Just found a VERY similar analysis of another device that has the same file structures for both the ISO update file and the Romfs.bin file....

Bravo Firmware (http://archive.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=288489)

Looks like I'm off to the races...

not to nag but this thread is huge as it is with out filing it with HD-3510 info
it does look like a good start and i would recommend a dedicated thread for HD-3510 users

or i may be totally in left field and this is a good thing

IMHO

Good point...I'll stop hijacking this thread and start another one...

Hello everyone,

I've been lurking for quite awhile, I have updated to the latest firmware (it looks great by the way) and decided to contribute by generating the mg35tool in C, for Windows/Linux.



For the beginning, I think we can use at least CVS/SVN and the download space. If you agree, we can also use the tracker (for bugs) and their forum.



I'd rather use CVS (used it before), however I do hate (not quite a strong enough word) the limitations of directory renames etc. So maybe it's time to learn SVN. Just as long as we don't have to use SourceSafe :eek:

I do suggest that a directory structure be created... so that people can create projects in the proper location.

Something long the likes of

scripts
+ <build scripts>
+ <packaging scripts>
+ ...

tools
+ <directory per tool>
tests
+ test tools/scripts etc

AlTechSource
+ direct copy of their source tree under here.

Or something along those lines... a well thought out source tree prevents a number of issues.

Jeff

I'd rather use CVS (used it before), however I do hate (not quite a strong enough word) the limitations of directory renames etc. So maybe it's time to learn SVN. Just as long as we don't have to use SourceSafe :eek:

I do suggest that a directory structure be created... so that people can create projects in the proper location.

Something long the likes of

scripts
+ <build scripts>
+ <packaging scripts>
+ ...

tools
+ <directory per tool>
tests
+ test tools/scripts etc

AlTechSource
+ direct copy of their source tree under here.

Or something along those lines... a well thought out source tree prevents a number of issues.

I also suggest using CVS, at least for the beginning. We can later migrate to SVN ( a week, mount or an year from now). Sourceforge has a script for automatic migrations.

My CVS experience is only installing and using a local VCVS on Windows, but I hope it's not hard to use it over ssh on the remote server. There are some instructions here (http://sourceforge.net/docs/B01/#cvs_client) , I will let you know if I notice anything special. As always, if somebody know this stuff better and it's willing to administer, please speak!

Since CVS lacks renaming of files/modules, it's better to have a well-thought design for our repository.

I don't think it's of any use to have Altech's sources in a different directory. Better have them as the base of our repository. If ever they will release the right code, we can easy see the diffs between their releases, and, more important, we can merge our changes (if any) into their line of code.

So my idea of structure is based on Altech's:
busybox
libexif (???)
microwindows
minimod
nbtscan
samba
uClinux
udhcpc
wireless_tools
Should we use the version number in the module names, as Altech did? Could be a good idea, since we already have a newer busybox. Then we should have busybox_1.0.3 and busybox_1.2.0.

Then add our own tools' directories:
mgnv
mg35tool
mgpal
package (gadgetmind's packaging script)
img (when we'll consider to add them under CVS)
....

These can be subdirectories in a "tools" module, just to make clearer what's built from scratch and what's based on Altech's sources. OTOH, keeping them at the root level helps understanding the project globally.

I think the build and test scripts are better placed together with their respective sources, or if you want in a "build" or "test"subdirectory there. It's better to have each tool self-consistent, since maybe many developers will only work on an utility or two.

I was think that since we will probably never get the actual sources from Altech, it would be easier to nuke it :)

I'd rather work in a tree than have it flat a the top... simply because projects grow, and .. eventually get out of control if to flat.

Also, I'd love to see a build that can be launched from the root of the tree and build everything.

Different version numbers on modules is fine with me.

I have used CVS over the net before, I think we used the pserver option, it's been a while. Anyway, it was fast and easy.

Jeff

What do you prefer on the project, CVS access or SVN access to the source code? SVN alows a few more operations (e.g. file renaming), but if the majority of developers like CVS, we will use it. For now, CVS is active.
I guess SVN is better but I am used to CVS and TortoiseCVS (http://www.tortoisecvs.org/index.shtml) from work.

I can really recommend TortoiseCVS (http://www.tortoisecvs.org/index.shtml) as an CVS client. I have used all of them but TortoiseCVS (http://www.tortoisecvs.org/index.shtml) must be one of the most user friendly and best integrated with your os (at least if your running Windows).

I'd rather work in a tree than have it flat a the top... simply because projects grow, and .. eventually get out of control if to flat.

I second that, I would prefer a tree like structure, kernel code could be one branch etc. It is sometimes easier to manage a large project by branch (submitting and updating). Especially if you got different users mainly working on different branches...

Yes, we need a well considered tree. We need to differentiate between stuff that runs on the MG-35 and host utilities/scripts (Windows and Linux)

I'll make a list later of what I've created that I think it worth making available. Some of it is trivial, and some really needs more work.

Ian

I've now created some scripts that do most of the work of applying themes and creating update files. A slight tweak to the theme ZIP is required.

The structure on the disc is
firmware - call this what you want!
---release - where I put stuff to share it with the MG-35
---1.4.4.4 - old tree
---1.4.5.5 - current tree
------themes - where the zipped themes live
------current - where the current unzipped theme lives
---------root - logontsc.jpg and img dir for current
---------xx-xx.nfo - name of theme. File name is short name, contents are long desc
------MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha6
------MG-35-1.4.4.5-alpha7
---------root - the MG-35 file tree
---------docs - docs to supply with the release
---------kernel - the kernel to put into the upgrade

The older trees have the same sub-structure as the ones I've expanded.

I then have a script called settheme, which really just tidys up themes/current and then unzips the relevant theme.

Another script called makeupgrade is a wee bit more complex. It -
1) Pulls the short theme name from themes/current
2) Creates the root/VERSION file with version, date and (new!) long name of theme in it.
3) Copies the img files from themes/current to the root of the relevant release
4) Patches the palette from the themes/current into dvdplayer.bin
5) Makes the cramfs
6) Makes the upgrade

I'm going to write another script called release than will use settheme and makeupgrade for all the themes it can find, and then zips up all of these and the docs directory, and uploads the whole lot to my web site.

I'll probably release these by actually releasing the whole 1.4.4.5 tree. People will need the mg35tool and I'll also release the C palette patcher. I might wait until I have another theme so it can all be tested properly.

Ian

Here is a very simple palette patcher. It just needs a command line with offset, path to palette file and path to writeable dvdplayer.bin.

http://www.foxhill.co.uk/mg35palpatch.zip

The usage tells you the normal offset.

The source is included and an x86 Linux executable. It should build on pretty much anything.

Ian
P.S. The right zip file is now there!

I've only used this on Linux. It might be cygwin friendly but I don't know!

You will need mg35tool, mg35palpatch and whatever package gets mkcramfs for your distro.

http://www.foxhill.co.uk/build-1.4.4.5.tar.gz

tar -xzf into a directory called something like firmware. Look at README. Have fun!

Ian

So, is it better this way?

firmware
+--busybox-1.2.0
+--libexif-0.6.13
+--microwindows
+--minimod
+--nbtscan
+--samba-2.0.7
+--uClinux-2.4
+--udhcpc
+--wireless_tools-26
+--mathopd
+--pure-ftpd
+--mgnv
+--themes
+--scripts (sashrc, phase1, phase2, ...)
+--mg35config ??

host_tools
+--mg35tool
+--mg35palpatch
+--package (gadgetmind's packaging script)

So, is it better this way?


Yes, other stuff we can add later, but that structure makes sense.

Things that spring to mind are -
themes
web content
cgi (screendump, screenraw, flashid, version)
silly utilities (peek, poke, dumptop)
kernels
drivers

I'm going to have to learn how to clean up this stuff and get it up there via SVN, particularly for pre-existing stuff I've hacked, such as udhcpc, mathopd and BusyBox.

Ian
l

I want to thank everyone for making my MG even better! Love the new look and the web interface! I might even have to put a HD in her soon!

Thanks again,
John :)

I'm going to have to learn how to clean up this stuff and get it up there via SVN, particularly for pre-existing stuff I've hacked, such as udhcpc, mathopd and BusyBox.

Ian
lFor pre-existing source you have modified, would it make sense to start with the unmodified source of the utility, then as the initial "delta" store the versions with your changes?

It would allow somebody to get a diff of the changes needed to run on the MG-35 and also get back to the original source if they find a different/better approach to making any given change as we learn more.

Joe L.
Like many, I've never used CVS, or SVN, but willing to learn. I've spent 20 some odd years using SCCS on UNIX, and, sorry-to-admit, forced by customers to use Source-unSafe on several consulting projects on Win2k servers. Both CVS and SVN have to be better than SourceSafe!.

I'm going to have to learn how to clean up this stuff and get it up there via SVN, particularly for pre-existing stuff I've hacked, such as udhcpc, mathopd and BusyBox.

I added the repository structure to wiki (http://mediagate.pbwiki.com/MG35Development#CVSstructurefortheSourceforgemg35toolsprojec t), so it's easier to edit and view the changes.

For now I only enabled CVS, since most people know it. We can switch to SVN later. But let me know if you want SVN instead of CVS, it's just a checkbox away :). I think we cannot have the same repository accessible by both CVS and SVN. We can have two distinct repositories, one for CVS and one for SVN, but I don't think it's a good idea. I have to dig a little more into it...

For pre-existing source you have modified, would it make sense to start with the unmodified source of the utility, then as the initial "delta" store the versions with your changes?

That's why I started with Altech's firmware as a base.

I am sure its only weeks or months (at the outside) before we see the MG-35 cease production and I VERY much doubt we will ever see another major firmware upgrade for it from Al Tech... Sorry TS, but I must disagree with this sad assessment as well! Al Tech came out with the MG-25 about a year before the MG-35, and on a similar schedule they've just released the MG-350. From what we can see on the airlinktek website, they are still updating MG-25 firmware (now 1.4.6). Given that anywhereus told us that they would see a repeat function for mpgs for the MG-25 firmware first before we see it on the MG-35, it's clear to me that they're keeping a wishlist for their products and (ever so slowly) working off that list to improve functionality. And that goes even for products older than the MG-35.

And even though I'm quarrelling with Todd over what's the best business strategy for Al Tech to milk us all for the highest price, nevertheless I agree with him that they could see severe pricing pressure from competitors if they were to let the whole cat (complete useable firmware release) out of the bag. But unlike Todd I think Al Tech has a lot of room to price their product lower if they get more serious competition. Just notice that you can buy a complete/functional DVD player for only $30, and that includes the DVD drive that an MG-35 doesn't have! They have more than a little wiggle room IMHO.

And as PB (?) pointed out a few pages back, it's possible for Al Tech to do the right thing legally by releasing the complete GPL sources, while keeping their proprietary stuff in kernel modules. This would prevent competitors from gaining complete software and functional parity while producing a cheap $20 MG-35 knock-off using Al Tech's IP.

Sorry TS, but I must disagree with this sad assessment as well! .


Krell,

Always welcome your comments,even if you and I don't always agree..

Time will tell I guess,as to who's views are right or wrong - I just cannot see Al Tech producing two machines (for very long) that are so similar.My guess is that we will see the MG-35 turn into a "legacy" product,the price of the 350 will lower,and new features (Maybe a ftp server to compete with TVIX etc) will be added to this to make it much more attractive to prospective buyers and 35 owners that want to "upgrade" - I still doubt that any new features will ever be added to the 35 by Al Tech - just look at the debacle of the 1.4.5 firmware - not exactly stable and already 6 weeks without any of the introduced bugs being fixed.
As to the MG-25,well it may be on their site,but has been over six months since its last firmware update,not exactly showing great support.
As to another Full GLP release , I would love to see it , but sadly cannot see its going to happen - these people are very scared of people like TVIX and only ever seem todo things that directly help themselves..

Just a quick "what I'm doing now" post as I haven't posted in a while and I don't want to duplicate effort...

1) cgi based memorydump - e.g hexdump.cgi?start=0x1f80000&end=0x1f80100
2) Very thin cgi parameter decoding C lib (all libs on web are unnecessarily complex - I like simple concise code!)
3) Use the above and screenbmp.c to build a multifunction cgi executable
4) Make it very easy to add "modules" to said executable

5) Modify my screendump VB program (which can also put in background jpegs) to use the output of screenbmp.cgi

6) Try to find where/how the background jpg/video is rendered on the MG35 - or failing that how to make intelligent guess at which jpeg is displayed so we can do a "proper" screendump (although I'm still quivering nervously after looking through the jpeglib documentation!)

Been a bit busy both at work (damn clients) and home (damn dead PC) lately so progress is a bit slow - but I'm getting there!

For pre-existing source you have modified, would it make sense to start with the unmodified source of the utility, then as the initial "delta" store the versions with your changes?

It would allow somebody to get a diff of the changes needed to run on the MG-35 and also get back to the original source if they find a different/better approach to making any given change as we learn more.


I'm happy to take advice on this. I did start with existing released code and can easily do a diff against this. But it makes sense to also have the full source up there - someone's going to have to download it from somewhere, and they might as well get it with my loving hacks!

Ian

3) Use the above and screenbmp.c to build a multifunction cgi executable


Do you want me to send the source of flashid? (don't think I released this at any point - it's not very pretty!)

Ian

As to another Full GLP release , I would love to see it , but sadly cannot see its going to happen - these people are very scared of people like TVIX... Huh? :confused: From what I can see of the pricing on TVIX products, it's they who should be terrified of Al Tech!

I'm happy to take advice on this. I did start with existing released code and can easily do a diff against this. But it makes sense to also have the full source up there - someone's going to have to download it from somewhere, and they might as well get it with my loving hacks!

IanIan,
I understand...
My comments about starting with unmodified source only applies if you used a different file than the one supplied by AlTech as your starting point, or one not supplied by them at all.

Since you are storing their supplied source tree, even though we know it is incomplete, diffs will be easy to make for those.

Joe L.

Huh? :confused: From what I can see of the pricing on TVIX products, it's they who should be terrified of Al Tech!

Not always , look at the support / features that TVIX have started give , sometimes almost weekly firmware updates - No everyone just looks at price..
From what i understand,Al Tech looks at TVIX as its main opposition in their domestic market (which is the main one as far as they are concerned).
The TVIX flagship product is indeed expensive atm,but the gap between this and the Mg-350HD will indeed close as time goes on.. Maybe its better to say that they fear each other..and is indeed a interesting battle..

Final versions (I hope) of the "New Generation" Theme. It comes in two flavors, the tasteful official "Sky Blue" and the tacky renegade "Royal Blue"... :rolleyes:

Available from Yahoo Groups (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/mg-35_firmware_mods/files/MG-35%20Graphics/) as always. Note new palette and gfx for both themes (after some minor final adjustments)...

I should have named them "Princess Blue" and "Guardsmans Blue" to honor my loved car but I guess it woulden't make sense to anyone but me...

Al Tech looks at TVIX as its main opposition in their domestic market (which is the main one as far as they are concerned).
They should, I always recommend a TVIX over my MG-35 for the ones that don't like the idea of hacking the device. The only reason for me getting a MG-35 was the price and that was just risk management. No player on the market today is flawless. That is why I need to manage the risk! I really shouln't have to but what are the options:

1. Buy an expencive one and hope that I will benefit from the high price by superiour support (that they will use some of the profit to increase quality and finally fix it).

