DRAFT
VERSION
C
HAPTER
8. A
DVANCED
T
OPICS
55
•
The second one is called
rockbox flash.rock
and is used to reprogram only
the second image. It won’t touch any other byte, should be safe to fool around
with. If the programmed firmware is inoperational, you can still use the Minus
start with the Archos firmware and Rockbox booted from disk to try better.
The non-user tools are in the
flash
subdirectory of the cvs source files. There’s an
authoring tool which composed the firmware file with the bootloader and the 2 images.
The bootloader project, a firmware extraction tool, the plugin sources, and the tools for
the UART boot feature: a monitor program for the box and a PC tool to drive it. Feel
free to review the sources for all of it, but be careful when fooling around with powerful
toys!
8.5.4. Risks
Well, is it dangerous? Yes, certainly, like programming a mainboard
BIOS
,
CD/DVD
drive firmware, mobile phone, etc. If the power fails, your chip breaks while program-
ming or most of all the programming software malfunctions, you’ll have a dead box.
We take no responsibility of any kind, you do that at your own risk. However, we tried
as carefully as possible to bulletproof this code. The new firmware file is completely
read before it starts programming, there are a lot of sanity checks. If any fails, it will
not program. Before releasing this, we have checked the flow with exactly these files
supplied here, starting from the original firmware in flash. It worked reliably, there’s
no reason why such low level code should behave different on your box.
Warning:
The risk is slightly higher for player flashing, because:
!
•
This is brand new
•
It could not be tested with all hardware versions.
Refer to this e-mail:
http://www.rockbox.org/mail/archive/rockbox-archive-2004-12/0245.
shtml
There’s one ultimate safety net to bring back boxes with even completely garbled
flash content: the
UART
boot mod, which in turn requires the serial mod. It can bring
the dead back to life, with that it’s possible to reflash independently from the outside,
even if the flash is completely erased. It has been used that during development, else
Rockbox in flash wouldn’t have been possible. Extensive development effort went into
the exploitation of the UART boot mod. Mechanically adept users with good soldering
skills can easily perform these mods. Others may feel uncomfortable using the first tool
(
firmware flash.rock
) for reflashing the firmware.
To comfort you a bit again: If you are starting with a known-good image, you are
unlikely to experience problems. The flash tools have been stable for quite a while.
Several users have used them extensively, even flashing while playing! Although it
worked, it’s not the recommended method.
About the safety of operation: Since we have dual boot, you’re not giving up the Ar-
chos firmware. It’s still there when you hold Minus during startup. So even if Rockbox
T
HE
R
OCKBOX MANUAL
A
RCHOS
S
TUDIO
/P
LAYER
