Thread: PRS-500 Reader internals
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Old 04-17-2008, 05:04 PM   #109
Buffy
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Buffy began at the beginning.
 
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Join Date: Apr 2008
Device: Sony PRS-505
TinyHttpd is a simple web server, usually run on webcams, routers and similar embedded systems to support configuration tools. The source is available. It may be run as a kernel process in memory-limited systems. But its basically just a web server and works like all others.

Of course Sony could have used that name for something else, but that seems pretty unlikely.

I would assume that at least one purpose for a web server would be to load content, diagnose and/or configure the reader through a network connection. Small embedded Linux systems often use IP over USB to avoid any additional hardware, and I see that the software to support IP over USB is installed, but not activated by default - or a least no network connections show up when I plug my reader in. So I assume that either a command must be sent to the reader, or some special combination of keys pressed to load the appropriate gadgets.

(On Linux, client-side USB drivers are called "gadgets". A gadget is needed for each different function.) Clearly the ones for charging and SCSI are there and working, because when I plug in the reader it negotiates for power and provides connections for the part of the internal memory and the card slots.

Of course its very hard to know what's there just because they didn't take it out, and what's there because they have (or plan to have) a use for it. But it seems unlikely they'd have both the IP over USB gadgets and a web server running unless some sort of network interface was used or planned for.

I may try to figure out how to implement the USB commands you've listed and what they do - it could be that one of those enables the network interface. I don't have a MS Windows system handy to try the DLLs on, but probably can come up with one.

I would assume that once the networking is enabled, it should be possible to connect to the web server (and probably the SSH daemon too) and talk to the reader more directly than by dropping autorun files onto a removable device.
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