2. Buy a cheap one and save some money for the next product cycle (buy cheap and replace often).

I don't belive in option 1 anymore (from what I have seen not only from companies like AL Tech, but also from supreme brands unable to fix chroma bugs in their top-of-the-line DVD players etc.)

That leaves me with option 2, until I can get my hands on something enabeling open source development. I prefer FLOSS because no company can match the combined will, knowledge, stamina, engagement etc. of the Internet, not today and not in the future. Thats why I belive FLOSS will either play a major part in future business models (or simply kill your old business model)...

@EmuMannen

Many thanks once again for all your hard work in supporting BOTH versions of these themes.As soon as they are built into a firmware , I will do new screen shots and uplaod to Yahoo , so end users can choose which they like best and maybe even swap between them..

I prefer FLOSS because no company can match the combined will, knowledge, stamina, engagement etc. of the Internet, not today and not in the future. Thats why I belive FLOSS will either play a major part in future business models (or simply kill your old business model)...

I'm seeing that every day. It is just a matter of time.

@EmuMannen

Many thanks once again for all your hard work in supporting BOTH versions of these themes.As soon as they are built into a firmware , I will do new screen shots and uplaod to Yahoo , so end users can choose which they like best and maybe even swap between them..

Thanks to the wizzy new build stuff, I have built both 1.4.4.4-pre4 and 1.4.4.4-alpha7 with these themes applied.

But, of course, this exposes a naming issue. I've already released a 1.4.4.4-pre4 and this is the same firmware but with the two new themes.

I haven't released 1.4.4.5-alpha7 (have I?) and this is now just the same as alpha6 but with the new themes and a new version number.

All ideas for better naming systems very welcome! Take a look at the build scripts and the structure of the new ZIP before shouting too loud - as I say, any theme can be applied to any firmware, and we perhaps don't want to go up pre or alpha numbers just for this.

But I'll go with the flow/majority.

Ian

First of all I want to thank all of you that have worked on this project. I have followed the thread for awhile now watching the progress. Keep up the awesome work!

I was wondering which firmware is the one i should be using. I joined yahoo groups today and saw a different one than I have seen here. They all work ok for me as far as i can tell. I guess my question is which is the recommended one at this stage?

First of all I want to thank all of you that have worked on this project. I have followed the thread for awhile now watching the progress. Keep up the awesome work!

I was wondering which firmware is the one i should be using. I joined yahoo groups today and saw a different one than I have seen here. They all work ok for me as far as i can tell. I guess my question is which is the recommended one at this stage?

Welcome , this is a question that I receive many emails a day on..

1)If you are a developer and understand the functions , try the alpha releases in the "for developers folder"..

2)If you are not the above Use the ones in the "Non-developers" folder..

3)If you are unsure of the above , have a look at the read_me files located in each release,as they advise of functions..

All ideas for better naming systems very welcome! Take a look at the build scripts and the structure of the new ZIP before shouting too loud - as I say, any theme can be applied to any firmware, and we perhaps don't want to go up pre or alpha numbers just for this.

But I'll go with the flow/majority.

My idea is to keep things simple: choose one default theme (a poll on Yahoo?) and build our "official" packages with it. Then create theme packages (images+dvdplayer) and give the user a tool/script to apply any theme to any release. Otherwise, as themes proliferate, we will have an endless number of packages, all different only by the graphics.

Is this easy to do? We will probably need just mg35tool and tools to edit the cramfs.

P.S. Anyway, we should name the themes... EmuMannen, you are the father, give them names :)

P.S.2 Alphas could be released in only one theme.

I don't think it will be possible to edit the cramfs on windows - the lack of symlink support basically bollocks ups the whole thing... (and yes, that is the official technical term)

Of course, we could, if a non-default theme name is stored in nvram, mount a ramfs over the image directory, copy the new theme pngs and jpegs from HD/network (or even internet!) then patch the YUV palette directly in RAM.

Can we spare 400K?

http://www.foxhill.co.uk/MG35-1.4.4.4-pre4.zip
http://www.foxhill.co.uk/MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha7.zip

Each file contains both Sky Blue (SB) and Royal Blue (RB) versions of the .upgrades to help stop bickering. :)

All tested with avi playing and reflashing to other firmware. Which is getting to be quite a chore. But it now takes longer to upload these than it does to build them!

Must add another script or two as some steps are still subject to finger trouble,

Ian

Of course, we could, if a non-default theme name is stored in nvram, mount a ramfs over the image directory, copy the new theme pngs and jpegs from HD/network (or even internet!) then patch the YUV palette directly in RAM.

Can we spare 400K?

More like 2MB. Remember the palette is stuffed into dvdplayer.bin

Ian

I don't think it will be possible to edit the cramfs on windows - the lack of symlink support basically bollocks ups the whole thing... (and yes, that is the official technical term)

There's a patch for this.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

:)

Ian

P.S. Anyway, we should name the themes... EmuMannen, you are the father, give them names :)

I'm afraid they already got names:

"SB" aka "Sky Blue" aka "The New Generation - Tastful Official Sky Blue Tint" aka "Princess Blue"...
"RB" aka "Royal Blue" aka "The New Generation - Tacky Renegade Royal Blue Tint" aka "Guardsman Blue"...

I'm afraid they already got names:

"SB" aka "Sky Blue" aka "The New Generation - Tastful Official Sky Blue Tint" aka "Princess Blue"...
"RB" aka "Royal Blue" aka "The New Generation - Tacky Renegade Royal Blue Tint" aka "Guardsman Blue"...

Well, hint hint, if you supply the ZIP files with xxxxx.nfo files in them, hint hint, you can call them what you want. The xxxxx goes into the .upgrade file name and the file contents go on the end of /VERSION.

Ian

Not always , look at the support / features that TVIX have started give , sometimes almost weekly firmware updates... OK, so if Al Tech fears competition from TVIX because of their superior features, support, and firmware release schedule, then this argues for Al Tech to release new updates themselves. Wasn't that my view? :confused:

By the way, how does Dvico treat their GPL sources? Can we use anything?

P.S. I'm with you on the Tacky Renegade Royal Blue. ;)

OK, so if Al Tech fears competition from TVIX because of their superior features, support, and firmware release schedule, then this argues for Al Tech to release new updates themselves. Wasn't that my view? :confused:

P.S. I'm with you on the Tacky Renegade Royal Blue. ;)

Yes it does , but as we all know Al Tech Don't seem to follow the logic of all this..

Ref Royal Blue , you mean you like it better than the "official" sky Blue?

Ref Royal Blue , you mean you like it better than the "official" sky Blue? Sky Blue... :p

Sky Blue... :p

Each to their own I guess , we shall see from the poll though..

Kinda nice to be the Renegade :-)

More like 2MB. Remember the palette is stuffed into dvdplayer.bin

Ian

Not if you store the palette (or entire theme) on HD / Network Share and dynamically update the palette in video memory AFTER dvdplayer.bin has loaded...

I must vote in favor of Sky blue over the dreaded Princess Blue

yes i know there the same but im about to buy 4 more (today) mg-35's and set them up for friends and family and then tell them i just loaded it with Princess Blue
i dont think so

its like the wife calling her mans thing(family fourm) Princess Sofi :D

its just not cool

hi anebodee knows a way to convert just the sound on a videofile dvix,mpeg etc?

i have some movies on xvid with ac3 audio but the mg35 doesn't work with it any suggestions,software

thx a lot ........julian

hi anebodee knows a way to convert just the sound on a videofile dvix,mpeg etc?

i have some movies on xvid with ac3 audio but the mg35 doesn't work with it any suggestions,software

thx a lot ........julian
I use the latest Dr.Divx with the "Home Theater" profile, and select AC3 in the Audio Tab. The generated .divx file renamed .avi plays perfectly in the MG-35 sending AC3 out the coax cable. See the link: http://labs.divx.com/DrDivX for how to obtain Dr.Divx ... Al

Each to their own I guess , we shall see from the poll though.. Where is this renegade poll? I only see the donations poll on Yahoo.

Where is this renegade poll? I only see the donations poll on Yahoo.

Gimmie a chance here mate , have had to upload all four firmware versions first - otherwise people would not know what they are voting on would they?

Wil be up within the next 45 mins...

I've spent 20 some odd years using SCCS on UNIX, and, sorry-to-admit, forced by customers to use Source-unSafe on several consulting projects on Win2k servers. Both CVS and SVN have to be better than SourceSafe!.


Over the last 23 years I have used CMS, ClearCase, Continuous, cvs, Source-Safe, pvcs, floppies... :rolleyes: and have to say, cvs was probably the easiest and fastest, especially with tortoise and wincvs under windows.

Currently stuck using Source-Safe at work... where we have about 15 versions of the same database .... that's how they do releases :eek:

The only time I've ever lost anything was with source-safe...

Jeff

Wil be up within the next 45 mins... OK. But if we really really hate the Bilious Blue Sky motif, can we vote for our Renegade more than once? ;)

OK. But if we really really hate the Bilious Blue Sky motif, can we vote for our Renegade more than once? ;)

Well.. er.. being the Mod God at the Yahoo group,I have some power,but sadly only superman can vote twice,however good he thinks the Royal Blue is :) :)

I installed them both and all my family votes for the -RB release. The -SB is too bright and the silouete is washed out. But otherwise everything looks terrific; thanks for all the hard work... Al

BTW, Is the webserver missing from the pre upgrade files?
I don't know how to use FTP to copy files to the cdrom. Is that something a non-developer like me should be able to do?

Not if you store the palette (or entire theme) on HD / Network Share and dynamically update the palette in video memory AFTER dvdplayer.bin has loaded...

Yes, I guess that will work.

Ian

BTW, Is the webserver missing from the pre upgrade files?


The web server appeared late in the 1.4.4.5 alpha series. Maybe alpha6 was the 1st where it was usable. Check the README. There is no web server in 1.4.4.4 and there never will be.


I don't know how to use FTP to copy files to the cdrom. Is that something a non-developer like me should be able to do?

Assuming you have phase1/2 scripts that remount your HD as rw, you should be able to use ftp to copy files across. I haven't included these with recent 1.4.4.5 software as I figured that people will be writing their own to do exactly what they want. If someone wants to produce what they think are good sample phase scripts, and also a short document describing how to use them, then they can go into the docs directory and they will be automatically included in the ZIP with the new firmware.

Note that README is now in the ZIP and *not* in the cramFS.

Ian

Handling of M3U playlists seems to be the top requested item.

I guess we ought to brainstorm how to actually achieve this?
I'll shortly refloat a previous idea that I had, but this is maybe one where loads of suggestions (no matter how wacky) are required.

Ian

Handling of M3U playlists seems to be the top requested item.

I guess we ought to brainstorm how to actually achieve this?
I'll shortly refloat a previous idea that I had, but this is maybe one where loads of suggestions (no matter how wacky) are required.

Ian
There is some sort of "built-in" play list support. Should be easy enough to write a new prog. that would translate a M3U file into the built-in format. My only question is, do we know how the built-in list works?

Almost there...
AC3 in MPEG files is stored in a Private 1 Block (0x000001BD) followed by an AC3 header (0x80).
By bypassing certain branches I see the BD is being detected properly, but the 80 is 00.

Now just trying to find why..

Another Ian

Has anyone writen a CGI script to turn the LED from on to off and from off to on?

I would like to make sure that we can do this fine before finishing up my first beta of the webserver.

We also need to look at using SSI in our CGI scripts so we can input information back into the webpages, or maybe exporting values to a xml file which the web browser can parse and input the information into the webpage?

Nick

Handling of M3U playlists seems to be the top requested item.
I guess we ought to brainstorm how to actually achieve this?


The main problem here is not playing, but finding a remote control event we can "hook".

How do we want to play the m3u? If we want to select it from the TV interface, we should first find a way to display it (can anyone check if a m3u file is displayed? I don't have the device with me, so I'm just fishing about this).

An alternative way is to select a folder and then press Play. I remember dvdplayer playing files one by one (using fileplayer), so it probably internally enumerates the files in the folder. Can anybody try to see what happens if you mix MP3s with OGGs and WAVs in the same directory?

Both ways need some dvdplayer hacking.

I noticed that m3play seems to play all the files in the cdrom/music, maybe we can try to look more into it? Does it "honour" a m3u in that folder? I didn't find "m3u" string in the executable, so I suppose it doesn't...

After trying to configure WinCVS with sourceforge for more than 1 hour, I finally decided to bite the bullet and try SVN. To my surprise, it was a lot easier (5 minutes?): just install TortoiseSVN and point it to https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/mg35tools (yes, the name of the project is mg35tools... the sourceforge application was made before talking about the name on the list; we can probably change that name). You can even point your web browser to the above address, and you will see the repository contents.


A small tutorial is here (http://haacked.com/archive/2006/02/22/QuickstartGuidetoSubversiononSourceForge.aspx).

For now I just added the minicom sources, but I will add the rest soon.

So if you agree, we can use SVN. It's a LOT easier to configure on the user side (CVS needs you to generate a pair of keys, then load your key to pageant, and then configure your CVS client).

To update the sources, you need to be listed as developer. Just PM your sourceforge username to me, and I will add you to the developer list.

@icabrindus

This all sounds very complex to me , is there any way at all a "Man in the Street" type like myself is going to be able to contribute to this? , or is it strictly for programmers?

The main problem here is not playing, but finding a remote control event we can "hook".

How do we want to play the m3u? If we want to select it from the TV interface, we should first find a way to display it (can anyone check if a m3u file is displayed? I don't have the device with me, so I'm just fishing about this).

An alternative way is to select a folder and then press Play. I remember dvdplayer playing files one by one (using fileplayer), so it probably internally enumerates the files in the folder. Can anybody try to see what happens if you mix MP3s with OGGs and WAVs in the same directory?

Both ways need some dvdplayer hacking.

I noticed that m3play seems to play all the files in the cdrom/music, maybe we can try to look more into it? Does it "honour" a m3u in that folder? I didn't find "m3u" string in the executable, so I suppose it doesn't...
This might be a totally stupid approach but what about using soft-links? A M3U-file is just a list of references to the music files anyhow so why not create soft-links based on that specification?

We could write a program that would read M3U-files and create soft-links out of it. Maybe filling a directory named after the play-list with soft-links to its files. This could be done on boot (let a script read M3U-files from a specific directory) and be written to disk (if we want persistence) or to volatile memory if we don’t want it to be static.

Soft-link creation (reading M3U-files and making the soft-links) and management (checking for broken links, adding, deleting etc.) could also be implemented via a web-interface (maybe better than on every boot).

I don’t know if the player supports soft-links as is but it could be a quick win strategy (we wouldn’t have to alter any existing code in the player, just add our own supporting routines)...

Ps. Maybe I should have named soft-links -> symlinks insted but I guess you know what I ment...

This all sounds very complex to me , is there any way at all a "Man in the Street" type like myself is going to be able to contribute to this? , or is it strictly for programmers?

Yes, it's SVN is mainly for programmers. Is not that complicated, though.

This might be a totally stupid approach but what about using soft-links? A M3U-file is just a list of references to the music files anyhow so why not create soft-links based on that specification?


It's not stupid, it could work! We can create symlinks at boot time in a ramfs, and bind that ramfs over /cdrom/music. When pressing Play on the MG35 (NOT on the remote!) it will automatically start to play the /cdrom/music files.

