Here is some interesting news... the "PRS-500 Updater 1.0.02.01300.exe" executable turns out to be a winzip archive and can be easily unpacked (for instance by adding the .zip extension to it and unpacking it with Winrar). The content:
Code:
/:
total 14796
drwxr-xr-x 3 root debian 4096 2007-02-09 20:06 .
drwxrwxrwt 15 root root 8192 2007-02-09 20:08 ..
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 585 2007-01-08 00:34 checksum
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 4263936 2007-01-08 00:34 cramfs.Fsk.img
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 8622080 2007-01-08 00:34 cramfs.Rootfs.img
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 13824 2007-01-18 01:56 eBookDeviceUpdater.dll
drwxr-xr-x 4 root debian 4096 2007-02-09 20:06 eBookUpdater
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 4722 2007-01-18 01:50 eBookUpdater.xsb
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 86016 2007-01-18 01:39 ebookUsb.dll
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 65955 2007-01-05 00:52 FskCore.xsb
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 884736 2007-01-08 01:56 fsk.dll
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 131072 2007-01-05 00:53 FskImage.dll
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 233472 2007-01-05 00:53 Fskin.dll
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 9728 2007-01-05 00:53 FskPower.dll
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 448 2007-01-18 01:39 kconfig.xml
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 344064 2007-01-18 01:39 msvcr70.dll
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 348160 2007-01-18 01:39 msvcr71.dll
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 35336 2007-01-18 03:13 PRS-500 Updater.exe
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 10752 2006-04-24 12:22 prsctr.dll
/eBookUpdater:
total 20
drwxr-xr-x 4 root debian 4096 2007-02-09 20:06 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root debian 4096 2007-02-09 20:06 ..
drwxr-xr-x 3 root debian 4096 2007-02-09 20:06 assets
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 342 2007-01-18 01:39 eBookUpdater.xml
drwxr-xr-x 2 root debian 4096 2007-02-09 20:06 scripts
/eBookUpdater/assets:
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 3 root debian 4096 2007-02-09 20:06 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root debian 4096 2007-02-09 20:06 ..
drwxr-xr-x 3 root debian 4096 2007-02-09 20:06 updaterAssets
/eBookUpdater/assets/updaterAssets:
total 276
drwxr-xr-x 3 root debian 4096 2007-02-09 20:06 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root debian 4096 2007-02-09 20:06 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root debian 4096 2007-02-09 20:06 behaviors
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 7165 2007-01-18 01:39 check.png
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 55563 2007-01-18 01:39 connectAssets.png
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 20190 2007-01-18 01:39 connectAssets.xml
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 119700 2007-01-18 01:39 connectBackground.jpg
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 10230 2007-01-18 01:39 licenseAgreement.txt
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 3021 2007-01-18 01:39 notificationAssets.png
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 10 2007-01-08 00:34 PRSVersion.dat
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 30610 2007-01-18 01:39 sonyEBook.png
/eBookUpdater/assets/updaterAssets/behaviors:
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 2 root debian 4096 2007-02-09 20:06 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root debian 4096 2007-02-09 20:06 ..
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 1327 2007-01-18 01:39 buttonBehavior.xml
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 3259 2007-01-18 01:39 revealHideBehavior.xml
/eBookUpdater/scripts:
total 28
drwxr-xr-x 2 root debian 4096 2007-02-09 20:06 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root debian 4096 2007-02-09 20:06 ..
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 7294 2007-01-18 01:39 eBookUpdaterMain.xml
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 819 2007-01-18 01:39 license.xml
-rwxr--r-- 1 root debian 4734 2007-01-18 01:39 updater.xml
It's pretty easy to extract the content of cramfs.Fsk.img and cramfs.Rootfs.img (see attached files). Likewise, it would probably be easy to replace the images with our own images, meaning that this way we could also flash anything we want to the Reader. The checksum file would have to be adjusted, or, if we couldn't find out the checksum algorithm used, the flash executable would have to be patched to ignore wrong checksums.