24Dec/0920
Npower Fusion – Breakdown Tutorial and Chipset Info
So a few of you had asked for a detailed chipset list for the npower fusion java console. Sounded like fun, so here it is. Turns out to be a pretty interesting device. For the super impatient among you, 200mhz 8mb ram arm SoC, possible rockbox target. Read on for photos and follow along instructions.
- Using your thumbnail or a flat screwdriver, pry up the front face. This is what holds the dpad and the 3 buttons in, so don't let them fall under the couch when you pop this sucker off. Trust me, you don't want to go under there.
- Using a small phillips screwdriver, remove the 4 face screws from the front corners of the device.
- Using a small flathead scredriver, insert it into the 4 slots on the outer edge of the device, this will allow you to pop open the rear plate and expose the motherboard
- Now that the mb is exposed we immediately see 2 chips, the hynix kor 713a firmware (apparently common in ipod clones) and Telechip tcc8200 200mhz arm SoC (very interesting), as well as 3 chips covered in spacer tape. This leads me to believe we may be able to get the rockbox distribution flashed on this.... The rockbox wiki has a page on this chipset which appears to have graphics acceleration of some sort? You can see the page here.
- Removing the first spacer tape reveals a K4M56323 8mb sdram chip. So the device has 8mb sdram in 4 banks of 2mb, with 2mb being allocated to the test java program. Here's a page with a pdf of the datasheet.
- The center spacer tapes are covering 1.8v caps, so leave them on there
- The spacer tape next to the hynix chip is covering some unsoldered leads, maybe worth getting a multimeter on there later?
- At this point, we've seen all there is to see on the rear face of the MB, time to flip it over. Using a small screwdriver remove the 4 small screws on the mb
- And there's the LCD. Looks like it's on there pretty good, not worth taking off. So that's that! Interesting stuff all around.
December 24th, 2009 - 19:03
Thanks for the info. Would it be possible to post some larger photos?
And it’s a shame those developers don’t release a SDK, and maybe even some hardware data sheet, so that people can use those things for robotics and other cool things.
December 24th, 2009 - 23:39
Hey Hunter,
Thank you very much for this intuitive breakdown. I find I a quite interesting little device personally. Did you come across any pin headers or solder pads that could accommodate a debugging of this device?
Hope everyone has a very merry Christmas
-Adam
December 25th, 2009 - 01:50
Ordered three of these from Woot, one will go to my son who is a Spongebob freak, but I am intrigued by the potential for these things. A Rockbox port would be fantastic! I hope someone begins work on that.
Do you know if this has any kind of underlying OS (Linux, Windows…), or is it more like the old MSX machines? I’d really like to have an ebook reader app (the text viewer on Roxkbox would be good enough, but a PDF, or better yet, HTML viewer would be much better.
December 26th, 2009 - 09:25
Hey Radu,
The photos posted are actually about 3x larger, just scaled down for the post. If you open/dl them they should be much better quality. Some of the chips themselves have datasheets available, but no public SDKs that I found.
December 26th, 2009 - 09:27
Hey Adam,
Not really. The leftmost spacer tape conceals some unsoldered leads for what may be a backup flash bank or something, haven’t gotten a multimeter on there yet but it might be a good place to start looking. Good Luck!
December 26th, 2009 - 09:30
Hey rs,
Yeah I picked up another 3 from woot myself. I figure they’ll either make for some interesting application platforms, or fodder for Hackaway 2010. I haven’t looked into what a rockbox port to the device would take, but with the nearly identical chipsets it may not be too hard. I’ll post up if I start working on it.
JavaME doesn’t give any information about the underlying OS its running on. I personally think it is (where else is that extra 6mb memory going to?), probably a small *nix or symbian type cell phone OS scaled down. Don’t know much about it yet.. but I think there’s a lot of interesting potential. Good luck with your ereader app
December 27th, 2009 - 10:08
Hay Hunter.
The NFusion looks interesting. I never heard of it before.
You seen the Nanovor Nanoscope yet?
December 27th, 2009 - 20:59
Hey DrA,
Sure haven’t, quite interesting. Sounds like it’s got wireless of some sort, as well as some sort of random / selected generation of game elements? Could be using the bluetooth built-in random() generation. Neat.
January 15th, 2010 - 09:46
Hi Hunter,
I’m interested in hacking the Fusion, too. I found a couple of hidden testing and firmware update modes you can unlock with different key combinations. Take a look at my blog post here: http://cbcf.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/npower-fusion/
Steve
January 15th, 2010 - 09:47
Hi Hunter,
I’m interested in hacking the Fusion, too. Take a look at my blog post here: http://cbcf.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/npower-fusion/
I found a couple of hidden testing and firmware update modes you can unlock with different key combinations.
Steve
January 15th, 2010 - 09:48
Hi Hunter,
I’m interested in hacking the Fusion, too. Take a look at my blog post here: http://cbcf.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/npower-fusion/
I found a couple of hidden testing and firmware update modes you can unlock with different key combinations.
Hmm… my messages keep getting marked as spam
Steve
January 15th, 2010 - 10:13
Hey Steve,
Excellent work! That’s a great find with the debug mode! We may get a custom firmware on this thing yet
Just shoot me an email if any posts get marked as spam in the future and I’ll un-mark em. Great blog post, and Good luck!
January 18th, 2010 - 15:43
hate to post about the zipit z2 on this page but i was hoping someone would be able to help me find a way to get one in england?
January 18th, 2010 - 16:42
Hey Kea,
THe only way I know (aside from a nice ebay seller), is to win the z2 I gave away in the hackaway…. Hopefully somebody can help you out, otherwise you’re welcome to enter the next hackaway when its announced. Good Luck!
January 19th, 2010 - 03:20
damn, oh well i will see what i can find on ebay. i did buy an im me for £7 to see what i can do with it, just have to have the time now, thanks for your help
January 23rd, 2010 - 20:27
I got a couple Fusions as an excuse to learn J2ME- if anyone’s curious I’ve put up a couple games I wrote for it here on my site: http://je.zacbrown.org/javame.html
I don’t suppose anyone else is interested in using these things as a homebrew dev platform?
January 24th, 2010 - 20:59
Hey John,
Of course we’re interested
Great work on the games! Dungeonheart is coming along nicely! Very cool stuff.
February 1st, 2010 - 05:02
I truly believe that we have reached the point where technology has become one with our lives, and I think it is safe to say that we have passed the point of no return in our relationship with technology.
I don’t mean this in a bad way, of course! Societal concerns aside… I just hope that as the price of memory falls, the possibility of downloading our memories onto a digital medium becomes a true reality. It’s one of the things I really wish I could experience in my lifetime.
(Posted on Nintendo DS running R4i SDHC DS SysBro)
March 19th, 2010 - 12:40
Nice job! I will look forward to the news on hacking this nice little device.
March 19th, 2010 - 13:36
Thanks Hari, I’ve bought 3 or 4 extra when they come up on woot so I’ll be giving a bunch away during the next hackaway event!