The only issue I see is that symlink creation can increase the boot time. You cannot create them on your fat/ntfs hdd, but maybe we can dd the ramdisk to a file between sessions, and load it from there at boot time.

We can also hex-tweak dvdplayer to search music in a different place than /cdrom/music, so that those without hdd can benefit of it. Or create an empty /cdrom/music directory in our firmware, so we can mount over it some network share.

With regards to playlists, would there be anyway of saving the lists you can already build in the MG35 (but delete themselves when you shutdown!!)? Not sure what format they are built in and this is just the view of a user as I am in way no clued up on the technical or programming side of things.

For me either would work, just wondered if it had been considered.

There is some sort of "built-in" play list support. Should be easy enough to write a new prog. that would translate a M3U file into the built-in format. My only question is, do we know how the built-in list works?

dvdplayer.bin seems to only store this information in internal data structures. Changing this is certainly possible but not trivial IMO!

Ian

It's not stupid, it could work! We can create symlinks at boot time in a ramfs, and bind that ramfs over /cdrom/music. When pressing Play on the MG35 (NOT on the remote!) it will automatically start to play the /cdrom/music files.


We could create /phase2/playlists, fill this with directories named after playlists, create simlinks in there to all the MP3 files, and then use mount -o bind /phase2/playlists /cdrom/playlists.

If this is done by something launched from phase2, then it won't slow boot.

We can create /playlists and stick another ramfs over it if we want. And maybe do the playlist creation in the postsetup script.

Ian

Has anyone writen a CGI script to turn the LED from on to off and from off to on?


Do you mean the LED or the NV entry of the LED's state?

I failed on the former! I think we'd need a dummy driver that pretends to be fipmodule and then bounced the ioctls onto the real driver.

Regards

Ian

On the subject of playlists, it would be fairly easy (I think) to write a cgi program (or even a script when we get a decent shell) that would read a playlist file and evoke fileplayer for each file. This would only work with a web front end, and we might have to somehow disable the remote/fipmodule to avoid problems. (What happens if you evoke fileplayer from a telnet session then play a file through the screen UI?) There would be one advantage, you wouldn't need to have the TV turned on to play music!

We could create /phase2/playlists, fill this with directories named after playlists, create simlinks in there to all the MP3 files, and then use mount -o bind /phase2/playlists /cdrom/playlists.

If this is done by something launched from phase2, then it won't slow boot.

We can create /playlists and stick another ramfs over it if we want. And maybe do the playlist creation in the postsetup script.

Ian

For the harddisk users, the whole thing is to create a "parallel" fs by indexing the harddrive, and then use this fs to play the media. The issue is that indexing a big collection of MP3s could take a long time, so if you do it all the time in phase2, the collection will only be available after some time. Alternatively, we can index the disk from on special request via telnet (or even better, via CGI), and save the resulting fs image in a file which will be mounted on subsequent boots. This is also good because we have the img on hdd, so we don't waste RAM for it.

This could work even for network users, for whom we cannot index the notwork shares in phase2.

Another idea is to have a wrapper script to fileplayer, and rename the .M3U file as .MP3 (or .OGG or .WMA ). We know this is not a real MP3 file, but this way it will be visible on the TV screen.

Whenever called, the wrapper will check the MP3 file for a m3u signature (a comment field, for example). If it is a real mp3 file, the signature is missing and it will just call fileplayer. But if it finds the playlist signature, it will read the file and play the files one by one, using fileplayer (it will need to do screen updating, since dvdplayer will think it is playing a single file...).

The advantage is that this works for both hdd and network shares.

What happens if you evoke fileplayer from a telnet session then play a file through the screen UI?) There would be one advantage, you wouldn't need to have the TV turned on to play music!

Yes, but you have to have a computer turned on, which is a lot better than turning the TV on:)

If you try to start fileplayer while it is playing, it will crash your MG35 so bad that you will need to remove the power plug. At least that's what happened to me.

Another idea is to have a wrapper script to fileplayer, and rename the .M3U file as .MP3 (or .OGG or .WMA ). We know this is not a real MP3 file, but this way it will be visible on the TV screen.


I floated something similar a while ago, but I was proposing hex editing dvdplayer.bin to replaced either OGG or WAV with M3U. This way you could just select an M3U file and the wrapped would play it.

But there wouldn't be much on-screen info regards what was playing.

And, of course, we could instead funnel our energies into a team project to replaced dvdplayer.bin.

Ian

I floated something similar a while ago, but I was proposing hex editing dvdplayer.bin to replaced either OGG or WAV with M3U. This way you could just select an M3U file and the wrapped would play it.

This is even better.

But there wouldn't be much on-screen info regards what was playing.

We can get a limited feedback by returning a fake mp3 header and a "time tick" for each file, as fileplayer does normally at each second. But I'm not sure if the commands received from the remote control will be correctly sent to the original fileplayer.

Displaying the filename/id3 would need some microwindows knowledge. But this could be an important step towards replacing dvdplayer.

And, of course, we could instead funnel our energies into a team project to replaced dvdplayer.bin.

Writing to the screen will enable us to go forward and try to build a minimal replacement for dvdplayer.bin.

But I'm not sure if the commands received from the remote control will be correctly sent to the original fileplayer.

Yes, it is possible. The wrapper should continouusly read cin and filter the command received from dvdplayer: keep some of them for itself (e.g. Next, Previous) and pass the others to the undelying fileplayer (e.g. REW, FF). Stop command should be passed, and when the working fileplayer exits, the wrapper should also exit.

I floated something similar a while ago, but I was proposing hex editing dvdplayer.bin to replaced either OGG or WAV with M3U. This way you could just select an M3U file and the wrapped would play it.

But there wouldn't be much on-screen info regards what was playing.

And, of course, we could instead funnel our energies into a team project to replaced dvdplayer.bin.

IanI think we will will get the most functionality-for-the-effort by writing a small cgi program that will read a playlist, populate a "Playlist" ramfs with symbolic links to the actual mp3's, and then pressing 'Play' with the existing dvdplayer.bin.

We don't need to deal with the display since the playlist will exist as a list of MP3's on the screen as the MG-35 plays them.

The code that selects a specific playlist can be initially web-based, then eventually dvdplayer.bin could be wrapped to recognize it, and someday, dvdplayer.bin replaced. This gives initial m3u playlist capability from the cgi interface and it could prompt you to press "Play" on the "Playlist" folder. The existing dvdplayer.bin would do the rest.

It's not that we can't deal with replacing dvdplayer.bin, it just adds functionality we will build upon from the web/cgi side. (Odds are we will need the ability to display the folder hierarchy of media there and the ability to click on a file to play it. This will kickstart that effort.) 90% of the desired functionality gets in place quickly, the balance eventually. As already mentioned, if someone wanted to overlay the "Music" folder it will automatically play and need no user interaction for a default playlist.

So... a cgi graphical folder traversal is needed...to select a specific m3u file.
a m3u parse, 'playlist' "create ramfs with links" program is needed
Both can be developed independently, then used together. Odds are, neither will be wasted as we develop more custom features.

Yes... eventually dvdplayer.bin will be replaced, but until then we might partition some related work into tasks different folks might want to tackle as a parallel effort.

Joe L.

This is coming from the average window user so bear with me.
What if . .
it was possible to utilize a data library from another program for playlist, mp3, image etc . .
Example: J.River Media Center
They have an SDK for interface plugin
http://www.jrmediacenter.com/devzone.html

I have seen Media Centers library used for other applications ie. Cinemar MusicLobby as well as an avsforum member that developed an app to interface with the russound cav66 (works great).

Sorry, for wasting space and time if I'm barking up the wrong tree.
Thanks

The Airlinktek (http://airlinktek.com) website is now showing release notes for MG-35 V 1.4.5 firmware. I haven't checked the firmware itself to see if it's different from the "beta" we tried a month ago. Edit - firmware looks the same to me. :( The new release notes go on at length about the Repeat function (available in the Setup menu). Now I see this was mentioned by AnywhereUS on the official Mediagate forum on August 29th. :o

Wasn't there M3U support in a korean Al Tech firmware? I think it was 1.4.4 korean, as this is the only KOR version in my archive :D

I know I tried it, but could not get it working with larger M3U files. I can not test it now as the player is in use...
I'm willing to try tomorrow, at least that should be a dvdplayer.bin which shows M3U files.

Zappacat

I floated something similar a while ago, but I was proposing hex editing dvdplayer.bin to replaced either OGG or WAV with M3U. This way you could just select an M3U file and the wrapped would play it.
Don't tuch OGG (must have), I never play WAV...

Wasn't there M3U support in a korean Al Tech firmware? I think it was 1.4.4 korean, as this is the only KOR version in my archive :D

I know I tried it, but could not get it working with larger M3U files. I can not test it now as the player is in use...
I'm willing to try tomorrow, at least that should be a dvdplayer.bin which shows M3U files.

Zappacat

Zappacat

Would be VERY interested in what you find here,as its often been speculated that M3U support was included within the KR firmware,but I don't think anyone has ever found anything...

I was looking at the recent (to me) release of the eureka line up from ziocanada.ca

there is way to much similarity with there lx351 (mg35) and the lx350hd (mg350hd) to be a coincident

fyi mg35 = $155 cad..... lx351 = $128 cad from 1 store

they are so close to spec im wondering if the firmware would work

any thoughts

I was looking at the recent (to me) release of the eureka line up from ziocanada.ca...
they are so close to spec im wondering if the firmware would work
For one thing, the filename is different: .bin rather than .upgrade. I predict that your Mediagate will not accept this file, even if renamed. And another thing: the LX-351 is more like an MG-25 than an MG-35, since it has no networking capability. I accidentally tried to upgrade my MG-35 with an upgrade file for an AVOX something-or-other (an MG-25 clone), and it crashed my MG-35 (though otherwise did nothing).

If you are feeling really really lucky, then try it! (I would not.)

The Airlinktek (http://airlinktek.com) website is now showing release notes for MG-35 V 1.4.5 firmware. I haven't checked the firmware itself to see if it's different from the "beta" we tried a month ago. Edit - firmware looks the same to me. :( The new release notes go on at length about the Repeat function (available in the Setup menu). Now I see this was mentioned by AnywhereUS on the official Mediagate forum on August 29th. :oThe upgrade file is exactly the same as the "beta" version originally released.

gadgetmind,
The cgi "Current screen grab as a BMP file" crashes my MG-35 and causes it to reboot itself. (At least it does in the RB version, I did not try the cgi in the SB version)

Joe L.
P.S. I installed both the alpha7 upgrade versions this evening. My wife and I both prefer the RB (Royal Blue) version and that is the one we are running.

Tonight I split the MG-350HD firmware, and tool a look at the contents of the cramfs.img file. Several interesting things:

1) Someone decided to start using source control for the kit, as ... there is CVS
directory in some of the directories I've seen.

2) dvdplayer does not exist, it's now curacao, located in /home

3) /etc/init.d countains a startup for curacao (rcS), ramdisk (S10ramdisk),
urandom, (S20urandom), and network (S30network).

I was wondering what would happen if I took the cramfs.img from the 350 and replaced my cramfs image in a 35... Though I think I would need the kernel as well.

I do like the new green background it has.

Jeff

I was wondering what would happen if I took the cramfs.img from the 350 and replaced my cramfs image in a 35... Though I think I would need the kernel as well.

I wouldn't try that, unless you have a serial cable to debrick. Better try to execute the players from 350 to 35, one by one. Maybe they work...

gadgetmind,
The cgi "Current screen grab as a BMP file" crashes my MG-35 and causes it to reboot itself. (At least it does in the RB version, I did not try the cgi in the SB version)


Well, it doesn't crash the box for me, but neither does it work. The problem is that I have no idea what I've changed to break it! I'll revert to alpha6 and then make the changes one-by-one. It was probably the stack changes - maybe mathopd is also short of stack?

Tonight. Maybe.

Ian

I was wondering what would happen if I took the cramfs.img from the 350 and replaced my cramfs image in a 35... Though I think I would need the kernel as well.


I think I'd have to describe the chances of this working as "somewhat low", but that's English reserve for you. :)

Ian

Hi All,

I'm looking to help out with the MG-35 firmware if I can but I don't have a development environment. Has anyone got a VM with a build environment on so I can help out? It would make it a lot easier!

Microsoft Virtual PC / VMWare / Parallells would all be good.

Cheers,
Andy

Hi All,

I'm looking to help out with the MG-35 firmware if I can but I don't have a development environment. Has anyone got a VM with a build environment on so I can help out? It would make it a lot easier!

Microsoft Virtual PC / VMWare / Parallells would all be good.

Cheers,
Andy

Andy,

Post #2028 and #2032 at this forum, will help you with this I think..

Regards

Teddy

Hi mediagaters

I have been lurking on the forum for a while now but it is time to come out of the shadows :) and offer my feed back and congratulations on the latest developer firmware. I have loaded the alpha7 (SB theme) and noted the following issues:


Web server screendump crashed the mediagate
ISO and DVD .IFO playback from a Samba share is still jerky inthe audio and video
Unable playback MP4 AVC/H.264 encoded video. Just shows a black screen from which all remote/player buttons other power are wedged. requires a shutdown restart to complete. (It would be nice th be able to recover from this without have to shutdown the player).
Some avi/divix files just refuse to play. (do not yet know what type of encodings are causing the problem, but they do not weged the player. The player returns the previous dialog).
Samba share scans still feel like they take a long time. There are delays when moving from one server share to another share on a different server.


I had read somewhere in the thread that it was possible to have music playback during a photo slideshow. Could someone point out how this is done or where to find the info.

I have also noted that NDAS when enabled and a client is connected, even simple AVI/DIVX playback is stuttered. So I have taken to disabling NDAS and USB to upload firmware.

Configuration:
MG35 with an 300GB Samsung Spinpoint drive formated NTFS in network with a number of Linux and Windows servers. (It would be nice to be able to cull this infor the web server info link page).

My single most import wishlist item is support for AVC/H.264. My video library is made up of mostly AVC/H.264 MP4 files. If the underlying media player is some version of VLC. This should be doable.

On other question on my mind, is what of the other MG35 projects. There is the Yahoo! group, some other forum another poster listed on this thread, the sourceforge mg35tools project, the pbwiki wiki and the various file storage sites. Could someone help clarify whats what. Is this thread going to eventually migrate to SF?

Having said all this, I should also say that this firmware enhancement project is proving to be really exciting and you contributes have done a great job. The MG35 is certainly more desirable with your improvements. Great work! Keep it up.

Kiboko

I had read somewhere in the thread that it was possible to have music playback during a photo slideshow. Could someone point out how this is done or where to find the info.

Just throw some MP3s in the "music" folder on harddrive. They will automatically play when you look at the JPEGs. I didn't find a "shuffle" option, so they always play in alphabetical order, I think.


On other question on my mind, is what of the other MG35 projects. There is the Yahoo! group, some other forum another poster listed on this thread, the sourceforge mg35tools project, the pbwiki wiki and the various file storage sites. Could someone help clarify whats what. Is this thread going to eventually migrate to SF?

These are our locations:
- this thread is main "forum" for our group.
-Yahoo group is used mainly for firmware releases, but some end-users ask questions there.
- pbwiki is for documentation (no forum there)
- sourceforge is mainly for development. It's a new location, only a few days old, so there is no activity yet.

