLA140-year-month-date. Motherboard is the same. I've gotten a hold of the chipset datasheet and tested them all electrically and only one has the chipset shorted so i'm quite sure it's just a matter of bad FW on all of them. But unfortunately i broke the two boards that did power on by swapping too many flashes... The traces are just too sensitive.

Oh and they have a non-standard USB port as well which makes it a pain to work with. I'll give them a more in-depth look next week.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Alright, it's on. The one which lit up blank was recognized as an unformatted USB drive. It formatted fine and i'm able to copy stuff to it, so in the worst case i have a 1GB flash drive in the shape of a MP4 player. Gonna mess around with s1giveio now.

Edit: I followed this thread: FW 4 iPod Nano 3G clone -ZX-6302L-TLSTK V2.0 ACU7515

I typed in the exact same commands in s1giveio v1.4 (the one that you uploaded on rapidshare). Results confirm that the backlight is on A2, but at the end of the procedure in post 19 i get 00 00 same as systembug gets in his post 20. Any help on that?



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Edit 2: I tried backing up the existing firmware with s1clone but i would get the semaphore timeout error after about 23MB. Tested on two laptops... After testing another two players which i could never get out of ADFU mode, i found one where the flash chip looked like it broke loose from the soldering on one side. I soldered the flash back, applied power, and...

IT POWERED UP!!!! I have ONE FULLY FUNCTIONING CHIPOD! Now time to dump that firmware by whatever means possible.

Edit yet again: It's almost 5am but it was worth the wait - another one recovered! Let's take it step by step shall we?

I used s1clone to dump the "soul" of the working player. Fortunately i found my way around that stupid semaphore error, and that is - use USB 1.1 ports. It'll make things sloooooowwww, but it'll work. I quickly found that my old crappy Pentium III isn't up to the task at running stable for the 2-3 hours needed to get an image from the player (bad motherboard), and my laptops have no useful options in the BIOS so it was time for plan B. That is, booting up the main computer and disabling USB 2.0 in the BIOS. That seemed to work a treat, and the firmware dump completed in a little under two hours.

I then soldered the cable to the device that would start up with a black screen but get into removable disk mode (yes i still don't have a proper cable to go with them, damn Chinese not using miniUSB), and instructed s1clone to flash it with the firmware i had just dumped. I left verification off, because i was sure it would take a LONG LONG TIME if i verified too. The flash completed in about 3.5 hours. And what do you know... The player booted up and everything works fine. The only problem is that neither of the players plays nice with USB 2.0 ports (copying is very slow and unresponsive). I don't blame them since my makeshift cable is only rated for USB 1.1 and it's longer than needed too. So, now time for some sleep, and tomorrow i'll be hunting for cables to go with those things. Well, if i can find miniUSB ports i think i'd be better off hacking those into the players.

Then it'll be a matter of figuring out how to kick the other players out of ADFU mode so they can be spoon-fed this clean firmware i got. The only computer i can install the ADFU drivers on is the unstable Pentium III, since all other PCs in this house run 64-bit, and mom's P4 which runs win7 32 for some reason does not recognize the chipods at all. Maybe it's just my crappy cable, i'll see when i buy new ones tomorrow. Worst-case scenario - either get my lazy ass to fix the PIII motherboard, or drop a spare hard drive in my main computer and install XP 32-bit on that. Oh wait, there was that thing that booted a live XP from a CD. I forgot how it's called but i think i have it somewhere, i think i'll be able to use that.

Oh, and... The dump will be getting uploaded tomorrow for anyone else who might need it.

[lolita]

s1clone should be able to write to flash in hard ADFU mode.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Originally Posted by lolita

s1clone should be able to write to flash in hard ADFU mode.

Yes it works, but on one of the players it reported something of the like "no flash chip detected" yesterday. I found the reason behind that today - the flash chip wasn't soldered properly on one side just how it was on the first working player. I'll make sure the chip gets soldered properly and see what s1clone has to say today.

Edit: Two more players recovered and another one is on the way. My friend suggested i use that VmWare XP i had installed on my main computer - i had totally forgotten about that, i used it to flash cellphones. What do you know, it worked like a charm for the players in ADFU!

There is one problem with one of the players though - the backlight does not turn on. I have tried another (known good) screen on it, taken from one of the boards i've messed up. No luck with that either. Could the backlight driver circuit be fried, or could it just be a slight difference in the firmware? lolita, if you could help me with some more backlight initialization commands that i can try, i'd be grateful. Also... Any knowledge on the voltage level that the backlight operates at? I might be able to hack together a separate circuit that fits inside the player.

And one more question. The devices have a second flash chip slot. If i solder another flash there, will it be picked up, or will the firmware need to be modified to gain knowledge of it? There will be a few flashes left over from the damaged boards so i wonder if i could make them 2GB players.

[lolita]

Does it have a different board ID? The connectivity might be different.

2x1GB should be supported. See S1MP3 Wiki - How to add/change a memory chip for more information.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Nope, all board IDs are the same. Also i have discovered that all screens have the same serial number printed on the flex cable, it's only the codes on the sides screens themselves that differ. I think the backlight driver on that board is blown (no voltage on the backlight pins). I also have one recovered player that won't power the screen at all, but i'm suspecting damaged LCD, i haven't given that one an in-depth look yet.

Hmm, so 2x 1GB might work eh? I have tried 1x 2GB and it didn't work, s1clone crashes with "cannot read from the specified device" halfway thru the flash. Btw, i managed to ressurect one of the boards i messed up with a little surgery and patch a 2GB chip onto it. But now i have to remove it and drop a 1GB in again... Let's hope i won't break the board worse than it already is, it's the only board left that i'm 100% it works, as it used to power up to hourglass before removing its original 1GB flash and messing a trace up.

Edit: Yup, broke the board for good. It sure sucks not having a hot air rework station... I'll see what i can get out of that one which won't show anything on the screen at all and i'm done. I'll be selling the ones that work, and next week another batch of 20 or so should be coming in. Those will likely have a higher rate of success since now i know what NOT to do. Maybe the profit that i get from them will be enough to buy me a hot air station, if so, i'll be in for some fun.