Project - Themes

[Slaughter]

Apparently iRiver folks use a program called H3Mod to skin their players. This program will read the same firmware files .mi4 as the e200. I played with it a little bit but couldn't get it to work. Someone had already posted on misticriver.net asking how to get the e200 mi4 files to work, but no on has replied. Maybe someone with more skills and time can get this working.

[sumx4182]

I'd love the ability to get themes on the Sansa, hell, i'd even love just to be able to change the wallpaper (usually themes consist of menu bars and items too)...but I dont know much about theme type stuff...hopefully some one will tho...

[Slaughter]

Well after some more researching it looks like Lord Julius the creator of H3Mod is going to work on adding support for the e200. Hopefully soon, it would be nice to skin/theme the e200.

[sumx4182]

what does this program entail? is it something that just adds a feature to the sansa like a new firmware would? or is it a program that actually is stored on the sansa? I hope it's not like flashing/flexing a cell phone...MANY people ruin phones trying to add stupid stuff to em! lol

[Slaughter]

It just replacing the default images and backgrounds in the firmware. It decrypts the firmware, replaces the images, and encrypts it. Then you reinstall your firmware as usual, but with your own icons, wallpaper, themes, ect...

[Lord Julius]

Hi there,

I've got a first version of H3Mod ready that supports Sansa e200 firmware.
This is the very first version, so you can already use it to theme the firmware
image by image, but it lacks the ability to replace complete themes in one go.
We also need confirmation that it really works (obviously nobody tested yet,
since it's brand new), but from the rockbox experience I'm quite optimistic.

Now the next steps are up to you: bookmark all the images you can find,
and publish the bookmark files, so I can include them in the program. Later
on, someone needs to provide slides for the preview function, but one thing
at a time.

Go to http://www.cerebus.de/iriver, and download the H3Mod package and
the Sansa reference file, unzip them all in the same folder. Then read the
help file. Read it again. Especially the Sansa page. Don't dare to ask
questions that are answered there; I'm known to get testy when that
happens

There is also a section about troubleshooting, and if that has no answers,
about how to properly report errors. Let's try to keep this thread as useful
as possible by avoiding unnecessary questions.

It's also an idea to go to the misticriver pages, the H10 forum, and read the
threads about skinning and hacking. They are long, but give you a good idea
of how the thing developed, and what questions other people had. The H10
uses almost the same firmware type as the Sansa, so there are similarities.

Have fun, LJ

P.S. Not that anybody is interested, but they use a really annoying non-
standard colour encoding. When the rest of the world does RGB, Sansa has
to do BGR. Took me half a day to figure all the details out. Grr.

[kwerdenker]

when i klick on the download link for the e200 reference i actually get the u3 reference but the helpfile says i need a file called "Sansa_e200_reference.bin". so i think some link went the wrong direction

[sracer]

Originally Posted by Slaughter

It just replacing the default images and backgrounds in the firmware. It decrypts the firmware, replaces the images, and encrypts it. Then you reinstall your firmware as usual, but with your own icons, wallpaper, themes, ect...

I don't know what kind of memory the e200 uses for its firmware, but IIRC there is a finite number of times that certain types of flash memory can be overwritten. I'd like to know that before I start re-flashing to change wallpapers.

[kwerdenker]

Originally Posted by sracer

I don't know what kind of memory the e200 uses for its firmware, but IIRC there is a finite number of times that certain types of flash memory can be overwritten. I'd like to know that before I start re-flashing to change wallpapers.

flash memory has a finite number of erase-write cycles (most commercially available flash products are guaranteed to withstand 1 million programming cycles)

...taken from wikipedia

[greendusk]

Has anyone got this to work yet. Or Have a picture.

[Lord Julius]

Originally Posted by kwerdenker

when i klick on the download link for the e200 reference i actually get the u3 reference but the helpfile says i need a file called "Sansa_e200_reference.bin". so i think some link went the wrong direction

link fixed

@greendusk: I don't know what picture you mean, but there are screenshots
of H3Mod on the website, if that's what you mean.

[kwerdenker]

thx julius, now it works.

there is one thing i want do discuss: i know messing with the firmware voids your guarantee and there is always the risk of turning your player into a (expensive) paper weight but the sansa has a "recovery mode" and i want to know if its independet from the normal firmware or not. if its independet i could use it to recover my sansa with an unmodified version if the modified one screws up the whole thing.

what are your opinions on that matter?

[joosep]

Installed the .NET framework and downloaded the newest version and the e200 reference file, but...

[Lord Julius]

Originally Posted by joosep

Installed the .NET framework and downloaded the newest version and the e200 reference file, but...

Is it version 1.1 you installed? Microsoft has published 2.0 meanwhile, and I
think they are not backward compatible. You can have both on the same
machine, though.

@kwerdenker: I don't have a Sansa myself (nice looking unit, beats my
chunky iriver H320 in style, at least), so I can only throw in the experience
of the H10 crowd: apparently mi 4 firmware is loaded by a bootloader that
verifies it, and rejects firmware with major errors, and in case of problems you
can always copy the old firmware back, as long as you don't modify the
bootloader itself. So that looks quite safe. Sansa uses the same concept of
bootloader and mi4 firmware, as the rockbox gurus found out.

[kwerdenker]

@julius ok, thanks for the info

i played with your program and i found the screens for the rating system. i made bookmarks for all of them and i hope i did it right. the new bookmark-file is appended to this post (as you can see it's for the european version)

p.s. i think i also found the imagesequenze for shutdown, but i have to confirm that. i'll keep you updated

[Slaughter]

Just so everyone can see what you can start doing, here is a pic of my e260 with the background image replaced with a red one.

[joosep]

Originally Posted by Lord Julius

Is it version 1.1 you installed? Microsoft has published 2.0 meanwhile, and I
think they are not backward compatible. You can have both on the same
machine, though.

v1.1 and that's the only one on my comp.

[greendusk]

Looks ok i think i am getting the hang of this

[smartglo1]

omg that is sooo sweet. i would love to do that on my sansa. how long did it take you to make the theme? are there any problems? firmware or something?

[Sandisk_E260_Lover]

There are too much responses to this thread. can someone explain this whole thing in a shorter response. The exact steps to making these themes?