The mediagateusa forum is US distributor's forum.

Web server screendump crashed the mediagate


Yes, I'm going to take a look at this.


ISO and DVD .IFO playback from a Samba share is still jerky inthe audio and video


Someone was going to try different settings in smb.conf. No feedback so maybe still pending.


Unable playback MP4 AVC/H.264 encoded video.


It's a hardware limitation. H.264 won't ever play on the MG-35

Ian

Hi mediagaters

I have been lurking on the forum for a while now but it is time to come out of the shadows :) and offer my feed back and congratulations on the latest developer
firmware.
Welcome... you have a lot to catch up on.

I have loaded the alpha7 (SB theme) and noted the following issues:


Web server screendump crashed the mediagateAlready reported... use Alpha6 if you are a developer, until Ian figures it out.
ISO and DVD .IFO playback from a Samba share is still jerky inthe audio and videoNobody has done anything to change the kernel and/or dvdplayer.bin that are involved here. So... it is how the MG-35 works, regardless of the new graphical look that has been accomplished so far, the networking and performance of the MG-35 are unchanged.
Unable playback MP4 AVC/H.264 encoded video. Just shows a black screen from which all remote/player buttons other power are wedged. requires a shutdown restart to complete. (It would be nice to be able to recover from this without have to shutdown the player)Try reloading the 1.4.4 factory firmware, odds are that video format is unsupported by the MG-35. If it does not work with their firmware, it will not with Ian's latest release, since as I already said, nothing has been changed in dvdplayer.bin.
Some avi/divix files just refuse to play. (do not yet know what type of encodings are causing the problem, but they do not weged the player. The player returns the previous dialog).Many file formats are unsupported. Many never will be, since the decoding is in the Sigma hardware chipset.
Samba share scans still feel like they take a long time. There are delays when moving from one server share to another share on a different server.
unless you configured the new networking feature Ian built, it defaults to using the old standard MG-35 process which re-scans your entire network when you change modes, etc.
I had read somewhere in the thread that it was possible to have music playback during a photo slideshow. Could someone point out how this is done or where to find the info.Create on your first hard disk partition a folder named "Music" Put some mp3s there, they will automatically play when that folder is visited. They will also play when photos are viewed. (Press mute if you do not want music when viewing photos thereafter)
I have also noted that NDAS when enabled and a client is connected, even simple AVI/DIVX playback is stuttered. So I have taken to disabling NDAS and USB to upload firmware.NDAS being done in software and is highly processor intensive. Expect it to slow down video. Disable it when playing video


Configuration:
MG35 with an 300GB Samsung Spinpoint drive formated NTFS in network with a number of Linux and Windows servers. (It would be nice to be able to cull this infor the web server info link page). It would be nice to see the network shares from the cgi interface.My single most import wishlist item is support for AVC/H.264. My video library is made up of mostly AVC/H.264 MP4 files. If the underlying media player is some version of VLC. This should be doable.
Since the codecs are in hardware, it may never be possible. AlTech has not released any source code for their video player programs, even though they should as they appear to be based on GPL projects, so it might be a long time until we can compile our own version of dvdplayer.bin.
On other question on my mind, is what of the other MG35 projects. There is the Yahoo! group, some other forum another poster listed on this thread, the sourceforge mg35tools project, the pbwiki wiki and the various file storage sites. Could someone help clarify whats what. Is this thread going to eventually migrate to SF?There is only one project. It is evolving. Parts of it are stored in various places as you discovered, each place has its own purpose. The main thread describing progress is here. The software source code will soon be managed via SourceForge.

Having said all this, I should also say that this firmware enhancement project is proving to be really exciting and you contributes have done a great job. The MG35 is certainly more desirable with your improvements. Great work! Keep it up.

KibokoI'm sure everyone involved appreciates your kind words.

This isn't a simple problem. There is some instability in the system and some unrelated changes have exposed it.

I copied alpha6 to an x (experimental) directory and made all the alpha7 changes one-by-one. When I'd finished, the x version still worked! I diffed the trees and the only changes were trivial. I built two new alpha7's and x's, tested all four, and the x's worked but the 7's failed the screenbmp test.

So, I renamed alpha7 to broken, copied README from 7 to x, renamed x as 7, and tried building and flashing the new x (which is now fundamentally the same as the working x and identical to the old 7)

This came up without networking and crashed when I tried to reflash from HD. I had to debrick it!

So, trivial changes are killing stuff. I still suspect stack on something. I'm going to play a whole load more, but it will have to be at the weekend when I can be methodical and test the hell out of stuff.

Ian

This isn't a simple problem. There is some instability in the system and some unrelated changes have exposed it.

I copied alpha6 to an x (experimental) directory and made all the alpha7 changes one-by-one. When I'd finished, the x version still worked! I diffed the trees and the only changes were trivial. I built two new alpha7's and x's, tested all four, and the x's worked but the 7's failed the screenbmp test.

So, I renamed alpha7 to broken, copied README from 7 to x, renamed x as 7, and tried building and flashing the new x (which is now fundamentally the same as the working x and identical to the old 7)

This came up without networking and crashed when I tried to reflash from HD. I had to debrick it!

So, trivial changes are killing stuff. I still suspect stack on something. I'm going to play a whole load more, but it will have to be at the weekend when I can be methodical and test the hell out of stuff.
Ian
Some probably crazy ideas: do other cgi scripts make it fail? If not, is there something peculiar about screendmp that would explain it? is the cgi execution itself the problem? Al

Some probably crazy ideas: do other cgi scripts make it fail? If not, is there something peculiar about screendmp that would explain it? is the cgi execution itself the problem? Al

I don't know what the disease is and am only seeing the symptoms. I don't think there's anything wrong with screenbmp.cgi and when I bricked the box, the network wasn't up, so no way had it been run.

I have no idea why another trivial change (should have been a null change!) caused the network to fail and upgrader to not be able to run from HD.

I'm sure it will be obvious once I've worked it out!

Ian

Ian,

Do you think it would be prudent for me to remove Alpha7 from Yahoo and Rapidshare? so we dont get people bricking their boxes.I myself have changed to Pre4 from alpha 7 with no problems - but just wondered what you think..

Unless Ian's sneaked in some bells, whistles and a PC emulator while no-one was looking, the screenbmp.cgi program is pretty trivial - it doesn't malloc any memory or do anything else that could "leak" - the only real way it could crash the box is through its interaction with the web server.

Yes, I'm going to take a look at this.
It's a hardware limitation. H.264 won't ever play on the MG-35
Ian

Should have thought of that. I looked at the hardware KB on the wiki and based on the information in this other AVS thread 717909, (URL post restriction) the Sigma chip in the MG35 does not support hardware AVC/H.264. Too bad. I think I will have to finally break down and build an HTPC for my AVC collection.

Kiboko

Ian,

Do you think it would be prudent for me to remove Alpha7 from Yahoo and Rapidshare? so we dont get people bricking their boxes.I myself have changed to Pre4 from alpha 7 with no problems - but just wondered what you think..

Yes, you might as well pull it. Other than the cosmetic theme stuff, the only changes were me trying to address some breakage. But this introduced more breakage!

Ian

Unless Ian's sneaked in some bells, whistles and a PC emulator while no-one was looking, the screenbmp.cgi program is pretty trivial - it doesn't malloc any memory or do anything else that could "leak" - the only real way it could crash the box is through its interaction with the web server.

Yup, and the whole thing has more than a whiff of memory tramplage, and the trigger seems to have been stack boosting telnetd and lash to add more stack.

Dunno whether to wind back stacks or add more! Probably the latter.

Ian

Yes, you might as well pull it. Other than the cosmetic theme stuff, the only changes were me trying to address some breakage. But this introduced more breakage!

Ian

Done!

I checked the KOR firmwares again and the MG35_1.4.5_KOR.upgrade (http://www.mediagate.co.kr/file_swfw/MG35_1.4.5_KOR.upgrade) as it is on the al tech site DOES SUPPORT M3U files! (but boy what does it look ugly now as my eyes are used to the sparkling colours of the ungated RB! :) )

If you go to playlists you see the M3U files in your collection. But of course, in real al tech style, it's not straightforward. Playlists with files from different folders don't load (or take a ridiculous long loading time) and it seems that the #EXTINF: tag has to be filled (playtime in seconds). WINamp does this, Windows mediaplayer doesn't.

So if you don't mind some korean text (navigating is easy as all icons are in english) and don't fear some testing, you can have M3U support.

However I'm pretty confident the ungated mediageek version will get there, and probably will do a better job at it!

So if you don't mind some korean text (navigating is easy as all icons are in english) and don't fear some testing, you can have M3U support.



Zappa , many thanks for this...

This is really good news , and will save the development guys alot of time.Rather than just writing stuff from scratch,hopefully they will just be able to import the feature from the KR firmware into the latest English builds..

I think I'd have to describe the chances of this working as "somewhat low", but that's English reserve for you. :)

Ian

Actually it's fairly close the nil, for moderately large values of zero.

:)

Shame to as there seems to be an .xml file controlling some aspects of the gui.
One can only hope for an upgrade.

Jeff

(but boy what does it look ugly now as my eyes are used to the sparkling colours of the ungated RB! :) )

I can update themes to a 4.4.5 version but I would like to work with an English "production" 4.4.5 version of the firmware if possible (dont want to recreate all the OSD PNG-files).

Shame to as there seems to be an .xml file controlling some aspects of the gui.
Where and what version? :eek:

Hi
Been following this thread with great interest...excellent job you guys are all doing.
Finally took the plunge and flashed the 1.4.4.4-pre4 firmware yesterday and was very impressed indeed.
Having a problem when using Ftp with Win2k accessing the Fat32 partition of the Freecom media player 35 hard drive.:
Does this log file show where I am going wrong?
Thanks


220-Local time is now 00:00. Server port: 21.
220 You will be disconnected after 15 minutes of inactivity.
USER anonymous
230 Anonymous user logged in
PWD
257 "/" is your current location
Host type (I): UNIX (standard)
PASV
227 Entering Passive Mode (192,168,1,2,45,90)
connecting to 192.168.1.2:11610
- -
connecting to 192.168.1.2:11610
Connected to 192.168.1.2 port 11610
LIST
150 Accepted data connection
Received 1795 bytes in 0.1 secs, (170.00 Kbps), transfer succeeded
226-Options: -a -l
226 28 matches total
CWD cdrom
250 OK. Current directory is cdrom
PWD
257 "cdrom" is your current location
PASV
227 Entering Passive Mode (192,168,1,2,85,226)
connecting to 192.168.1.2:21986
- -
connecting to 192.168.1.2:21986
Connected to 192.168.1.2 port 21986
LIST
150 Accepted data connection
Received 255 bytes in 0.1 secs, (20.00 Kbps), transfer succeeded
226-Options: -a -l
226 4 matches total
CWD Partition5
250 OK. Current directory is cdrom/Partition5
PWD
257 "cdrom/Partition5" is your current location
PASV
227 Entering Passive Mode (192,168,1,2,81,194)
connecting to 192.168.1.2:20930
- -
connecting to 192.168.1.2:20930
Connected to 192.168.1.2 port 20930
LIST
150 Accepted data connection
Received 708 bytes in 0.4 secs, (14.78 Kbps), transfer succeeded
226-Options: -a -l
226 11 matches total
sending COMPLETE.WAV as COMPLETE.WAV (1 of 1)
TYPE I
200 TYPE is now 8-bit binary
PASV

227 Entering Passive Mode (192,168,1,2,182,83)
connecting to 192.168.1.2:46675
- -
connecting to 192.168.1.2:46675
Connected to 192.168.1.2 port 46675
STOR COMPLETE.WAV
553 Can't open that file: Read-only file system

The MG35 mounts the internal HD read only. If you read back in this thread it is possible to telnet in, unmount the drive, then remount it read/write. This will only work at present if the drive is FAT32 formatted - we don't have read/write ntfs drivers yet...

Thanks for the speedy reply.
The drive is part formated FAt32 and part NTFS
I tried the Telnet instruction from the FAQ at mediagate.pbwiki and got this:


BusyBox v1.2.0 (2006.08.28-07:47+0000) Built-in shell (lash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

/ # /bin/pure-ftpd -H -D -M -z &

[1] 56
/ #
/ # Unable to start a standalone server: Address already in use

Thanks for the speedy reply.
The drive is part formated FAt32 and part NTFS
I tried the Telnet instruction from the FAQ at mediagate.pbwiki and got this:


BusyBox v1.2.0 (2006.08.28-07:47+0000) Built-in shell (lash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

/ # /bin/pure-ftpd -H -D -M -z &

[1] 56
/ #
/ # Unable to start a standalone server: Address already in use

I'm not sure why you're trying to run another ftp server, but you'll have to either kill the current one (launched from /erc/sashrc) or run the second one on a different port.

But from your earlier message, your ftp server is working just fine. You logged in, changed directory, and uploaded a file. Of course, the file wasn't written to disk, but this is because it's mounted read-only.

As a one-off, use the telnet session to mount your disk as read-write.
/bin/mount /cdrom -o remount,rw
you might need a variant of this with multiple partitions. Use mount without any arguments to see what's mounted and remount the bit you want to be read-write.

To have your HD always read-write, the only current solution is to use a couple of simple phase scripts.

Ian

As a one-off, use the telnet session to mount your disk as read-write.
/bin/mount /cdrom -o remount,rw
you might need a variant of this with multiple partitions. Use mount without any arguments to see what's mounted and remount the bit you want to be read-write.

Ian

Brilliant thanks Ian:
/bin/mount /cdrom/Partition5 -o remount,rw
did the trick.
After all that FTPing a 360mb file took 24 mins against 6 minutes using NDAS.
I'm guessing thats expected behaviour though.
Thanks again.
Peter.

Brilliant thanks Ian:
/bin/mount /cdrom/Partition5 -o remount,rw
did the trick.
After all that FTPing a 360mb file took 24 mins against 6 minutes using NDAS.
I'm guessing thats expected behaviour though.
Thanks again.
Peter.

Glad it worked. I keen meaning to work out what the bottleneck is when using ftp. It would be nice to match (or exceed?) NDAS speeds.

I wonder if ftp will let us ftp to /dev/nul?

Ian

Thanks for the pointers to the posts... but I can already run linux.

What I want is a pre-build development environment where I can simply load the project, change the code and rebuild exactly the same as you guys. Is there such a setup?

If not, what tools are required, where can I get them and whats next on the list of stuff to do? :)

Thanks,
Andy

What I want is a pre-build development environment where I can simply load the project, change the code and rebuild exactly the same as you guys. Is there such a setup?

No, we don't have one. But if you do it, please take some notes and add them to the wiki or post them here. I started using a VMware image named Nuke, but I didn't had the time to compile and run a "Hello, World!" on MG35.

We have a page for developers (http://mediagate.pbwiki.com/MG35Development), a list of people working (http://mediagate.pbwiki.com/WhoIsDoingWhat//) and a wishlist (http://mediagate.pbwiki.com/wishlist). Here is what we know about the hardware (http://mediagate.pbwiki.com/MG35Hardware) and firmware (http://mediagate.pbwiki.com/MG35Firmware).

@gans

There is a MG-35 user From Holland, over at the Mediagate forums that appears to have somehow Bricked his machine - If he sends the unit to you and some money for return postage,would you be papared to De-Brick it for him??

