Um, anyone got any more information on this, 'cos I ain't convinced, judging by reading <a href="http://flame.dnsart.com/~daniel/ipod.html"; target="_blank">this stuff</a> and the links on it.
Basically the ARM7 processor specification (remember, ARM just design chips and license the designs, they don't make them) includes technology which is able to run an accelerated Java Virtual Machine, but that doesn't mean to say either that PortalPlayer's version has implemented this same embedded capability or that the iPod is taking advantage of it.
Oh, and if rtxc-32 is in fact the iPod's OS, well, their site says it's written mainly in C. Okay, so there might well be a JVM living in the bootloader, but since all the OS has to do is run the UI and dump data into the (hardware) music decoder, it seems to me an unnecessary complication.
Although it does have to said that all the extra features we have now suggest that iPod software v1.0 wasn't exactly pushing the hardware...
<strong>Um, anyone got any more information on this, 'cos I ain't convinced, judging by reading <a href="http://flame.dnsart.com/~daniel/ipod.html"; target="_blank">this stuff</a> and the links on it.
....
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I made some interesting discoveries! I followed the instructions on the web page you linked to, made a copy of the 32MB partition, and ran the terminal command "cat image2 | strings | less"
Im not sure what this does exactly, but my guess would be that it substracts all the strings from the partition and displays them line by line in the terminal.app. I did this and had a read through all the different strings, and there were a number of interesting once:
First of all, it said copyright PortalPlayer 1999-2001, which I guess is for the CPU. Now, further down, it lists what I believe is the Hard drive formats it supports, APPLE_HFS, FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32.
Then later on, it lists what I think is a list of all the different music file formats the iPod supports, and amongst these are:
RIFF
FORM
WAVE
fmt
data
AIFF
COMM
SSND
AIFC
NONE
sowt
codec
acelp85
acelp16
mp332
rev1
I know what the most of these are, but what are some of them? RIFF and FORM ? Never heard of them...
Then Further down I get the following weird list:
Video
Stereo Mix
Mono Mix
Phone
File
Line in
Radio
Digital
S/P DIF
Where the interesiting parts are Video, Phone, Radio and S/P DIF. Are these the supported play modes intended for the iPod ? Radio, Phone and Video ? Interesting...
Then There seems to be a lot of lines concerning error messages, or programming stuff, like:
Unknown signal
Invalid operation
Divide by Zero
Overflow
Underflow
Inexact result
:Heap Memory Corrupted
Seems to be error messages, or methods (functions) or something.
The following list seams to be commands, near the top of the list:
RTXCbug - RTXC Objects>
D - Dump all (tasks, mailboxes, queues...)
T - Tasks
M - Mailboxes
P - Partitions
Q - Queues
R - Resources
S - Semaphores
C - Clock / Timers
K - Stack Limits
Z - Zero Partition/Queue/Resource Statistics
$ - Enter Task Manager Mode
# - Task Registers
G - Go to Multitasking Mode
H - Help
U - Return To Main Menu
X - Exit RTXCbug
Bad command
** RTXCbug -
K - RTXC
G - Go to Multitasking Mode
X - Exit RTXCbug
RTXCbug>
Undefined Task
Register set of current task is meaningless
Task Register set is undefined
Does anyone else but me find this info interesting ? Will the iPod ever play Videos (probably not), what is Phone for, or Radio ?
<strong>Um, anyone got any more information on this, 'cos I ain't convinced, judging by reading <a href="http://flame.dnsart.com/~daniel/ipod.html"; target="_blank">this stuff</a> and the links on it.
....
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I made some interesting discoveries! I followed the instructions on the web page you linked to, made a copy of the 32MB partition, and ran the terminal command "cat image2 | strings | less"
Im not sure what this does exactly, but my guess would be that it substracts all the strings from the partition and displays them line by line in the terminal.app. I did this and had a read through all the different strings, and there were a number of interesting once:
First of all, it said copyright PortalPlayer 1999-2001, which I guess is for the CPU. Now, further down, it lists what I believe is the Hard drive formats it supports, APPLE_HFS, FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32.
