Texas Instruments finally decided to release free-to-use versions for Linux of their C/C++ compiler for the c54x DSP series (for open source projects at least).

This DSP is found in TI’s TMS320 family (dreaded chips, known mostly in our communities for their total lack of public docs).

In Rockbox terms, this exciting news opens up the possibility for easier coding for the targets that use the DM320 series, which currently is the Olympus M:Robe 500 but may include other players in the future.

For your convenience, here’s a link to the actual TI license and the 12MB tarball (hosted on my site). The tarball contains a binary that installs 86 files occupying 31MB.

The compiler and more details can be found in the Neuros blog.

I just wanted to push for Jonas Häggqvist’s latest cool service – the Rockbox wiki MajorChanges as an RSS feed. It’ll allow more people to more closely track when “major” changes are done in Rockbox land. It was posted by himself on the rockbox mailing list…

If you rather have all commits in a feed, there are two different options cia.vc and gmane.org, out of which the latter doesn’t look as fancy…

I’m not sure everyone out there has yet realized what a cool build system we’ve created in the Rockbox project!

We’re using Subversion for source code version control. We have a master server that detects whenever there has been a commit and it then starts one thread for each known build server, where each thread connects to the remote server, asks it to update to a specific rev number and then asks the server to build for a particular target.

When the build is done, the master copies the build log and in some cases also the final zip file (which is then offered for download to users). At the time of this writing, we have 67 different builds and we average on 15 build servers. The master adapts to the servers that respond and just ignores the ones that don’t.

This has the cool outcome that roughly 5 – 7 minutes after a commit, there are zip files offered on the site with the absolutely latest code for 27 different players! There’s also a huge table presented on the site with the results from all builds so that warnings and build errors can be worked on.

Of course the master then goes back to check for commits again and the whole thing starts all over again.

Just now, the build for the Olympus M:Robe 500 was modified to depend on a recent ARM tool chain patch so we need to get all build server admins to update their ARM compilers!

The build servers are of course “donated” to the cause by volunteers. It is a fairly easy way to help out the project, if you have the sufficient bandwidth and machine. You can help too!

I did a count back in August, and it seems the downloads counter is growing. During October 2007, Rockbox was downloaded 102127 times from build.rockbox.org, split up on 26 different zip files. This is a 43% increase since my last count! (New since last count is the SanDisk Sansa C200 package)

Here’s the list, with the August results on the right side of the slash (position, count, share of total).

1. ipodvideo 20721 (20.3%) / #1 17829 (25.1%)
2. sansae200 18788 (18.4%) / #2 9909 (13.9%)
3. ipodnano 13228 (13.0%) / #3 9110 (12.8%)
4. ipodvideo64mb 12780 (12.5%) / #4 7649 (10.7%)
5. h300 3614 (3.5%) / #5 3153 (4.4%)
6. gigabeatf 3522 (3.4%) / #6 3113 (4.4%)
7. iaudiox5 3340 (3.3%) / #8 2712 (3.8%)
8. ipodcolor 3287 (3.2%) / #9 2400 (3.4%)
9. ipodmini2g 3083 (3.0%) / #10 2286 (3.2%)
10. h120 2924 (2.9%) / #7 2720 (3.8%)
11. ipod4gray 2896 (2.8%) / #11 2098 (2.9%)
12. sansac200 2841 (2.8%) / NEW!
13. ipodmini1g 1647 (1.6%) / #14 1191 (1.7%)
14. ipod3g 1624 (1.6%) / #15 984 (1.4%)
15. h10 1624 (1.6%) / #13 1322 (1.9%)
16. h10_5gb 1524 (1.5%) / #12 1380 (1.9%)
17. ipod1g2g 1384 (1.4%) / #17 606 (0.9%)
18. player 834 (0.8%) / #18 551 (0.8%)
19. recorder 692 (0.7%) / #16 615 (0.9%)
20. iaudiom5 422 (0.4%) / #19 341 (0.5%)
21. recorder8mb 354 (0.3%) / #21 256 (0.4%)
22. h100 345 (0.3%) / #20 299 (0.4%)
23. recorderv2 222 (0.2%) / #22 227 (0.3%)
24. fmrecorder 222 (0.2%) / #23 207 (0.3%)
25. ondiofm 113 (0.1%) / #24 105 (0.1%)
26. ondiosp 96 (0.1%) / #25 101 (0.1%)

As you can see, the recorderv2 and ondiosp packages are the only ones downloaded less than before. Sansa e200 has taken a big bite of the share since last, and the newcomer c200 gets almost 3% at once. The h120 build dropped 3 steps.

The top-4 targets are portalplayer based. The top-8 targets have color displays.

The downloads split on main architecture is interesting (the previous count to the right of the slashes):

1. portalplayer 85427 downloads (83.6%) / 56764 (79.7%)
2. coldfire 10645 downloads (10.4%) / 9225 (12.9%)
3. samsung 3522 downloads (3.4%) / 3113 (4.3%)
4. sh1 2533 downloads (2.5%) / 2062 (2.8%)

So while all gained downloads by number, the portalplayer targets increased their share…

Another split on properties is to separate the targets on solid state (flash) memory and hard drives:

1. HDD 67061 downloads 65.7%
2. flash 35066 downloads 34.5%

Like last time, this doesn’t include custom builds, builds from download.rockbox.org nor release builds from www.rockbox.org. Take all this as indications, not absolute facts.

The guys working on the Rockbox port for the Olympus M:Robe 500 player have now reached a state where adding mrobe 500 builds to the Rockbox build table makes sense and there will soon also be zip files provided for download for ordinary mortals.

The only thing left before that will happen is some basic documentations adapted for this target for user.

I was just told about it by zivan56, and my mi4 page was just updated: the SanDisk Sansa View uses the mi4 file format and it is clearly PortalPlayer based. mi4code can find the crypto key, so decrypting it for disassembly is easy.

In fact, the zip contains two mi4 files and the second one is called “mediaproc.mi4” seems to be for a separate processor or similar, and it makes sense since the PP can’t do the movie playback etc with the specs that they boast for this player.

That media processor might very well be a “nv6110“, referred to many times in the firmware image.

Go crazy in the Rockbox forum thread about it!

Well, not really but at least the recent “jailbreak” for it opens up the possibility…

The jailbreak seems to open up the ability to run apps on the target that are built for it, so I figure it can then theoretically be used to run whatever, and that’s why I say it is an opening for an eager and dedicated person to get Rockbox going on it.

A few guys are now discussing Rockbox for the D2 in the Rockbox forums.

The D2 is a Telechips equipped 2/4GB flash based player with a 2.5″ 320×240 touch screen and an FM tuner.

Recent progress are thanks to the tcctool that can upload code to a telechips MCU and execute it, thanks to the “usb-boot” mode.

Dave Chapman once considered a Rockbox port to this device, but has recently decided to skip that idea. So whoever were holding your breath: get another target model and start breathing again!

Or possibly get someone else interested enough to get the porting back on track again!