If so,let me know and I wil send you a pm with his email , but thought it only fair I ask you first..

Regards

Teddy..


hello again, today i recived the broken MG-35 form the user (from Holland)
to get in in the bootloader menu is no problem
then i upload the file with y-modem

etc etc .... when i used the last step the output is

*************** BEGIN *****************

Writing : ............................................................ ....
............................................................ ....
............................................................ ....
............................................................ ....
............................................................ ....
............................................................ ....
............................
boot> boot flash

Inptr=
00000011
Inflating....

Inflate Failed
Final Inptr=00000016
Original LEN =8B1F000EOutCnt = 00000000
Original CRC =28090033
Computed CRC =00000000
KABOOOOM!!


*************** END *****************

what can be wrong with this machine ? why is the "computed CRC' 0000000

when i try to send the rom file again en flash it i power down the MG-35....
TO BAD !!!!

now it is in THIS STATE :-(

If you hit the power button and the HD spins up but no LEDs light, then your bootloader is probably corrupted or erased. This is the worst case. There is an ongoing effort to figure out if the EM8511 has a JTAG port and if it's usable for JTAG recovery.



how to restore the BOOTLOADER ??

please help me ( i tought the where was a standard page for it bu i can't find it anymore ,,,,

If not, what tools are required, where can I get them and whats next on the list of stuff to do? :)

Check to see if these instructions (http://www.mpcclub.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=6403) work for you.

when i try to send the rom file again en flash it i power down the MG-35....
TO BAD !!!!

now it is in THIS STATE :-(

If you hit the power button and the HD spins up but no LEDs light, then your bootloader is probably corrupted or erased. This is the worst case. There is an ongoing effort to figure out if the EM8511 has a JTAG port and if it's usable for JTAG recovery.



how to restore the BOOTLOADER ??

please help me ( i tought the where was a standard page for it bu i can't find it anymore ,,,,

This is not really my field , but what version of the bootlaoder is it now displaying?

One thought I just had,is that when the owner of the box ORIGINALLY upgraded to a newer firmware,he did so from a much older firmware version that had a different bootloader - I remember a while ago PB said that older firmware had a different bootloader? - you may need to flash with a older Cramfs? - Ian may be able to help here...

Just a idea...

This is not really my field , but what version of the bootlaoder is it now displaying?

Just a idea...

at the moment there is NO bootloader ..... it is gone .....
the state is when i power up, there is no more a blue led flashing :confused: :confused:

- you may need to flash with a older Cramfs? - Ian may be able to help here...

If it doesn't boot (so you don't have serial console), we simply canot do anything. Unless you have the skills and tools to get the flash chips out, rewrite them, and then solder them back. Or unless someone figures out the JTAG stuff, which is at least improbable...

when i try to send the rom file again en flash it i power down the MG-35... Do you mean that the second time you ran y-modem and did the boot flash command, it worked? :confused: And then you powered down and now the blue LED light doesn't flash upon powering up again?

If so, and the boot flash command worked, it's possible the NV memory has a bit spuriously set to turn off the LED. Before panicking, hook it up to a TV. If there still is no video output, then it's OK to panic. :eek:

If it doesn't boot (so you don't have serial console), we simply canot do anything. Unless you have the skills and tools to get the flash chips out, rewrite them, and then solder them back. Or unless someone figures out the JTAG stuff, which is at least improbable...

the serial console does not repond anymore :( :mad: :( :mad:

what can be wrong with this machine ? why is the "computed CRC' 0000000

My first knee jerk thought it that the SDRAM is hosed.

Have you tried using the dump command (sorry forgot the name, and the syntax is also a bit odd) to see if the ramfs is in memory after you downloaded it?

Or just try some memory reads and writes?

There is an SDRAM test in the boot loader but it only seems to trigger if the loader decides that the config is dead and this must be the 1st ever boot.

Ian

So from what I saw on the last posts, I think what Al-tech should help us on, it's to give us a bootable CD where we can reflash the bootloader via a cdrom ;p

So from what I saw on the last posts, I think what Al-tech should help us on, it's to give us a bootable CD where we can reflash the bootloader via a cdrom ;p

Um, but what's going to boot the box, handle the IDE/ATAPI commands to read the CD, handle the ISO9660 filing system on the CD, and program the flash?

Unless you have something in the flash, the box isn't going to boot. (Unless your silicon supports a boot via JTAG, serial, SPI, I2C or whatever)

Ian

It would be nice to see the network shares from the cgi interface.

We can list the contents of the /net directory with using the ls or ll command in a shell script. Is this the sort of thing you were thinking of or were you hoping it might beable to be hyperlinked so you can click on it and see the contents of the shares? This might be able to be done using sed, will have to look into it some time.

Nick

Where and what version? :eek:
Version 1.0.6, for the MG-350HD...

Looks like a much cleaner implementation ...

I Need some help on figuring out what may be the problem.

I am currently connected to 2 MG-35's via a 5 port hub from a dedicated XP pro PC (no internet access just iso files and ripping software). I use DVD decyptor and or DVD Shrink to create the iso file.
On certain iso files the digital audio will drop in and out in the first few minutes of movie play (this is really quite annoying).

I have done a few things to troubleshoot this problem.
I have reripped problem DVD's
did a direct connect with crossover cable
disc defrag
and still no change in audio performance

then I put a few of the problem files on a hdd, put it in the MG-35 and the files played without a problem.

I would prefer to keep my iso files in one area so my family and I can enjoy our little makeshift VOD.

There is one other problem (with all iso's).
After about 20 - 40 minutes of play the vid will stutter for a second and than continue on.

I am running about 75 feet of cat5 to each MG-35 but thought the length shouldn't be a problem.

If you have any thoughts on this they would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

so the bootloader is like the bios on a computer ?

so the bootloader is like the bios on a computer ?

The boot loader is like a cross between a bios and grub, refer http://mediagate.pbwiki.com/MG35Firmware#Bootingprocess

Nick

Um, but what's going to boot the box, handle the IDE/ATAPI commands to read the CD, handle the ISO9660 filing system on the CD, and program the flash?

Unless you have something in the flash, the box isn't going to boot. (Unless your silicon supports a boot via JTAG, serial, SPI, I2C or whatever)

Ian

so for this player it is end of lifetime, i (let it)send it to freecom for repair ....

If you have any thoughts on this they would be greatly appreciated.


Someone needs to try different settings in smb.conf to try and see if we can get better network performance. It can't be me as my network works just fine!

The procedure should be really easy.
1) cat current smb.conf and copy what's there - it's only two lines.
2) create a new copy on a PC and make it available via a network share (remember to use dos2unix to turn crlf into lf!)
3) copy the new smb.conf over the current one.
4) browse to your network share and start playing some content.

We kicked around ideas for which values to add/change fairly recently - search for smb.conf.

Ian

Ian,

I'm just having a look at the information mgnv can get hold off to look at seeing if I can grab the info using a cgi script and then insert into an webpage.

A few Questions?

1. Have yoou lood at how to get the mac address out, i get 155:208:10:168:2 when i grab it in in decimal format and just garbage is i use strings?

2. Do you know where they trun on / off the NDAS and the DHCP flags in the NV?

3. Same as above but for the language, video, screen, preview & audio?

I have noticed that the NV is not updated to the IP address given by udhcp, do you know how this info is stored?

Cheers

Nick

I saw somewhere I think its on the Cosmo box, that they boot up with a CDROM to repair the bootloader, thats why I was saying that. On the wiki page, on the bootloader information, there is Initialise Hardware (with a question mark) on his first step so it mean thats they are not sure if it actually the bootloader the one who initialize the hardware ?

On the wiki page, on the bootloader information, there is Initialise Hardware (with a question mark) on his first step so it mean thats they are not sure if it actually the bootloader the one who initialize the hardware ?

No, we know for sure it does some harware setup, but we don't know the extent of this phase, e.g. if it looks for IDE drives or not, if the rendering engine is initialized, etc. We know it brings up the network and serial i/f, since in the bootloader we have commands to load stuff over the net/serial. The rest of the initializations are left for the uClinux kernel.

1. Have yoou lood at how to get the mac address out, i get 155:208:10:168:2 when i grab it in in decimal format and just garbage is i use strings?


mgnv "%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x" b:200 b:201 b:202 b:203 b:204 b:205

The spec string is just a normal printf style one, and the arguments afterwards just give the type of this to fetch (byte, word or string)


2. Do you know where they trun on / off the NDAS and the DHCP flags in the NV?

3. Same as above but for the language, video, screen, preview & audio?


Sorry, I never went this far. Try using the dump to file option in mgnv and then compare the files afterwards (maybe this can be done in a CGI script as you can just call mgnv and then cat the file?) Change the options in the UI and see what changes in the config. Then update the wiki!


I have noticed that the NV is not updated to the IP address given by udhcp, do you know how this info is stored?


If DHCP is disabled, then setup doesn't call udhcpc and instead calls ifconfig and route itself and directly generates /hosts/smb.conf itself. All the information regards IP, netmask, gateway, etc. comes from the NV
If DHCP is enabled, then setup calls udhcpc and this program does all the ifconfig, route and smb.conf stuff - this information doesn't get read from NV and doesn't get written to NV.

The common place for you to get the information you need is from the output of ifconfig and by reading smb.conf. Or you can read the IP and netmask directly from memory if these are all you need - try using peek for the eight bytes at 0x1FFF208

Note that when dhcp is enabled, the new udhcpc also writes /hosts/resolv.conf so that gethostbyname will work. This doesn't happen if dhcp is disabled (I guess postsetup could do this)

Ian

Someone needs to try different settings in smb.conf to try and see if we can get better network performance. It can't be me as my network works just fine!
Ian

I had problems with stuttering while playing ISO's on my two MG-35's. I got looking into the statistics of my switch (BayNetworks 350), and noticed that I had a TON of FCS Errors. I then found that my Server (CentOS 4.3) had the network card to autonegotiate. The switch had been hard pegged to 100 FD, but after I hard pegged the NIC in the server, my problems with stuttering went away. Aldo the machines that I was using to take my DVD collection and rip them off started to take 20-45 minutes per DVD instead of the normal 2.5 - 3.5 hours.

-shawjo

For alpha7, I increased the stack sizes for busybox and lash so that the stack sizes of everything was as follows. This caused screenbmp.cgi to fail and there were other nasty issues.

Alpha 7 sizes
Flag Rev Text Data BSS Stack Relocs RAM Filename
-----------------------------------------------------------
-r 4 175072 23776 6960 32768 11012 238640 busybox
-r 4 7040 912 528 4096 304 12640 cls
-r 4 674368 775776 463760 65535 45760 1979503 dvdplayer.bin
-r 4 302304 149376 114896 32768 7564 599408 fileplayer.bin
-r 4 62784 19872 8800 65536 4472 157056 hdparm
-r 4 72640 9744 1952 4096 4372 88496 hush
-r 4 62400 10672 11200 4096 2528 88432 init
-r 4 69280 7584 1440 32768 3792 111136 lash
-r 4 98336 17296 72416 4096 6344 192208 mathopd
-r 4 29344 5424 688 4096 604 39616 mgnv
-r 4 35072 7360 12400 4096 2196 58992 minimod
-r 4 95904 55296 3196512 32768 2840 3380544 mp3play
-r 4 123296 86112 2172416 32768 3784 2414656 mp4play
-r 4 82656 8944 9248 655360 4832 756272 mpegplayer.bin
-r 4 48480 8064 8272 65536 1080 130416 nbtscan
-r 4 35584 4704 1104 4096 800 45552 nbtscan.new
-r 4 123616 18160 153248 262144 6868 557232 pure-ftpd
-r 4 25792 5280 8624 65536 648 105296 setup
-r 4 379536 90672 51604 16384 19616 538260 smbmount
-r 4 89888 9392 2128 4096 3872 105568 telnetd
-r 4 42336 6992 864 4096 1616 54352 udhcpc
-r 4 67968 7872 8912 393216 2280 478032 upgrader
-r 4 27328 4176 688 4096 532 36352 uptime

For Alpha8 I have made the following changes. I have pushed up many other stack sizes, but reduced it for the ftp server as it seemed OTT to me.

Alpha 8 revised sizes
Flag Rev Text Data BSS Stack Relocs RAM Filename
-----------------------------------------------------------
-r 4 175072 23776 6960 32768 11012 238640 busybox
-r 4 7040 912 528 4096 304 12640 cls
-r 4 674368 775776 463760 65535 45760 1979503 dvdplayer.bin
-r 4 302304 149376 114896 32768 7564 599408 fileplayer.bin
-r 4 62784 19872 8800 65536 4472 157056 hdparm
-r 4 72640 9744 1952 32768 4372 117168 hush
-r 4 62400 10672 11200 4096 2528 88432 init
-r 4 69280 7584 1440 32768 3792 111136 lash
-r 4 98336 17296 72416 16384 6344 204496 mathopd
-r 4 29344 5424 688 16384 604 51904 mgnv
-r 4 35072 7360 12400 4096 2196 58992 minimod
-r 4 95904 55296 3196512 32768 2840 3380544 mp3play
-r 4 123296 86112 2172416 32768 3784 2414656 mp4play
-r 4 82656 8944 9248 655360 4832 756272 mpegplayer.bin
-r 4 48480 8064 8272 65536 1080 130416 nbtscan
-r 4 35584 4704 1104 16384 800 57840 nbtscan.new
-r 4 123616 18160 153248 32768 6868 327856 pure-ftpd
-r 4 25792 5280 8624 65536 648 105296 setup
-r 4 379536 90672 51604 16384 19616 538260 smbmount
-r 4 89888 9392 2128 8192 3872 109664 telnetd
-r 4 42336 6992 864 8192 1616 58448 udhcpc
-r 4 67968 7872 8912 393216 2280 478032 upgrader
-r 4 27328 4176 688 4096 532 36352 uptime

I'd appreciate any comments people might have on what they think of the new sizes.

They seem OK so far, but I need to do a whole load more testing.

Thanks

Ian

Ian does this help ?

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:Sn5V-91WvgkJ:www.ecsl.cs.sunysb.edu/tr/TR193.pdf+pure-ftpd+stack+size&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2

The odd crashing in alpha7 (which was even worse in my later test builds!) does seem to be down to stack sizes. With them all tweaked, I've made a dozen different firmware versions and all have been solid. (Well, other than issues due to me making a mess of adding new stuff)

So I am unloading -
http://www.foxhill.co.uk/MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha8.zip
Sky Blue and Royal Blue theme versions!

This has had more test than previous alphas and I have done *many* reflashes from net and HD, and have given the web front end a good bash. See the readme to see what's new in the web front end (it's not all obvious!)

I also tested a load of telnet commands and some ftp transfers. ftp only went wrong once - I file finished transfering but the ftp session didn't go back to a prompt. Anyone else seen this? Maybe the ftpd does need more stack ...

Thanks to nhousty for the new front end stuff. It's looking nice.

Ian

Iv seen this issue of not going back to the root in a few cases i find a different or better client can resolve this sometimes

Iv seen this issue of not going back to the root in a few cases i find a different or better client can resolve this sometimes

I'm just using the normal Linux ftp client that comes with Ubuntu Breezy.

Anyone know where this pure-ftpd cames from? I think we're just using a version that someone else built from source.

