MiG

The NW-A808 is the bassiest player i've heard, it has an amazing warm, punchy sound. Your I-River never had more Bass, just admit it..

Right, i haven't posted for a good while here, but i've still been a heavy reader of the forums, and the front page news So, on the topic title... i believe, we should start to figure out the way in which the NW-A3000's database works, so that we can create our own interface for transferring tracks to the player, but something that is very simplistic. Currently... No Matter how many tracks you have on the player, the device has the current filelist, barring folders, they seem to be dynamically added after one folder is full, each containing around 250~ tracks. 00010021.DAT 00GTRLST.DAT 01TREE01.DAT 01TREE02.DAT 01TREE03.DAT 01TREE04.DAT 01TREE10.DAT 01TREE11.DAT 01TREE12.DAT 01TREE13.DAT 01TREE14.DAT 01TREE15.DAT 01TREE22.DAT 01TREE2D.DAT 01TREE2E.DAT 01TREE2F.DAT 01TREE30.DAT 01TREE31.DAT 01TREE32.DAT 01TREE33.DAT 01TREE34.DAT 01TREE35.DAT 01TREE36.DAT 01TREE37.DAT 02TREINF.DAT 03GINF01.DAT 03GINF02.DAT 03GINF03.DAT 03GINF04.DAT 03GINF10.DAT 03GINF11.DAT 03GINF12.DAT 03GINF13.DAT 03GINF14.DAT 03GINF15.DAT 03GINF22.DAT 03GINF2D.DAT' 03GINF2E.DAT' 03GINF2F.DAT' 03GINF30.DAT 03GINF31.DAT 03GINF32.DAT 03GINF33.DAT 03GINF34.DAT 03GINF35.DAT 03GINF36.DAT 03GINF37.DAT 04CNTINF.DAT' 05CIDLST.DAT 07GTCHLG.DAT [10F00] [A_WM] [CONNECT] For this example, I have only included the first folder that is added... From a first glance, most of the files seem to be blank, containing a lot of duplicate data. The Files of interest have been marked in the above example with a ' It Seems that 04CNTINF.DAT contains the Track names, and seems to be the only file that does so. Thats about it for now... Lets get our heads together and figure this out! MiG

Nope, it doesnt work, i already tried. The player says that there is no database available.

The gaps you have to solder are 0.1mm apart...

Dont try that downgrader, they are fake (well not fake, but dont work and wont for a long time), as currently the way 2.6 works is totally different to 1.5, and works around this: for 1.5 firmware, the PSP boots, wallah, done, i dont think anything in the IPL is checked to see whether the firmware is correct, as there is the PSP firmware version stored in the IPL, and the Flash0 of the PSP. In 2.6 firmware, the IPL is encrypted heavily and if the Index.dat of FLASH0 is changed to allow a 1.5 update to run then on the next reboot the PSP will not boot because the IPL knows the PSP is 2.6 yet some haxing has gone on to try and change this to 1.0 so a 1.5 update can be run.. so the PSP doesnt turn on, and you get an expensive paper weight.

thanks for the replys... i'm going to do the best i can to understand the current firmware first, and see if there can be any modding available... I'm going to need some people looking at the current Firmware images if at all possible to help speed up the understanding process of the current firmware.. MiG

So Basically, im gunna try and port Rockbox to the NW-A3000... well try to get it started.. Firstly, i need some high detailed pics of the inside of the device, ones that i can read the different pcb's on, i know a few members have already taken there device apart so any helpful scans of the PCB's would be appreciated.. Nextly, we might need someone who has a mulitmeter, that can trace voltages from differnet component and come up with the schematics of the device. (not all that important imo.) We also need some people to take a look at the images shipped with the updater, to find some sort of code about the Firmware and whether we can go in just straight modding everything or pack our own updater. Bootloader is going to play a main role as well, and i'm also going to need to help develping an assembly boot loader for the device.. This Device has so much potential and rockbox or a modding the current firmware is one development i'm willing to take on.

i dont think sony read these forums tbh, but there is always the chance that they will.. This is a popular site for sony's hardware so i wouldnt be suprised if they didnt.

If you have installed Sonicstage that will rob the computer of any interaction with the device, and if you plug in the NW-A3000, it should load up SonicStage 4.0, thats if you have installed it. I found this out when i installed Sonicstage 4, and it didnt work properly, heck i found it 10x worse than Connect Player... So what i found you have to do is go to initialise disk in the settings, and then plug it in your computer, it "should" come back to life.

