Linux ported to Archos portable multimedia player
Jul 30, 2004 — by LinuxDevices Staff — from the LinuxDevices Archive — 9 views
A new project is developing a Linux port for Archos portable multimedia harddisk player/recorders. The LinAV project began in April, and has focused initially on the AV3xx-series devices, so far releasing a working kernel and a build environment for graphical applications based on the nano-X API.
(Click for slightly larger view of Archos AV3xx)
Archos products have been popular targets for hardware and firmware hackers. The RockBox project, released under the GNU General Public License, has produced a non-Linux firmware replacement for the Archos Jukebox 5000, 6000, Studio, Recorder, FM Recorder and Recorder V2 MP3 players, while the avOS Project has done some low-level work mapping the hardware and producing test binaries for the AV3xx and other Archos devices.
It lives!
(Click to enlarge)
The LinAV project appears to be the first to actually achieve a Linux port to an Archos product. LinAV is based on uClinux, the version of Linux for devices based on processors without a memory management unit (MMU). However, at CEBIT last year, Archos was rumored to have a next-generation AV500 portable multimedia player that appeared to be running Linux.
Archos AV3xx series devices cost betwee $500 and $600 direct from Archos. They are based on a TMS320DSC25 processor from Texas Instruments, a RISC/DSP system-on-chip that integrates an ARM7 system controller with a TMS320C5000 DSP, NTSC/PAL controller, USB/UART, CCD controller, and external CPU Interface. The devices have a 3.8-inch color LCD and harddrives up to 80GB, and include a USB interface for downloading files from a PC.
Archos offers several attachments for its AV3xx devices, including a memory card reader, a 3.3 Megapixel still and MPEG-4 video camera, and a PVR (personal video recorder) accessory.
More details about the LinAV project are available online.
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