Ian

MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha8
Sun Sep 24 13:42:57 BST 2006
Linspire Clear Royal Blue version

the web works but the new /setup with login and pass says page cannot be found after entering the proper login and pass

screenbmp works ok
what plugin is needed for the raw ( not that i need it but it should be tested)

List NAS devices does not seem to work

problem
network>select device>takes a really long time (4-5 min)

backing out of alpha 8
UFC 63 is ready to roll :)

the web works but the new /setup with login and pass says page cannot be found after entering the proper login and pass


Did you access setup.html? I think the setup entry in mathopd.cfg needs an Index keyword adding.


what plugin is needed for the raw ( not that i need it but it should be tested)


One that doesn't exist yet. :)


List NAS devices does not seem to work


You need to have gone to the list of servers in the UI first.


problem
network>select device>takes a really long time (4-5 min)

Not here. I'll do some more testing.

Ian

problem
network>select device>takes a really long time (4-5 min)

Have you used setnas to select a nas machine or not?

I've testing both cases, and both work here, but if you let me know your config then I can suggest a few tests to try and pin this down.

Ian

i call xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/setup

then a login pops up

i enter l/p then its directed to page cannot be found

_________________________________-


the long device access may be due to nas and web currently running the same device i want movies from

xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/setup.html works

doe's anybody knows all the combinations for the remote?
i know u press 1 for random etc.

i was wondering id there's some combinations that should be posted if anybodee knows them............thx

network>select device>takes a really long time (4-5 min) I see this delay as well, although it only takes maybe 15-20 seconds during which time it appears the box has frozen... Still this delay doesn't exist in Al Tech firmware.

To clarify, when browsing network shares, the usual delay (without setting up a specific server) occurs when selecting network mode and then e.g. Movies. Once the list of network servers shows up, picking any one of them normally enumerates the shares thereon quickly. Not in Alpha8! (I'm not sure about earlier developer releases, since I have been playing around almost exclusively on my hdd for the last week or so.)

Fine work, Ian and nhousty!

To clarify, when browsing network shares, the usual delay (without setting up a specific server) occurs when selecting network mode and then e.g. Movies. Once the list of network servers shows up, picking any one of them normally enumerates the shares thereon quickly. Not in Alpha8! (I'm not sure about earlier developer releases, since I have been playing around almost exclusively on my hdd for the last week or so.)


That's when smbmount is scanning the selected machine. Maybe my udhcpc replacement isn't correctly creating smb.conf? Without an ndas machine set, nbtscan will be being called as normal, and smbmount is called normally no matter what.

But it's all super-fast for me. :(

Maybe someone with this slow down can try running nbtscan and smbmount by hand?

The nbtscan command line is -
nbtscan -q -b /net -e 192.168.1.5/24
with the ip replaced with your own. This will create /hosts/hosts and populate /net

Please report the contents of /hosts/hosts, /hosts/smb.conf and what's in /net at this stage.

The smbmount command line is -
smbmount -b /net/MACHINE -L MACHINE -U guest -N -s /hosts/smb.conf C
with MACHINE replaced with the name of your nas machine.

I just tried here. With a nas machine set, the 1st command is fast, but it's slow without it. The second command is very fast in both cases.

Ian

nbtscan -q -b /net -e 192.168.1.5/24
with the ip replaced with your own. This will create /hosts/hosts and populate /net
This completes without error but takes awhile as you mentioned without a nas set.

Please report the contents of /hosts/hosts, /hosts/smb.conf and what's in /net at this stage. This has a list of IP addresses and host names, repeated twice. smb.conf has:

interfaces = 192.168.1.103 /24
socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_KEEPALIVE SO_RCVBUF=32768 SO_SNDBUF=128

/net has directory names corresponding to my host names, but nothing in them until I run the smbmount command.

smbmount -b /net/MACHINE -L MACHINE -U guest -N -s /hosts/smb.conf C
with MACHINE replaced with the name of your nas machine. This command works and populates the corresponding /net directory with share names. And it returns in about 1 second. :confused:

Seems like this is all working normally when issuing the commands by hand.

I am very impressed with the progress that has been made! I went away on vacation about a month and a half ago, and its literally taken me 3 weeks to catch up with the thread.

I would like to help where I can. My areas of expertise which may be applicable:

- NTFS internals
- IP protocols and ethernet
- Quality Assurance
- Testing
- C programming
- Exploratory hacking

I can also host files if needed (20gb of space, 400gb monthly download limit) and donate to the cause if we need more hardware.

It looks like you've gotten through a lot of areas I would have enjoyed helping with, but I'm sure there will be more!

Brendon / Bytre

As a first contribution, I would recommend moving files into a subdirectory of the hidden recycler / recycled directory. This will give it more protection when being hooked up to a Windows machine.

Although "recycler" is the default for an NTFS drive, there are conditions where Windows NT will use "recycled" (volumes converted to NTFS). Additionally, there are some "clean up your PC" products which will nuke the contents of the recycled directory.

As a first contribution, I would recommend moving files into a subdirectory of the hidden recycler / recycled directory. This will give it more protection when being hooked up to a Windows machine.

Although "recycler" is the default for an NTFS drive, there are conditions where Windows NT will use "recycled" (volumes converted to NTFS). Additionally, there are some "clean up your PC" products which will nuke the contents of the recycled directory.

We have three possible locations: Recycler, Recycled and zz_develop. For example, I prefer zz_devel (I think it's safer, and the family doesn't object to seeing it in the list of network shares), but others have different opinions :)

I would like to help where I can. My areas of expertise which may be applicable:

- NTFS internals
- IP protocols and ethernet
- Quality Assurance
- Testing
- C programming
- Exploratory hacking

I can also host files if needed (20gb of space, 400gb monthly download limit) and donate to the cause if we need more hardware.

It looks like you've gotten through a lot of areas I would have enjoyed helping with, but I'm sure there will be more!

Brendon / Bytre

Hi, Brendon!

If you have a serial cable, your skills in QA/testing can be especially helpful. Gadgetmind would be just happy to see someone stepping ahead for the job of packaging, testing and uploading releases. This means you could sometimes brick your MG35, so the serial cable is really necessary.

Programming is also useful, since only Gadgetmind is doing the hard work here. Any help is useful. Just pick a interesting subject for you, and go ahead. Once you choose your interest topic, let us know on wiki page (http://mediagate.pbwiki.com/WhoIsDoingWhat).

Gadgetmind would be just happy to see someone stepping ahead for the job of packaging, testing and uploading releases. This means you could sometimes brick your MG35, so the serial cable is really necessary.


Yes, I'd love for someone else to do this. But there are currently issues with small changes causing large and (based on current knowledge) unrelated things to stop working.


Programming is also useful, since only Gadgetmind is doing the hard work here.


I've just been pottering really and waiting for a decent GPL release from Al Tek. I just got another promise from someone high up that a real GPL release that matches the MG-35 is in the pipeline. Fingers crossed!

Ian

Seems like this is all working normally when issuing the commands by hand.

That makes it even harder to debug! But it does sort of match what I've seen when stack sizes have been wrong. It's child processes of child processes that seem to fail, which I can't explain very well.

(Initially screenbmp failed when called by mathopd, then after I rebuilt what I thought was the same image, udhcpc failed when called from setup and upgrader failed when called from dvdplayer.bin. I got into looking at stack sizes when ls failed when called from lash which was called from telnetd)

But I don't think I've touched the stack sizes of either dvdplayer.bin or smbmount.

I'm not sure what to try next.

Can you tell me -
1) Are you using DHCP?
2) I guess there is no NAS server set?
3) Are the shares on Windows machines, Linux machines, or a mixture?
4) Roughly how many servers and how many shares on the one you're selecting?

I need to try reproducing this if I'm going to manage to fix it.

Hmmm. Another idea is for someone who's having this problem to overlay a ramfs over /bin, replace the link to smbmount with a new smbmount, and make this a copy of the one in /sbin/rbin but with flthdr used to change the stack size.

Ian

But I don't think I've touched the stack sizes of either dvdplayer.bin or smbmount.


Hmmm, I haven't, and it's set to an odd number on the former and a rather low number on the latter.

I can send a smbmount executable with more stack to anyone who'd care to try and see if this fixes it.

The following in your phase2 (or just type afterwards!) will do the job
echo "Map a ramfs over /bin" >>/phase2/phase2.log
mkdir /phase2/overlay
cp -a /bin /phase2/overlay/
mount -o bind /phase2/overlay/bin /bin

A copy is taken of /bin into a ramfs and this is then mounted over /bin. You can then copy anything you want into /bin (use ftp if you want!)

Ian

Here is smbmount with 64KB of stack.

It will speed things up if someone can try it, or I can build a test version of some firmware.

Ian

1) Are you using DHCP?
2) I guess there is no NAS server set?
3) Are the shares on Windows machines, Linux machines, or a mixture?
4) Roughly how many servers and how many shares on the one you're selecting? 1) Yes.
2) Correct again!
3) 2 Windows, 1 Mac
4) 3 and 2. Used to be 3 and around 10.

Well, I guess we give Al Tek another week or so and then start really getting stuff into shape for handing over to these guys.

http://gpl-violations.org/news/20060922-dlink-judgement_frankfurt.html

Ian

http://gpl-violations.org/news/20060922-dlink-judgement_frankfurt.html Lovely. :rolleyes: I'm surprised at D-Link's position that they are not bound by the GPL copyright. One wonders what they were thinking.

Do you understand what "re-engineering" was performed by gpl-violations.org?

Do you understand what "re-engineering" was performed by gpl-violations.org?

At a guess, digging through the firmware to find out exactly what parts of which GPL projects were being used and collating the evidence.

Which is what I was trying to do on the wiki, but I'm as guilty as everyone else of not having had the time to keep adding to it.

Ian

Welcome back Brendan and thanks in advance for your expertise and participation.
My areas of expertise which may be applicable:

- NTFS internals
- IP protocols and ethernet...
Ooooh, great areas in great need. You may have noticed from this rather extended thread that the Mediagate is in serious want of an NTFS implementation that can write to the internal HD (if one exists). And faster network file transfer to the internal hd. If I understood what I read above, the ftp transfer (to FAT32 volumes) is about 5X slower than the encrypted and already ponderously-slow NDAS method supported by Al Tech. :eek:

At a guess, digging through the firmware to find out exactly what parts of which GPL projects were being used and collating the evidence. That makes too much sense. ;) I wouldn't call this "re-engineering", though. Perhaps the translation from German was a little off? Edit: They meant "reverse engineering", not re-engineering. They were probably using the reverse engineering tools found here. (http://svnweb.gnumonks.org/trunk/reveng-tools/?rev=566&sortby=rev#dirlist)

1) Yes.
2) Correct again!
3) 2 Windows, 1 Mac
4) 3 and 2. Used to be 3 and around 10.

I just disabled nas and connected to shares on a Windows machine. It only took a couple of seconds.

Not much more debug I can do at this end.

Sorry!

Ian

If I understood what I read above, the ftp transfer (to FAT32 volumes) is about 5X slower than the encrypted and already ponderously-slow NDAS method supported by Al Tech. :eek:

Some quick tests show the HD is pretty fast (1.5MBytes/s) but the network is about 3x slower, both using FTP and SMB.

We might be able to tweak smb using smb.conf. I'm not sure what's holding back ftp.

Ian

Can you tell me -
1) Are you using DHCP?
YES
2) I guess there is no NAS server set?
NAS is set
3) Are the shares on Windows machines, Linux machines, or a mixture?
win xp shares
4) Roughly how many servers and how many shares on the one you're selecting?
2 computers shows up i select the second one then wait about 4 min

Bad news guys. My Alpha8 firmware froze up on me shortly after powering up and playing a hdd-based DVD. It was doing just fine/dandy last night playing anything, including this same video.

Actually, it wasn't quite frozen. But the audio stopped and the screen went black. The power button on the remote worked, and it powered up and booted again just fine. But I flashed it back to 1.4.5 since I don't have a serial cable and I'm afraid of more serious crashes. :o

Edit: The same DVD is again playing just fine on 1.4.5 firmware. BTW - I should mention I ignored the recommendation in the owner's manual and left my NDAS permanently enabled. Perhaps this is a difference between geos and myself and gadgetmind...

I'm afraid I have to report a similar problem with alpha8.

I was watching an avi over the network connection and after about 25 minutes the video started getting choppy and the audio out of sync.
I made no telnet command line commands and didnt even try out the web interface prior to viewing the movie. I also have no phase 1/2 scripts or apps. (I'll learn how to do that soon)

I stopped the movie, reflashed back to pre4 firmware then tried the movie again.
To confirm earlier suspisions, I started the same movie again and low and behold it asked me if I wanted to resume (which I did). So the resume points are stored somewhere.

The movie then played perfectly.

BTW I am really torn between the colour schemes ..... both are good :)

Mike

Can you tell me -
1) Are you using DHCP?
YES
2) I guess there is no NAS server set?
NAS is set
3) Are the shares on Windows machines, Linux machines, or a mixture?
win xp shares
4) Roughly how many servers and how many shares on the one you're selecting?
2 computers shows up i select the second one then wait about 4 min

If NAS is set how are you getting two servers to show up in the list?
What output do you get if you run udhcpc from the telnet command line?

Ian

Bad news guys. My Alpha8 firmware froze up on me shortly after powering up and playing a hdd-based DVD. It was doing just fine/dandy last night playing anything, including this same video.


I could go ahead and make alpha9 with more stack boosting but I'm waiting for some feedback from tests with the new smbmount I posted yesterday.

If I don't get any, I'll go ahead and make an alpha9. I can use this on my main box for a few days before releasing it.

Ian

Bad news guys. My Alpha8 firmware froze up on me shortly after powering up and playing a hdd-based DVD. It was doing just fine/dandy last night playing anything, including this same video.

Actually, it wasn't quite frozen. But the audio stopped and the screen went black. The power button on the remote worked, and it powered up and booted again just fine. But I flashed it back to 1.4.5 since I don't have a serial cable and I'm afraid of more serious crashes. :o

Edit: The same DVD is again playing just fine on 1.4.5 firmware. BTW - I should mention I ignored the recommendation in the owner's manual and left my NDAS permanently enabled. Perhaps this is a difference between geos and myself and gadgetmind...

Did you use memory for other tasks?

I've seen this in previous releases, when using to much memory.
This could be triggered by creating a ramfs and put to much in it.
(This was discussed somewhere in this thread).

The unstableness of the kernel make me reflect of one really want to
have disks mounted rw. All too often I have needed to handle
corrupted filesystems on linux hosts. Linux has a history of not
keeping disk content in sync. Modern filesystems can survive a
crash, but ext2 and FAT may be damaged if the system crashes
or is shut down unclean.

Did you use memory for other tasks? Nope. The freezing occurred after powering up, navigating to the IFO on disk, and hitting the Select button twice: once to start the DVD menu and another to start the first title. NDAS was enabled, however. It's possible my W2K box was doing something on it's own...

Probably not doing anything was my problem. :rolleyes: Last night when this was working well, I was using the web interface to view the overlay, etc sometimes simultaneous with playing movies.

Did you use memory for other tasks?


telnetd, ftpd and mathopd all use memory, but not huge amounts. We tested what we could get away with and at least 1.5MB can be taken before video playing fails.


The unstableness of the kernel make me reflect of one really want to
have disks mounted rw.


Well, we haven't changed the kernel. Or particularly another else that Al Tek supply. We've replaced udhcpc and busybox, and also dvdplayer.bin has the palette inserted, but other than that it's all stock.