I'm with you on this one. i dont know what it is, but Connect Player is awesome for me, and i might have 2 record a video and upload just how much it flies on my machine... The new update has made the player just like so i'll get a video up for later 2day. ofc it could be faster at ripping cd's, because in comparison with other software its slooowww, but not that slow if u get what i mean. I have a NW-A3000 with the Latest connect player and i converted and transfered over 1gig of music in around 20min.

Really you must be using a Pentium II 400mhz and Windows 98 or something because the new connect player is one of the fastest players i have ever come across. The UI isnt the best in the world, but all u need to do is go to File --> Import Files, and then watch it transfer all of your files seemlessly. IF you want to transfer files to your device via windows explorer, buy a cheap ass £30 Flash MP3 Player, i on the other hand like the new version of connect player, and it is extremely fast. Computer Specs: AMD X2 3800+ @ 2.7ghz 1gb OCZ Platinum Nvidia 7800GT. DFI NF4 SLI-DR mobo.

well the NW-A3000.BIN file maybe scrambled or encrypted, as finding anything in the file of any use is looking slim. All the image programs i have tried wont recognise the image as any type of disk image. Im still going to play with it though, see if any fun can be had.

Both files reside on the device. they are both needed for the firmware update... i found out this by doing the following. Extract the Installer, inside the installer you will find a file called NW_A3000.ini This contains: [PAC_FWUpdater] Target=NW-A3000 Comment=NW-A3000 Firmware Update [DEVICE01] DeviceName=NW-A3000 ProductInfo=HDD WALKMAN ClassifyType=4 DevicePropertyProductInfo=NW-A3000 SubIdentification=00000000 CommandType=1 Version00=3.00 FWPackage00=ver3.00 FWPackageWriteFolderName=\ RemainingBatteryLevel=60 StorageMediaFormatType=0 PBRFile=NW_A3000.PBR Timer=1:30 This is obviously code to tell the updater what is what. Changing the string FWPackageWriteFolderName=\ to something like FWPackageWriteFolderName=\TEST will mean that the updater copies all required files to that folder. There is also a PBR file that i cant figure out what it does, and this is the contents of NW_A3000.PBR: ëX?SONYPrF @ ø ? ÿ ? ±?F4 )xV4NO NAME FAT32 rƒë:f¡|&f;&ŠWüu€ÊˆV€Ãsë3ÉŠF˜÷fFVFÑ‹v`‰Fü‰Vþ¸ ÷æ‹^ÃH÷óFüNþa¿ èæ r9&8-t`±¾¡}ó¦at2Nt ƒÇ ;ûræëÜ û}´}‹ð¬˜@tHt´» Íëï ý}ëæ ü}ëáÍÍ&‹UR°» è; rè[ŠV$¾|‹üÇFð=}ÇFô)}ŒÙ‰Nò‰NöÆ–}Ëê ¶Èf‹FøfFf‹ÐfÁêë^¶ÈJJŠF 2ä÷âFüVþëJRPSjj‘‹F–’3Ò÷ö‘÷öB‡Ê÷vŠòŠèÀÌ Ì¸€~u´B‹ôŠV$Íaar@uB^IuøÃA» `fj ë°NTLDR NTLDR is missing þÿ? ±?FPress any key to restart ¬¿ÌUª Somethings can be made out from this, and will probably determine certain drive characteristics, but i dont understand what "NTLDR is missing" is used for, because mainly this is associated with Boot Loaders, so this file may determine the boot information of the device.

Well basically, a Custom Firmware could be possible, but somehow the firmware needs extracting. The firmware update can be extracted, and by doing this u will reveal 2 files that are used in the update Process.. NW_A3000.BIN - Looks like the Firmware but im not too sure on this. NW_A3000.UPG - Less Likely to be the firmware but once the updater is run the file resides on the device until it is updated, i know this from not unplugging the device after update and checking what files are added. The device will obviously check for any updates on boot, and because of this i think it wud be very easy to install a custom firmware.. I think if we can get some people together to try and figure how the files are stored in the firmware, we'll be able to mod it.

i think a custom firmware willl be possible on the NW-A3000 i think that it would just take time for the initial modding, depeneding on how the firmware is stored. i might have a play.