Then later on, it lists what I think is a list of all the different music file formats the iPod supports, and amongst these are:
RIFF
FORM
WAVE
fmt
data
AIFF
COMM
SSND
AIFC
NONE
sowt
codec
acelp85
acelp16
mp332
rev1
I know what the most of these are, but what are some of them? RIFF and FORM ? Never heard of them...
Then Further down I get the following weird list:
Video
Stereo Mix
Mono Mix
Phone
File
Line in
Radio
Digital
S/P DIF
Where the interesiting parts are Video, Phone, Radio and S/P DIF. Are these the supported play modes intended for the iPod ? Radio, Phone and Video ? Interesting...
Then There seems to be a lot of lines concerning error messages, or programming stuff, like:
Unknown signal
Invalid operation
Divide by Zero
Overflow
Underflow
Inexact result
:Heap Memory Corrupted
Seems to be error messages, or methods (functions) or something.
The following list seams to be commands, near the top of the list:
RTXCbug - RTXC Objects>
D - Dump all (tasks, mailboxes, queues...)
T - Tasks
M - Mailboxes
P - Partitions
Q - Queues
R - Resources
S - Semaphores
C - Clock / Timers
K - Stack Limits
Z - Zero Partition/Queue/Resource Statistics
$ - Enter Task Manager Mode
# - Task Registers
G - Go to Multitasking Mode
H - Help
U - Return To Main Menu
X - Exit RTXCbug
Bad command
** RTXCbug -
K - RTXC
G - Go to Multitasking Mode
X - Exit RTXCbug
RTXCbug>
Undefined Task
Register set of current task is meaningless
Task Register set is undefined
Does anyone else but me find this info interesting ? Will the iPod ever play Videos (probably not), what is Phone for, or Radio ?
Hmm, interesting in some ways, but be careful: just because something is mentioned within RTXC and has PortalPlayer's name attached, don't presume it signifies anything for the iPod, given that the whole device is largely an exercise in pulling appropriate technologies and hardware off the shelf and wrapping it up in a bit of Appleness (TM).
Good work, nevertheless.
Actually, a thought just hit me: shouldn't this be in Digital Hub?
Hey Guys. Sorry if my original message sounded vague. I got my info from the print version of MacWorld in Andy Ithnako's column in the back of the magazine. He got the info from attending a MacHack seminar. I have no other info on this matter.
Comments
Who here knew it had one? Who doesn't care? Who posted this info already?<hr></blockquote>
Huh?
Basically the ARM7 processor specification (remember, ARM just design chips and license the designs, they don't make them) includes technology which is able to run an accelerated Java Virtual Machine, but that doesn't mean to say either that PortalPlayer's version has implemented this same embedded capability or that the iPod is taking advantage of it.
Oh, and if rtxc-32 is in fact the iPod's OS, well, their site says it's written mainly in C. Okay, so there might well be a JVM living in the bootloader, but since all the OS has to do is run the UI and dump data into the (hardware) music decoder, it seems to me an unnecessary complication.
Although it does have to said that all the extra features we have now suggest that iPod software v1.0 wasn't exactly pushing the hardware...
<strong>Um, anyone got any more information on this, 'cos I ain't convinced, judging by reading <a href="http://flame.dnsart.com/~daniel/ipod.html"; target="_blank">this stuff</a> and the links on it.
....
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I made some interesting discoveries! I followed the instructions on the web page you linked to, made a copy of the 32MB partition, and ran the terminal command "cat image2 | strings | less"
Im not sure what this does exactly, but my guess would be that it substracts all the strings from the partition and displays them line by line in the terminal.app. I did this and had a read through all the different strings, and there were a number of interesting once:
First of all, it said copyright PortalPlayer 1999-2001, which I guess is for the CPU. Now, further down, it lists what I believe is the Hard drive formats it supports, APPLE_HFS, FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32.
Then later on, it lists what I think is a list of all the different music file formats the iPod supports, and amongst these are:
RIFF
FORM
WAVE
fmt
data
AIFF
COMM
SSND
AIFC
NONE
sowt
codec
acelp85
acelp16
mp332
rev1
I know what the most of these are, but what are some of them? RIFF and FORM ? Never heard of them...