I should have more time to give all of this a kicking next weekend, and hopefully by then someone who's having the slow browse issue will have got around to downloading and trying the new smbmount.

Ian

Airlinktek (http://www.airlinktek.com) now has Hebrew versions of the latest firmware for the MG-35 and MG-350HD.

Come on Mediagate aficionados. We've got to keep adding to this thread or the XBMC crowd will eventually catch up! :)

Come on Mediagate aficionados. We've got to keep adding to this thread or the XBMC thread will eventually catch up! :)

Didn't know about XBMC, but after some reading I finally got the joke :) BTW, how does xbox+xbmc compare to MG35?

The sourceforge project is up and running, its name is mg35tools. I uploaded the Altech sources.

Didn't know about XBMC, but after some reading I finally got the joke :) BTW, how does xbox+xbmc compare to MG35?

The sourceforge project is up and running, its name is mg35tools. I uploaded the Altech sources.


the xbmc was done to perfection and a very good choice unless you dont want it to play games or be portable

its nearly 100% updateable with new codecs and has very good online tools (weather,imdb) bla bla bla

I dont play games and i travel a bit so the mg35 is the toy i chose

I have all my MP3 albums in different folders. With my XBOX i can choose song nr one, and when it is finnished it will move on to song number 2 and so on. That way I can start song number one and not have to do anything more to be able to listen to the whole album. It move on from song 1 to 2 and so on. The MG-35 doesn't do this. Is it possible to make it do so? And another thing that I would really like is FLAC support. I have alot of albums in this format, and can't listen to them.

Another thing. I see alot of you guys here mod the firmware yourself. Is there a place where I can download them, and maybe see what differenceses you guys have made.

Cheers

Jim

A similar unit to the MG-25 and these guys encourage you to create your own UI!

http://www.unibrain.com/Products/iZak/Custom_GUI.htm

Ian

I have the Royal blue GUI and it is very impressive...if I did have one suggestion for improvement it would be the colour used for the brightness-contrast-saturation slider on the RHS of the screen which is currently black and a lot of the time it doesnt show very well whereas the original green was almost always easy to see.

the brightness-contrast-saturation slider on the RHS of the screen which is currently black and a lot of the time it doesnt show very well

Yes, I noticed that last night. Initially I thought the remote wasn't working!

Ian

It move on from song 1 to 2 and so on. The MG-35 doesn't do this. Is it possible to make it do so?
Just use the "play" button to start the songs instead of the "enter" button. You can also press the "play" button if you are "one folder up".

So if you have a music folder with all your albums in subfolders (just like me) just point to an album in the music folder and press "play" there. In this way the first song in the selected folder starts, followed by all the songs in that folder and after the last song it skips to the next album. And so on of course :)

You can find the firmware in the Yahoo group (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/mg-35_firmware_mods/).

O, and welcome to the forum!

Zappacat

A similar unit to the MG-25 and these guys encourage you to create your own UI!

http://www.unibrain.com/Products/iZak/Custom_GUI.htm

Ian

That should not be so hard. With the 'mount -o bind /cdrom/img /img' command you gave me it's quite easy to make and upload your own backgrounds (jpeg). The hard part is the PNG-stuff, like buttons and so on, which iZak wisely left out....

If there is a need I think I can make some templates like the ones from iZak.

My own GUI version (Black Metal) is somewere halfway...

Z.

Thanks alot Zappacat. :) Only thing I miss now is FLAC support. Hopefully it will come along in a later firmware update.

Yes, I noticed that last night. Initially I thought the remote wasn't working!
Sorry, I haven't notised this screen. Make a screen dump, identify color index used, then it's hopefully "easy" to make a new palette...

The xbox with xbmc is very impressive but it has a huge advantage over the mg35. Well atleast when it comes to customizing it.

It does everything with the cpu and not a decoder chip. Specs are something like 700mhz 64mb ram and hard drive.

It really does an amazing job, but it has plenty of cpu to make things happen.
I would imagine it is much easier to develope for a x86 chip then mips or ppc with special hardware decoders to also program. Alot more people seem familiar with x86 then other chips. Also xbox is hugely popular getting more people to develope software.

The only draw backs I see with an xbox is size, which is not a big deal and also noise and heat big drawback for me. Stock xbox used cheap parts so the hard drive and the exhaust fan are very loud. This can definately be fixed with extra money but at that time you are more money than a mg35. Getting the xbox to the stage of media player is lot more involved than a simple flash that is required with mediagate-35.

Once the dvdplayer.bin and kernel get replaced, which maybe a while, the fun with mediagate will really begin. This should open up room for people to develope things they really want, without developing things that have to fit in the current restraints of the mediagate

Thanks alot Zappacat. :) Only thing I miss now is FLAC support. Hopefully it will come along in a later firmware update. And, as Zappacat pointed out here, (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=8483739&&#post8483739) the Korean MG-35 firmware supports M3U playback, so there is hope that this feature will arrive in the English version too, at some point. You can (if running 1.4.5) turn on the repeat feature, and have the playback wrap around over all files in your path. You can also shuffle play with the "3" button.

A similar unit to the MG-25 and these guys encourage you to create your own UI!

http://www.unibrain.com/Products/iZak/Custom_GUI.htm

Ian


Nice find Ian

It would be nice if they do a mg35 like box

I was setting up my MG-35 for use in my car and had done my initial testing the other evening. Everything was looking great. I used an RF Modulator to feed the sound to the car radio and had fashioned a bracket to hold an 8" car monitor I had purchased.

Yesterday morning I went out to the car to work on the wiring (to make it neater) and the MG-35 would not turn on. It was completely dead. :( First think I looked at was the power supply. It looked fine, and the green LED was lit showing it had power, but I figured perhaps I had messed up the cable as I was moving things around the prior night. (I am using an AC inverter) It had rebooted as I moved things around once, so I figured the connector might have lost contact as I moved things.

I brought the unit inside and figured I'd try it with the other power supply from the MG-35 in my bedroom. Happily, the MG-35 worked, but not on its original power supply. :)

Looking closer at the 4-pin connector on the end of the original power supply cable I saw the 4 pins were almost 1/2 inch inside the barrel of the connector. On my bedroom unit power supply, the pins were almost even with the barrel of the connector. I could now see that the power supply of the unit I was putting in the car probably barely made contact, and between me moving it around, and the cold night air, it no longer did.

Now... fixing this was NOT an easy task. I looked for a way to disassemble the connector. I'm not sure there is one. I could slide the rubber strain-relief back, but the hard-plastic shell had to be slit with a razor knife to get it off.

I ended up using some heat-shrink-tubing on the connector and not using the original spring-loaded shell. The MG-35 was alive again.

So... if your MG-35 is completely dead, look at the power cable. You may not have the skills to fix it, but any competent repair shop should be able to fix it for you.

Joe L.
(I do have a serial cable, ordered from canada, but have not yet had the need to use it... perhaps when we start experimenting with alternate kernels... :D )

I brought the unit inside and figured I'd try it with the other power supply from the MG-35 in my bedroom. Happily, the MG-35 worked, but not on its original power supply. :)

So you have a spare power supply? Where did you find it?

BTW, do you know the type/code of the power connector?

So you have a spare power supply?
Yes, sort of...
Where did you find it?
It is the one that came with the second MG-35 we have installed in our bedroom, so it is not really a "spare", but I was able to visually compare the connector ends and see the pins recessed on the one not working, and not recessed in the connector barrel on the one that did work. The defective connector did not look bad with the pins recessed, and I tried to move the pins outward by pulling on them gently with a pair of needle-nose pliers. They did not budge. I had to resort to cutting apart the original connector shell.
BTW, do you know the type/code of the power connector?No, I do not. The four pins in it are not evenly spaced, two of them are spaced wider apart than the other two. I would love to find a matching connector. I could then fix it like new.
As it is, nobody looks at the end of the cable anyway, so I'm not going crazy looking for a replacement connector at this time.

Joe L.

So you have a spare power supply? Where did you find it?

BTW, do you know the type/code of the power connector?

I am ordering a spare power supply from here http://laptopupgrade.stores.yahoo.net/acpoadp4.html
The specs look the same.
I'll let you know how it works when I get it.

I am ordering a spare power supply from here http://laptopupgrade.stores.yahoo.net/acpoadp4.html
The specs look the same.
I'll let you know how it works when I get it.Wow... great find. It looks exactly the same physically.

Just be sure that the same pins on the new supply's connector are used for the same voltages as on the original supply before you plug it into your MG-35. (Don't want to accidentally put 12 volts on the 5 volt input of the MG-35.)

Joe L.

I am ordering a spare power supply from here http://laptopupgrade.stores.yahoo.net/acpoadp4.html Mcowher has also reported that the car adapter (https://id312.securedata.net/divxtech.com/merchantmanager/product_info.php?products_id=12) for the Modix HD-3510 works well. Presumably the AC adapter (https://id312.securedata.net/divxtech.com/merchantmanager/product_info.php?cPath=3_6&products_id=28) would work too. Kinda pricey, though.

Wow... great find. It looks exactly the same physically.

Just be sure that the same pins on the new supply's connector are used for the same voltages as on the original supply before you plug it into your MG-35. (Don't want to accidentally put 12 volts on the 5 volt input of the MG-35.)

Joe L.

Here's another on-line store
http://www.coolerexpress.com/expocoandaca.html
ground shipping is $10.00
power specs do match

The four pins in it are not evenly spaced, two of them are spaced wider apart than the other two. I would love to find a matching connector. I could then fix it like new.

Check this (http://domino.kycon.com/Pub_Eng_Draw/KPP-4P.pdf). Looks identical, can you please check the exact dimensions? Its name is KPP-4P.

doe's anybody knows all the combinations for the remote?
i know u press 1 for random etc.

i was wondering id there's some combinations that should be posted if anybodee knows them............thx

There's a few more remote control functions in this thread... (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=681709)

Maybe I'm just blind, but I don't seem to find out where I can change the Date and Time on this unit. My date and clock are wrong, and I want to correct them. Any ideas fellas?

Another thing I just realised. With MG35-1.4.4.4-pre4-LC-SB.upgrade witch has a real nice GUI I can't move around and look for other songs to play while a song is playing. This is possible with the official 1.4.5 firmware. Any ideas when a custom firmware with a nice GUI will be release. I'm all thumbs, or I would try to make one myself.

Maybe I'm just blind, but I don't seem to find out where I can change the Date and Time on this unit. My date and clock are wrong, and I want to correct them. Any ideas fellas?

I don't think you can. It will revert to 00:00 each time you reboot. We could probably add some ntp stuff inside, but no one bothered yet. But where do you see the date/time?

I don't think you can. It will revert to 00:00 each time you reboot. We could probably add some ntp stuff inside, but no one bothered yet. But where do you see the date/time?

Somewhere in the meny. I don't recall where. Doesn't mean anything really. Was just wondering :) But I am looking forward to a modified 1.4.5 firmware that has a nice GUI. The official 1.4.5 firmware allows you to browse while listening to mp3. Just can't go back to the boring GUI of the standard 1.4.5 firmware.....

Ain't had time to any development at all lately, but just to add to my to-do list I'll try to get a chance to learn the MG35 remote into my aging pronto. The pronto .ccf format is pretty standard as far as remotes go, and there's lots of tools for translating it into other formats.

is there a way to Reset to default settings... I accidentally selected 480p?? or something under the video settings on my mg-35. Is there a way to set it back to normal as all i see are fuzzy black lines. If I press the enter button a few times I can hear a movie start to play.

Thanks

Repeatedly press the video button until a picture appears...

Sorry, I haven't notised this screen. Make a screen dump, identify color index used, then it's hopefully "easy" to make a new palette...

The volume/brightness/contrast bar is index 247 (0 based), which is black in 1.4.4.5-alpha8 Royal Blue...

Repeatedly press the video button until a picture appears...
is that right when you turn it on?

Yikes,,,, I think i fried my mg-35 in less than 1 week! It turn on but it flashes blue over and over... the unit shuts off when I hit the power on the remote... is it bricked?

Yikes,,,, I think i fried my mg-35 in less than 1 week! It turn on but it flashes blue over and over... the unit shuts off when I hit the power on the remote... is it bricked?What were you doing when you "bricked" it?

If it was a software re-flash that went bad (lost LAN connection, lost power, etc while re-flashing) then it is likely you can recover with a serial cable and some effort.

Check the wiki ( http://mediagate.pbwiki.com/ ) for details how.

If your hardware is defective (bad ram, etc) then it may never be recoverable.

Good luck.

My advice, use an UPS when re-flashing so you don't have to worry about losing power in the middle, and use an internal hard-disk if possible so you don't have to rely on LAN connectivity when re-flashing.

Joe L.

The volume/brightness/contrast bar is index 247 (0 based), which is black in 1.4.4.5-alpha8 Royal Blue...Thanks, I have updated wiki and will fix this is an upcoming release...

Another thing I just realised. With MG35-1.4.4.4-pre4-LC-SB.upgrade witch has a real nice GUI I can't move around and look for other songs to play while a song is playing. This is possible with the official 1.4.5 firmware. Any ideas when a custom firmware with a nice GUI will be release. I'm all thumbs, or I would try to make one myself.
"move around and look for other songs to play while a song is playing" is working in the Freecom 1.4.4 firmware but not in the 1.4.4 Mediagate firmware (and I guess that's the one used to build custom firmwares). I am not sure that "move around and look for other songs to play while a song is playing" is all that good if I remember it right (you have to backtrack this thread but I know it was up for discussion). Makes me wonder if they actually made it "work" for real in 1.4.5 or if it is the same "hack" as in the Freecom firmware???

The sourceforge project is up and running, its name is mg35tools. I uploaded the Altech sources. When I click on the big green Download button, I get a new page that saysNo File Packages Defined Do I have to get subversion running before I can download anything? :confused:

When I click on the big green Download button, I get a new page that says Do I have to get subversion running before I can download anything? :confused:

Subversion is for source files. To download them you have to install a Subversion client (e.g. TortoiseSvn or Rapid Svn on Windows).

I think you tried to download packages (e.g. binaries), but for now we don't have any uploaded there. I'll upload something later today, just for testing.

"move around and look for other songs to play while a song is playing" is working in the Freecom 1.4.4 firmware but not in the 1.4.4 Mediagate firmware (and I guess that's the one used to build custom firmwares). I am not sure that "move around and look for other songs to play while a song is playing" is all that good if I remember it right (you have to backtrack this thread but I know it was up for discussion). Makes me wonder if they actually made it "work" for real in 1.4.5 or if it is the same "hack" as in the Freecom firmware???

That's right. I flash back to Freecom 1.4.5 firmware and now I can move around again while playing music. Someone should really modify the Freecom firmware instead of the Mediagate since this option only seems to be available on this firmware. A new GUI on this, and where near perfection :) Yeah, I now i nag about it, but I would really like FLAC support aswell.

The only draw backs I see with an xbox is size, which is not a big deal and also noise and heat big drawback for me.


It also lacks -
1) A remote control that can power it up and down.
2) A SCART output with pin-8 switching (also a problem with the MG-35)

Ian

A SCART output with pin-8 switching (also a problem with the MG-35) I had to look that one up! Seems like a great idea, and I'm surprised that it hasn't been adopted in the US. One also wonders why the Freecom version doesn't come with SCART output. :confused:

That's right. I flash back to Freecom 1.4.5 firmware and now I can move around again while playing music. Someone should really modify the Freecom firmware instead of the Mediagate since this option only seems to be available on this firmware. A new GUI on this, and where near perfection :) Yeah, I now i nag about it, but I would really like FLAC support aswell.

