The IHTOOM player

[ghost0001]

So recently I purchased a MP4 player from a local shop on my base in Iraq. I have searched all over the internet for anything about my player. It seems after a week and a half of searching I could not find anything that remotely looked like mine. Well, yesterday I had found a thread in this forum about a player similar to mine. Well, after searching this forum for an IHTOOM thread I thought I would start one.

This is what my player looks like:


CheckUDisk V5.0 says:
Sunplus SPCA536
Name: Sunplus SPCA536 (USB1.1)
VID&PID: Vid_04fc&Pid_5361
VendorID:
ProductID: PMP
Product Revision: DVG_
Vendor Description: Sunplus Co Ltd
Product Description: Sunplus SPCA536
Serial Number: 01.00.00

Specs:
512 Internal NAND flash memory
1.3 MP camera
Plays movies in .asf format
Plays audio in .mp3 format
Reads .txt files under ebooks
Has an alarm clock
Digital Video Recorder - records in .asf
Audio recorder
AV in/out
Plays NES games - not compatible with all NES games
SD card with contra and other 8bit rip-offs (cannot be read by my computer)

What I have encountered:
After trying about all the NES games I have it plays very few. My 512 SD card I use for music sometimes is not recognized by the player. I have to shut down and power up the device to get it to see the card. I cannot read what version firmware I have nor can I rip it with s1fx.

The boot screen says IHTOOM. I have ran across a web page that sells this device and calls is model MN860. I have been able only once to change the boot screen completely by accident. All attempts to get into this device have failed. If anybody has any information about this device please post or pm me. Thank you in advance.

[ghost0001]

UPDATE *15 SEP 07*

Well to no avail, i cannot seem to dump the firmware of this sunplus chip. I can't seem to find any support around the forums for this. I have tried multiple programs with failure.

On another note I have found this player not to be everything I had expected it to be. I think if I would have known about this site or even others first I would have purchased something else. Well, at least I know what my next PMP will be. I've already got my sights on a GP2X. As for an MP3 player, I am sticking with my HCT 512 MB w/SD slot. So, if anybody is in the market for this player and wants to fiddle with it, drop me a line. I'll see what i can do.

Found the same player on UXCELL, however it has some differences.
http://www.uxcell.com/cyclone-pmp-po...ge-p-8728.html
Anybody know anything about this player?

[lattesurf]

ghost0001 , i've ordered the cyclone last week, and probably would be expecting it sometime either this coming week or early next week. i'll do review on it when i've meddled with it.

[techt]

I have one of these that has no branding. I uploaded a couple pics of mine to the gallery section here. Mine is nearly the same as yours except mine doesn't have an alarm clock, and records video to 3GP format, not ASF as yours does. It does play nearly all the verified good NES ROMs I've thrown at it, and many but not all of the ROMs which had not been verified as good. Mine didn't come with SD card nor games, but I have been able to use SD and MMC cards I already have which are FAT32 formatted. I tested it with a 128 MB MMC, and SD cards of various sizes from 64MB to 2GB and it read them all fine. Also, it doesn't support hot-pluging of SD or MMC cards. You do have to power off the device before inserting or removing cards. From what I can tell, the Sunplus chipset is based on a ARM9 core. I haven't gotten mine open yet (removing the four screws on the back still didn't allow me to open the case, will have to get a guitar pick and see if that helps), but I hope there are pads for a standard ARM JTAG port. That would allow reading and writing of the firmware.

The one problem I have come up against is that, using the bundled Windows conversion software, I haven't been able to convert XVID or Divx movies into MP4 ASFs that it can play. The bundled Sunplus video conversion software appears to be ffmpeg with a front-end to automatically make ASF files with MP4/Divx video @ 320x240, and stereo 16 bit uncompressed PCM audio @ 8k sample rate with little-endian byte order. The 3GP video files the player records with the video camera do play fine, however.