Does anyone know of this E-Book reader and how to update the firmware on it ?

[Nicolas72]

Hey folks,
During my holiday i gave the whole firmware / hidden partition / frustration a bit more thought and i came up with the idea of just checking the firmware of the Skytex site.
Remember when you said that you could not reproduce the hidden partitions to show up Trinity ?
Well the solution is that the TAG file has changed.
So i checked out the primer firmware in the hopes to get a new TAG name reference and BINGO.
Its HTC_E01.Tag.
Create a file in your root and it should work for your skytex / primer firmware as well.
Anyways i have tried to contact the manufacturer about the firmware and or tools that can be used to even slightly modify it.
Turns out that the chinese dont like it when you want to mess with a proprietary hard/software so there was no response whatsoever (even using Chinglish witgh google translator)
Thay are always eager to sell but then shoot themselves in the foot with lousy customer support.
Btw Trinity are you still interested in the original Firmware ? If so i can post it here in the download section.
Take a look at the new Gemei GM2000 Touchscreen 7 Inch ebook reader. That thing is awesome...bricked mine already lolol.
I dont know if i can post links here but try either ¸èÃÀÊýÂë¿Æ¼¼ or any of the gadget sales sites.
I am just glad i bought 2 of those things (one for wifey one for me and guess who got the bricked player now...guess)

Yall take it easy now

Nicolas

[lgxb]

yes, the image with pc disappears and blue led start to blink

Originally Posted by kkrevenge

sure? the image with pc disappears?

[lgxb]

Nicolas :

Thanks for the new tag file name, I will try it on my ebook.

If you can upload the original firmware, that would be great. Does your support mkv file?

[Nicolas72]

Ive submitted the firmware file for the ebook reader yesterday.
I dont know if it needs to be approved or something because it does not show up under downloads yet.
So lets wait and see what happens.
Now i am actually stuck at the modding part of the player.
Seems like all the Tools out there cant handle the bmp0.bin properly because some of the images are RLE encoded.(smaller ones are ok but bootup and shutdown sequences are garbled still)
Anyways hope the file helps someone. (I can post the file with radio support as well if need be)

Regards
Nicolas

[lgxb]

I tried the tag name HTC_E01.Tag and it works great. Thanks!
I am also trying to do some modding too: I tried to setup the hot key in pdf reading so we do not need to press the directional key all the time to move inside the page. I do not know if it's easy to do. I am only familiar with C# coding.

Do you know what is the os for this thing? Is it Linux?

Thanks

Hao

[Trinity]

Just tried the tag file with the skytex firmware and yes it works :-) I now have all 4 drives showing. Good work!
You say you have original firmware uploaded somewhere? Would love a copy of it if poss to have a play with.
Also the skytex firmware does play xvid, divx avi and mkv files.

[Trinity]

If you can't upload the oringinal firmware here, then you could upload at this site for download to share.
2shared - file upload

[Nicolas72]

Hey Trinity,
You can find the firmware here in the download section. Its the current v1.0.5 one that i have without radio support. I suppose i could upload the other one as well if you really need it but the radio is actually more than just useless in my opinion. Nice sales gimmick but thats about it.
As far as the modding is concerned.
It all depends on what you want to mod. If it is just the icons (UI) then there are already some tools out there to help you with it. Since the Rockchip RC27xx is a proprietary system, they all have pros and cons. Images are best modded with the RK27UIEditor even tho it has some problems with the big bmp`s such as startup and shutdown images. (Reason is that those are most likely RLE encoded to save on space and none of the tools seem to be able to handle that kind of encoding.)
Regular icons are easily replaced, you just have to be careful with transparency.
Another problem is that the stringid has to match the images in case you want to add and not just replace some images. Right now i am writing my own code to easily add images and stringid`s but its a slow process because datasheets and info on structure are hard to come by.
Really coding new features into the firmware is hard because it seems to be based on a ARM CPU and compiling it to actually running it are two different things.
Ok there are RockChipEmulators out there (google it..RockChipEmu i think) but i still have to get one working for me.
With the ebook from Gemei (Gm2000) it is a lot easier since its based on the Ingenic Chipset and they work closer with the open source community than rockchip does.
Most of the programs you will find are reverse engineered and hence aimed at a specific firm/hardware so i would not trust them to be useful for that exact ebook reader that we have.
To add more features to PDF for instance is `double trouble` because both are proprietary formats.
The PDF and Rockchip heh so its even harder. So if i were you i wouldnt worry about it really.
Just convert the PDF into mobi or epub. (Use Calibre for that ..works like a charm)
Maybe tomorrow i can upload the tools that i have collected. Some are in native chinese so its like click and try most of the time lol.
Also it seems like the modding community is doing either 10000 million different things at once or none at all. Lots of the tools come without source code so you have to invent the wheel 10 times over and frankly it gets a bit tedious after the 5th time.
Anyways as soon as i have more success or come across something that is helpful i will let yall know here.


Regards

Nicolas

[Trinity]

I found the download you put up and downloaded it, and then converted to a .img file and tried it. It worked a treat and DOES have the radio within the firmware.
Can't find the TTS (text to speech) tho that i had before when i first bought the player. Unless it only pops up with certain formats.
So now we have 3 firmware versions to play with :-)

[Nicolas72]

Heh i suppose i got a little confused then with my firmware images here.
But hey all good i suppose. So if you need the one WITHOUT radio let me know lol.
I have never bothered with text to speech because it is just ugly when comes out of it.
If i want an audiobook i get an mp3 audiobook, then again i dont need a ebook reader to actually listen to it just a simple mp3 player. I agree it nice to have those features but only if it really makes sense and work right lol.
Last week a friend of mine bought a car GPS system that can play games..hmmm oook..
I mean its nice lol but well you get my point.

Regards

Nicolas