“skaos” mentioned in the Rockbox forum that the markings on the e200 v2 SanDisk chip is very similar to the ones on the newer m200 models (as compared to the older m200 models which use different ones – at least marked completely different). It seems to imply that the m200 series have v2 models too.

But more interestingly, I downloaded the latest v4 firmware for the m200 series and looked at it with hexdump -C. While the file is encrypted or at least scrambled somehow (update: I was wrong the file is unencrypted, contains ARM code and strings), it features one plain text string at index 0x420:

AS3525_2_0.cr_5_0_develop.00020021010305000500

AS3525 is the name of a SoC from AMS (makers of the AS3514 “Stereo Audio Codec with System Power Management” chip used in the Sansa e200 series as well as in the Sansa c200 series) so to me it seems a bit too much of a match to be a mere coincidence! Oh, looking for UTF16-encoded strings, there’s one present that takes away all doubts: “AS3525/27 Demo Player“.

We’ll see what more we can dig up to really verify this theory. Fortunately, we managed to get docs for the AS3514 when some Rockbox guys visited the AMS HQ in Austria so hopefully we can get some for this thing too.

Now we have yet another firmware file format to figure out! ;-(

The SanDisk branded chip in the Sansa Clip does look very similar as well. If anyone has a firmware file for this target I’d be happy to check it out!

SanDisk apparently has released updated versions of their Sansa c200 and e200 series, called c200 v2 and e200 v2. Since Rockbox works pretty fine on the original c200 and e200 series and not at all on the new v2 players, users start to take notice!

The v2 series are claimed to be audible.com compliant (it spells DRM), which we originally thought would imply some sort of e200R style, but the first details about the c200 v2 internals seem to hint that the hardware is seriously changed and there’s hardly any hope left for a quick port to these devices.

To recognize a v2 of these devices, carefully look for the “v2” text on the backside or for “audible.com support” on the box.

We’re of course still eagerly awaiting published scans or photos of the internals of the v2 series, as well as getting our hands on firmware upgrades for them. Do they even use mi4 files?

In the mean time, the Sansa View isn’t even available in the stores here in Sweden yet! 🙁 Oh right, we still await scans of the View’s internals as well!

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…