Then Further down I get the following weird list:
Video
Stereo Mix
Mono Mix
Phone
File
Line in
Radio
Digital
S/P DIF
Where the interesiting parts are Video, Phone, Radio and S/P DIF. Are these the supported play modes intended for the iPod ? Radio, Phone and Video ? Interesting...
Then There seems to be a lot of lines concerning error messages, or programming stuff, like:
Unknown signal
Invalid operation
Divide by Zero
Overflow
Underflow
Inexact result
:Heap Memory Corrupted
Seems to be error messages, or methods (functions) or something.
The following list seams to be commands, near the top of the list:
RTXCbug - RTXC Objects>
D - Dump all (tasks, mailboxes, queues...)
T - Tasks
M - Mailboxes
P - Partitions
Q - Queues
R - Resources
S - Semaphores
C - Clock / Timers
K - Stack Limits
Z - Zero Partition/Queue/Resource Statistics
$ - Enter Task Manager Mode
# - Task Registers
G - Go to Multitasking Mode
H - Help
U - Return To Main Menu
X - Exit RTXCbug
Bad command
** RTXCbug -
K - RTXC
G - Go to Multitasking Mode
X - Exit RTXCbug
RTXCbug>
Undefined Task
Register set of current task is meaningless
Task Register set is undefined
Does anyone else but me find this info interesting ? Will the iPod ever play Videos (probably not), what is Phone for, or Radio ?
BoeManE
<strong>Um, anyone got any more information on this, 'cos I ain't convinced, judging by reading <a href="http://flame.dnsart.com/~daniel/ipod.html"; target="_blank">this stuff</a> and the links on it.
....
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I made some interesting discoveries! I followed the instructions on the web page you linked to, made a copy of the 32MB partition, and ran the terminal command "cat image2 | strings | less"
Im not sure what this does exactly, but my guess would be that it substracts all the strings from the partition and displays them line by line in the terminal.app. I did this and had a read through all the different strings, and there were a number of interesting once:
First of all, it said copyright PortalPlayer 1999-2001, which I guess is for the CPU. Now, further down, it lists what I believe is the Hard drive formats it supports, APPLE_HFS, FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32.
Then later on, it lists what I think is a list of all the different music file formats the iPod supports, and amongst these are:
RIFF
FORM
WAVE
fmt
data
AIFF
COMM
SSND
AIFC
NONE
sowt
codec
acelp85
acelp16
mp332
rev1
I know what the most of these are, but what are some of them? RIFF and FORM ? Never heard of them...
Then Further down I get the following weird list:
Video
Stereo Mix
Mono Mix
Phone
File
Line in
Radio
Digital
S/P DIF
Where the interesiting parts are Video, Phone, Radio and S/P DIF. Are these the supported play modes intended for the iPod ? Radio, Phone and Video ? Interesting...
Then There seems to be a lot of lines concerning error messages, or programming stuff, like:
Unknown signal
Invalid operation
Divide by Zero
Overflow
Underflow
Inexact result
:Heap Memory Corrupted
Seems to be error messages, or methods (functions) or something.
The following list seams to be commands, near the top of the list:
RTXCbug - RTXC Objects>
D - Dump all (tasks, mailboxes, queues...)
T - Tasks
M - Mailboxes
P - Partitions
Q - Queues
R - Resources
S - Semaphores
C - Clock / Timers
K - Stack Limits
Z - Zero Partition/Queue/Resource Statistics
$ - Enter Task Manager Mode
# - Task Registers
G - Go to Multitasking Mode
H - Help
U - Return To Main Menu
X - Exit RTXCbug
Bad command
** RTXCbug -
K - RTXC
G - Go to Multitasking Mode
X - Exit RTXCbug
RTXCbug>
Undefined Task
Register set of current task is meaningless
Task Register set is undefined
Does anyone else but me find this info interesting ? Will the iPod ever play Videos (probably not), what is Phone for, or Radio ?
BoeManE
Good work, nevertheless.
Actually, a thought just hit me: shouldn't this be in Digital Hub?