Specifications

DRAFT VERSION
CHAPTER 8. ADVANCED TOPICS 54
8.5. Rockbox in flash
These instructions are outdated!!. This section is a copy of the wikipage Flashin-
gRockbox revision r.1.19.
Warning: Flashing Rockbox is optional. It is not required for using Rockbox on your
!
Archos Jukebox Studio 5000, 6000, Player 10 and 20. Please read the whole section
thoroughly before flashing.
8.5.1. Introduction
Flashing in the sense used here and elsewhere in regard to Rockbox means reprogram-
ming the flash memory of the Archos unit.
When you bought your Archos, it came with the Archos firmware flashed. Now, you
can add Rockbox to the built-in software.
8.5.2. Terminology
Firmware: The flash ROM content as a whole.
Image: Means one operating software started from there
By reprogramming the firmware, we can boot much faster. Archos has an unneces-
sary slow boot loader, versus the boot time for Rockbox is much faster than the disk
spinup, in fact it has to wait for the disk. Your boot time will be as quick as a disk
spinup (e.g. 4 seconds from powerup until resuming playback).
8.5.3. Method
The replaced firmware will host a bootloader and 2 images. This is possible by com-
pression. The first is the permanent backup, not to be changed any more.The second is
the default one to be started, the first is only used when you hold the Minus -key dur-
ing start. Like supplied here, the first image is the original Archos firmware, the second
is empty, left for you to program and update. It can contain anything you like. If you
prefer, you can program the Archos firmware to there, too.
Note: For now, the binary contained in the brand new player flash package does contain
b
rockbox built from current cvs in the second image slot. This is to lower the risk of
flashing (at least one of the images will hopefully work) in case you don’t program a
second image yourself in the first step. Of course the second image can be replaced like
with the other models.
There are two programming tools supplied:
• The first one is called firmware flash.rock and is used to program the whole
flash with a new content. You can also use it to revert back to the original firmware
you’ve hopefully backup-ed. In the ideal case, you’ll need this tool only once. You
can view this as ”formatting” the flash with the desired image structure.
THE ROCKBOX MANUAL ARCHOS STUDIO/PLAYER