I take it the OK button is not going to be an easy hack-away...

 

KEEP UP THE AWESOME WORK.

Next step would be finding a way to let WINCE see the PCMCIA card slot. If it could, more folks could write programs to play media, control ipods, etc...

 

you mean the DLLs ?
i dont think in previous version so many DLLs got dumped out

 

o yeah dll hell fukin' windoz :shakehead
hmmm why the hell does it come with all those OS-level dlls

 

heheh they be sending out them Yakuza badass

j/k

 

should I include internet explorer in the car? I dont know how usefull that is.

I gotta remove something, because my current build is 145 MB.. and I dont think thats going to fit on the flash.

 

bysin your one funny chracter.

 

Bysin

What BSP are you using. Without access to the specific BSP for the hardware in the system, I cannot imagine how you are going to successfully build a targeted version of CE.

You need to know the specifics of the hardware (LCD, touch panel, dvd ...) and have the appropriate drivers.

I cannot imagine that alpine publishes the BSP for this hardware.



Regards
Larry

 

Before the questions start rolling in, I will answer the obvious one.

BSP is Board Support Package. It is a set of drivers which run the specific hardware in question.

THe BSP's packaged with the WinCE development kit are targeted at a couple of off the shelf available evaluation boards. Yes they may contain the particular SH4 chip in question, but it is doubtable that the rest of the hardware is the same, or compatable with the electronics in the car.

Larry

 

Most of the build is taken from the dll's from the modules in the bin.

 

I know what I'm doing.

 

I certainly wasn't implying that you do not. I am quite impressed with your accomplisments to date. As a fellow CE 4.2 developer on SH chips, I was asking a question. I hadn't thought of the approach of essentially rolling your own BSP from the DLL's on production build, GREAT IDEA.

Regards
Larry

 

bysin is reverse-engineering the hell outta that system

 

Bysin,

You have done pretty amazing stuff so far hacking into acura navi. As a software engineer, I find it quite impressive at your age. Look like SCC college is already paying off!!!

Is it or was it your intention in removing the 'nag-screen' (legal disclaimer crap) and to allow the navi to boot up automatically bypassing the acknowledgement ('Ok' button).

Is there a way to get around the acknowledgement or is it part the navi bios/firmware?

Rich

 

If you have a TSX maybe you can help me out.. can you find out how much flash I have to work with?

 

The easiest way to find out how much flash we have would be to open up the navi system and look for the flash memory chips on the board. Then you can just look 'em up on the net to see their size. I would be VERY surprised if there was more than 128meg. PDAs can run GPS navi software on 64meg, and these OEMs usually are cheap when it comes to hardware so they'll go with the bare minimum... if someone has their trunk taken apart and is willing to take apart the navi unit, and take some high-res digipics of the motherboard, we could figure it out...

 

Anyone able to update from a PC card? I get ATA Read error.

 

XStatic2,

You loaded the BIN files onto a CF card in a PC Card->CF converter or something? Is that supposed to work? That would be better than burning CDs all the time

 

Bysin

No TSX, TL instead.

I suspect the main board is in the dash, and the DVD is a slave drive, I am not quite ready to attack removing the dash part to look at hardware, But if I have time this weekend I might take the trunk mounted stuff out and take a look.

An Idea: Why not hijack one of the existing applications with another which interrogates the system, and returns output through standard API to the system display. ie. write a program named calc.exe which outputs to the sysio device, run caclulator, and look at the results. I wonder if some of the CE debug tools could be run this way, or even explorer.

Larry

 

lfe,

I'm pretty sure the actual processor and flash memory is in the navi unit in the trunk not in the dash. If you look at the wiring diagram for the car (if you have the electrical manual which I do), you'll see that there aren't any data wires going to the front of the car. Just the display signal. Not to mention the fact that the PC Card slot is also back there with the navi unit and therefore the motherboard must be very close. I had it out of the car when I did my DVD->Navi conversion, but never thought to open it up.

 

zax123

Well now we are talking, just a thin piece of trunk liner between us and the system, I will have to do this late at night, my wife accuses me of being crazy when I take stuff like this apart, dont want to confirm that she is correct. hahahahaha

Larry

 

Just did a quick readover of this thread... but...

Why not drop a call to exit() in navi.exe? Or just fill it with NOPs? Or hell, have it run explorer.exe. It'd be interesting to see where that takes you. I'm not familiar enough with SH-4 to predict any specifics (nor do i have a navi system to test on).

 

Thing is, the explorer.exe has to be compiled for the SH4 processor. That's what Bysin is doing now. Then he'll be able to do that kind of thing I imagine. If he gets that going, our options are virtually limitless.

 

Ok, so after 45mins of reading i'm finally at the end...
1st off congrats Bysin, fantastic work. Now I didnt understand 15% of what you guys were talking about but it is amazing.

I just have one question I havent been able to see a clear answer to, you noted on your webpage that you added more cars, did that by chance include CL's, more specifically an '03 CL-S? Other than that i cant wait to get home and give it a whirl. Thanks

 

does anyone want to turn this into a background it would be sweet

 

As I noted earlier, I also got an ATA Read Error. I tried with a 1gb cf card, fat (not fat32) formatted, with all of the BIN files in the root. I wonder if this is a driver/hardware/filesystem issue or just that the Card Load function is looking for different files in a different way (maybe a manifest/config file or something?)

 

Yes, I put the bin files on CF and used a CF-PC card adapter. CF conforms to ATA specs and is PCMCIA/PC card & ATA compatable, the adapter is just to make it fit and route the 50 CF pins to the PC card 68pin connector.

The menu choice is there to load from PC card but as I said it didn't work for me, I got ATA read error.
Is it supposed to? I don't know.
Maybe the drive needs another file, maybe it needs to be formatted differently, maybe it needs a specific header or device name.

I will leave it to the guys with the SH-4 knowledge and disassemblers to try to figure this one out.

 

 

Oh didn't see him post that

 

you like that ?

j/k

 

calitsx here is your beautiful pic
http://uploadhut.com/view.php/63753.bmp
(original size is all out of whack I had to adjust it)

 

Linky no worky

 

Bysin, did you get rid of the nag-screen and the OK button? In the beginning of the thread it sounds like that is what you did, but now it sounds like only the text is gone.

 

I think he is still working on it. I just did mine this morning and it worked great. The warning text is blank and now has just a "GO" button. I think the other alternative he was working on was to allow you to generate your own text as long as it was the same size as the original.

 

From what I have gathered, that is correct, sigmachi96.

I think it would be awesome if the background images we worked so hard to customize would remain visible when the OK button appeared. However, I also realize that this would take more than adjusting a few sections of the program.

 

I was actually dropping that project to work on getting explorer.exe to run as a fully functional desktop in the car.

 

You're Bysin, can do both

 

until we can watch movies

you are the king bysin, came across this fourm 1 hour ago and have already tweaked my navi.

 

Some screens I have been PM'ed about (they are already in bmp and correctly sized to work with no lag):







Bysin, you can add this to your site if you want. You have done a terrific job. Keep on impressing us

 

I will agree that replacing the disclaimer text is a neat hack but not worth a great deal of effort as ther are certainly better things to work on.

Getting explorer to run sounds great and would offer a large range of opportunities to us that would like to really change the functionality of the nav system.

However, unless it just really isn't pratical at all I think most everybody would really appreciate a hack to bypass the requirement to press the touch screen everytime the system is booted.

In any case, you should definately work on the project as it best fits your needs, and I think I speak for everyone saying thanks for sharing!