@Kane69

Sadly 1.4.5 , also has other bugs which makes it unstable , just try playing background music while viewing your photos , music plays for a while and then stops dead - also if you check back on previous posts there were other bugs "introduced" by Al Tech in 1.4.5 - Think this was the reason that 1.4.4 was chosen to "work on" as it was more stable and bug free over all..

I had to look that one up! Seems like a great idea, and I'm surprised that it hasn't been adopted in the US. One also wonders why the Freecom version doesn't come with SCART output. :confused:

Well, the SCART connector sucks big time. You can't plug it in without looking and it falls out if you look at it wrong.

I did ask Al Tek if they can enable RGB output (it's in the menu) but they haven't done it yet.

Ian

@Kane69

Sadly 1.4.5 , also has other bugs which makes it unstable , just try playing background music while viewing your photos , music plays for a while and then stops dead - also if you check back on previous posts there were other bugs "introduced" by Al Tech in 1.4.5 - Think this was the reason that 1.4.4 was chosen to "work on" as it was more stable and bug free over all..

Why not try to mix-and-match pieces from 1.4.4 and 1.4.5? We could check 1.4.4 with dvdplayer from 1.4.5 (which supports m3u files), or we could try 1.4.5 using mp3player from 1.4.4 (which plays background music while displaying pics). Using phase1/phase2, it should be easy. Let's hope the kernel is the same...

Fortunately, there are only a few pieces in this puzzle :)

Why not try to mix-and-match pieces from 1.4.4 and 1.4.5? We could check 1.4.4 with dvdplayer from 1.4.5 (which supports m3u files), or we could try 1.4.5 using mp3player from 1.4.4 (which plays background music while displaying pics). Using phase1/phase2, it should be easy. Let's hope the kernel is the same...

Fortunately, there are only a few pieces in this puzzle :)

Remember is only the 1.4.5 KOREAN version that suports M3U , not the English release..

Hi, is there a way to store the playlist?
When i turn the mediaplayer off and on, the playlist is empty again. The Playlist is nice to use for random play.

OMG you get busy and don't get a chance to have a look for awhile and when you come back you need a week to read all the posts!!!

Great work everyone!

Almost need a this is where we are at section so that you don't need to read all the extra comments

Hi, is there a way to store the playlist?
When i turn the mediaplayer off and on, the playlist is empty again. The Playlist is nice to use for random play.

For now, there is no way to save the playlist, but we work on that.

teddystacker:
>Remember is only the 1.4.5 KOREAN version that suports M3U , not the English release..

I have used the Freecom 1.4.5 English version and it supports m3u in playlist mode.

/Johan

I have used the Freecom 1.4.5 English version and it supports m3u in playlist mode./Johan

Indeed it does! Just tested it. Am I correct that activation of telnet and FTP is only possible with serial access?

Am I correct that activation of telnet and FTP is only possible with serial access? Huh? :confused: To my knowledge no official firmware release from any manufacturer has ftp or telnet daemons. These are features added by gadgetmind to his 1.4.4 firmware, along with better-looking graphics courtesy emumannen.

If you're running alpha8, for example, you not only get ftp and telnet daemons, but also a web server with useful scripts! All this comes along with the firmware, and it's pre-activated and doesn't need the serial interface (or cable) to make it work.

Be forewarned that alpha8 locked up on me once. So, if you are fearful of the worst, i.e. a "bricked" mediagate, then get a serial cable first before experimenting. :cool:

I have used the Freecom 1.4.5 English version and it supports m3u in playlist mode. The bug-for-bug similarity among different firmware releases continues. With the Al Tech and Freecom 1.4.5 versions, when playing photos, both now fade out the last photo and fade in the new photo. But there is a strange scaling effect when the player has to switch back and forth between photos of different aspect ratios. It's hard to describe, but it looks like the photo always gets presented in full-screen mode, and then gets scaled to make the aspect ratio come out right. Both versions of the firmware also have a newly-introduced bug when playing photos and background music from the hdd music folder. It will play 1 or more songs, depending upon the length of the song, and then abruptly stop playing any further music.

The bug-for-bug similarities among firmware from different companies argues for a common source for that firmware. The dissimilarities are interesting too. One wonders how Al Tech would release a Korean 1.4.5 firmware with m3u support, but omit that from the English version even though we've been asking for that feature. :confused: (By the way, interested parties can try the Simplified Chinese and Hebrew versions of 1.4.5 as well, from the Airlinktek website.) I wonder if the common source of firmware is Sigma Designs, or a 3rd party developer such as the mystery Taiwanese manufacturer of the Mediagate, Freecom, and Movie Cowboy players.

no official firmware release from any manufacturer has ftp or telnet daemons. These are features added by gadgetmind to his 1.4.4 firmware, along with better-looking graphics courtesy emumannen.


PB got telnet and ftp going before I contributed anything, but he later used my telnetd and BusyBox builds.

I got a web server going, incorporated graphics and web content from others, added the mgnv/setnas stuff and vaguely formalised releases.

I may get around to an alpha9 tomorrow but am really wanting -
1) feedback on whether the smbmount with more stack fixes the slow share browse.
2) feedback on whether playing with settings in smb.conf fixes jerky content.

Ian

I wonder what happen to pb

I think he moved to the USA, and all his worldly belongings (such as computer equipment) are coming here via boat. His last post is here, (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=8376274#post8376274) and my post welcoming him to the US went unanswered. :(

The following in your phase2 (or just type afterwards!) will do the job...

mkdir /phase2/overlay
cp -a /bin /phase2/overlay/
mount -o bind /phase2/overlay/bin /bin

...You can then copy anything you want into /bin... I tried to follow these instructions, but I couldn't copy anything! I don't have a phase1 or phase2, but as promised I could open a telnet session and type the above 3 commands. After that, I tried:

/ # cp /cdrom/smbmount /bin/

using the new smbmount you uploaded to this forum a few pages back. But that command results in the error:

cp: unable to open `/bin/smbmount': Read-only file system

I thought maybe there was some confusion with the overlayed bin, so I also tried:

/ # cp /cdrom/smbmount /phase2/overlay/bin/smbmount

but this yields the error:

cp: unable to open `/phase2/overlay/bin/smbmount': No such file or directory

despite the fact that /phase2/overlay/bin/smbmount most assuredly does exist, as does /cdrom/smbmount!

cp: unable to open `/bin/smbmount': Read-only file system


Yes, my bad.

As /bin/smbmount is a symlink, when you try and copy over it, Linux actually tries to write to the link destination in /sbin/rbin

Before replacing smbmount, you need -
rm /bin/smbmount
to get rid of the symlink.

It should then work fine.

Ian

I've had a play with the copy you compiled and i don't notice any speed difference while using dvdplayer.bin to access the nas devices.

I did notice it was strange that you can only access the files in the drives you mount once you actualy browsed into it with dvdplayer.bin. Can some one explain why it does this?

I do now have a pause in playing a mpeg2 stream at about 15 minute interval for about 2 secounds, but i'm not sure if it is caused by me playing or some other change.

Nick

I've had a play with the copy you compiled and i don't notice any speed difference while using dvdplayer.bin to access the nas devices.


So, did you have slow selection of a share on a machine with alpha8 but the new smbmount fixed it?


I did notice it was strange that you can only access the files in the drives you mount once you actualy browsed into it with dvdplayer.bin. Can some one explain why it does this?


I've never seen this. If I use smbmount to mount a share, then I can access it from telnet with no problems. However, dvdplayer.bin insists that the order of events is -
1) Find machines with nbtscan.
2) After you select a machine, use smbmount /l to get a list of shares on the machine.
3) After you select a share, use smbmount to mount this.
4) Let you explore the file structure.

The NAS stuff I did accelerated (1)
alpha8 slowed down (2) for some people.

Ian

Environment:
- Running Alpha8 with sky blue theme
- SetNAS activated with both server name and IP address
- File server is a ReadyNAS box
- Not seeing slowdown on selection

Strange situation which I current CANNOT REPLICATE, but I thought I should report it in case anyone else runs into it, also.
1. Watched to the end of a XviD file
2. The folder menu of files is showing on screen
3. After standard time of no activity, MG35 does it's timeout thing and returns to the primary menu asking for a local or network selection
4. After a few more minutes being at this menu, I chose network then movies
5. The MG35 does a nbtscan. It acts as if the SetNAS variable was not activated
6. Hit the menu button to return to the primary menu and try these steps again and the MG35 is still doing nbtscan
7. Turn off the MG35 via the remote
8. Turn on the MG35 via the remote
9. Everything is fine again. No more scanning.

I am guessing that some how the setNAS got corrupted in memory, but not in flash, and the system ended up doing a fall back to nbtscan. Again, I cannot replicated. However, if this oddness happens again, Ian, what diagnosing information would be needed?

Thanks...IG.

I am guessing that some how the setNAS got corrupted in memory, but not in flash, and the system ended up doing a fall back to nbtscan. Again, I cannot replicated. However, if this oddness happens again, Ian, what diagnosing information would be needed?


Yes, just run nbtscan from the command line. It will report what it's doing and whether it falls back to a full scan.

(As you won't be giving the command line options, the full scan will fail, but this doesn't matter.)

Ian

Yes, just run nbtscan from the command line. It will report what it's doing and whether it falls back to a full scan.



OK, will do if I see this again.

Thanks...IG.

I want to do exactly like Teddy is describing -- playback my ripped DVDs (full rip, no shrink) from my SMB share on my XP PC. Surely there's a lighter weight device out there that can do this than the MG?

Can someone point me to the simplest device that can play back DVDs in the slot and Ripped DVDs from a SMB share?

The dream device for me is one that can browse a directory structure, and when it detects a VIDEO_TS directory, play it back like it's a DVD.

PS: I currently do this on a Windoze XP Media Center, but it has so many other problems, I'd rather switch to a Consumer Electronics-grade device.

Thanks. :)

rm /bin/smbmount OK, that did it, and I was able to replace smbmount. Why were we dong this? To see if the slow share scan gets faster? Oh dear! :confused: Now (using the new smbmount) it won't show shares at all! Instead I get a popup Message window that says (using the web server screen grab):
There are no shared directories, or shared mode is incorrect. Please refer to the user manual for configuring right of share mode. I tried another computer, and the place where the Message window was previously displayed, I saw instead a cleared region of the background (no Message window) and my Mediagate locked up. :eek: Fortunately it was still paying attention to the remote because it did power down and back up again. This time, without replacing smbmount, I just browsed to this same share and started a movie playing. Playback was extremely slow and jerky. Finally, I flashed the Freecom 1.4.5 firmware and tried the same network share again and got perfect playback.

Surely there's a lighter weight device out there that can do this than the MG? Can someone point me to the simplest device that can play back DVDs in the slot and Ripped DVDs from a SMB share? Do you literally mean "lighter"? The MG-35 without a disk is already pretty light and easily portable. One also wonders what you mean by "in the slot." Does this mean you have a slot-loading DVDROM in your XP PC, or do you want a networked DVD player? Assuming the former, the MG-35 will do that too, assuming the DVD in the DVDROM player is unencrypted. I just tried this, and it works quite nicely, other than showing you the file structure in the browser. (That is normal.) Of course an encrypted DVD does not play back, although I can hear some choppy and speeded-up audio, and an occasional video frame.

I just tried a Panasonic DVD-110DBK burner in place of the hdd in the Mediagate, but unfortunately the Mode Select screen does not allow you to select the Mediagate (rather than the network).

Do you literally mean "lighter"? The MG-35 without a disk is already pretty light and easily portable. One also wonders what you mean by "in the slot." Does this mean you have a slot-loading DVDROM in your XP PC, or do you want a networked DVD player? Assuming the former, the MG-35 will do that too, assuming the DVD in the DVDROM player is unencrypted. I just tried this, and it works quite nicely, other than showing you the file structure in the browser. (That is normal.) Of course an encrypted DVD does not play back, although I can hear some choppy and speeded-up audio, and an occasional video frame.

I just tried a Panasonic DVD-110DBK burner in place of the hdd in the Mediagate, but unfortunately the Mode Select screen does not allow you to select the Mediagate (rather than the network).

Ooops, sorry, I meant lighter as in 'less complex'. So, I take it that the MG-35 is a fairly simple device so that question is answered, thanks.

By 'in the slot' I meant to be able to put in a DVD into the device, using either an internal DVD drive (which I know it doesn't have) or an external USB2.0 DVD drive. that way, when someone comes home from Blockbuster with a DVD they don't have to RIP the DVD first, they can just pop it in a real drive and play it. From what you describe it looks like I cannot use the DVDROM drive in my PC for that scenario (since Blockbuster DVDs are all encrypted), which I guess make sense. So, that is why I was curious if a directly-connected USB2.0 DVD drive would work?

Thanks for your kind help! Sorry if these are elementray questions.

PS: for complete disclosure, I'm also researching the Rapsody N-35 and trying to decide between that device, the Mediagate MG-35 and the TviX devices (which I have not done a lot of research on).

PPS: yes, I really wanted a networked DVD player that would also play back VOB files from an SMB share. In that case, I'd have to put my content on an SMB share, which I was ready to do as a way to gain the ability to drop a 'real' DVD into a 'normal' DVD player for the basic Blockbuster scenario. But since I can't seem to find a good networked DVD player, I'm going to the option of a MediaStreaming device, which I will then connect up to SMB shares for stored media, and (hopefully) to an external USB2.0 DVD drive for the Blockbuster scenario.

Hi to you all,

Does anybody know how to get the MG-35 to play MPG files with AC3 sound? Works fine when playing ISO but can't get it to play these files (recorded TV DVB files saved and cleaned uo using VideoReDo) with AC3 audio using the L/R component output. Works fine with MPEG audio.

Thanks

Hi to you all,

Does anybody know how to get the MG-35 to play MPG files with AC3 sound? Works fine when playing ISO but can't get it to play these files (recorded TV DVB files saved and cleaned uo using VideoReDo) with AC3 audio using the L/R component output. Works fine with MPEG audio.

Thanks
It doesn't. for the moment you'll have to create them as iso. hopefully this will get fixed in future....

I have a strange problem with share's
in the past i used "Windows server 2003" with many shares for accsess on the mg-35 in de living room that went fine.

now i run "Windows XP Profesional" with a coupel of shares bun when i browse the network on the mg-35 is see no share at all ?? the MG-35 find the computer(s) on the network but when i tried to connect to the XP pc it goes wrong. when i connect to a other pc (on the mg-35 ) everything goes fine.

and the strange part is NOTTHING on the hardware is changed !! no cables or other hardware !! the only thing that changed is the os from "Server 2003 to Windows XP" if have tried to change the firewall setting, ip adresses, the accounts that may access the share the deleting and remaking the guest account checking the NTFS rights but no sucses ?


also cheked to access the shares form a differtent pc with the guest account, that goes fine !! the only thing that is different is the launguage of the os. ( it is dutch) so the guest account is named "Gast" en the Group "Gasten"
so i made the account and group "Guest" and "Guests" by my self. but no go ...

what is worng here ??

hope you can help me.