PRS+: Enhanced firmware for Sony Reader, Folders, Games & more

[kartu]

Originally Posted by bbriand

I have a PRS650.

Yesterday I decided to try the latest PRS+ 2.0.11beta.

So I wanted to take my reader from firmware 1.0.00.08100 to 1.0.00.14080

Originally I tried PRS-650 Updater from the PRS+ {roject site and it failed. Tried multiple attempts. Reader kept rebooting afterwards.

So then I downlaoded the firmware from Sony's site directly and it failed. Tried multiple attempts. Reader kept rebooting afterwards.

Then I thought to pop out the SD Card and the reader would boot but the about screen still had PRS+ and firmware version 1.0.00.08100

No wonder, if updates failed. I wonder, what's so special about your SD card.

The only thing is sometimes if the SD Card is in when cold booting the reader it goes into a loop. I thoguht deleting the Sony directory it creates on the SD Card solved this but sometimes it still exhibits this reboot behaviour.

Very strange. Is your SD broken / not compatible with the reader? Did you have such problems with standard Sony firmware?

Also in the previous PRS+ version I was able to open books directly off the reader. Now it wants to copy it to internal memory first. Not a big deal tho.

You can still have it the old (confusing to many) way if you change option to "disabled, load cache".

If I had 1 request it would be a reboot reader button. If that would be possible that would save a lot of wear and tear on the power slide button.

There is "shutdown" action which you could bind to any button you want.

[bbriand]

Originally Posted by kartu

No wonder, if updates failed. I wonder, what's so special about your SD card.

Very strange. Is your SD broken / not compatible with the reader? Did you have such problems with standard Sony firmware?

It is a 16 gig SD card and worked fine with Sony firmware as well as previous PRS+ and Boroda Russified firmware. I think the issue might be I'm trying to figure out the scan SD options. Since I have about 8gigs of books on the SD card

Originally Posted by kartu

You can still have it the old (confusing to many) way if you change option to "disabled, load cache".

Ahh I have not tried that option. I will later on today.

Originally Posted by kartu

There is "shutdown" action which you could bind to any button you want.

Yeah its also possible from the main Options menu to shut it down. I was more thinking to have it shut down and automatically restart. So you would not need to hit the power button to turn it back on.

Thank you for your quick reply.
Bill

[kartu]

bbriand
I still don't quite get how SD card could affect the updates... =/

Bah, so "restart" action, eh?
Maybe. But after the mess with 2.0.11b is understood and fixed.

[bbriand]

kartu

I don't think it was the SD card stopping the update to firmware 14080. It was just after the update failed I would have to hold the reset button to get it to reboot and it would boot up fully and I'd see the main screen. It would have the arrows spinning as if it was working on something and then reboot and keep doing that. If I took out the SD Card then it would start up and not reboot. It likely had to do with the 8gigs of books.

I had an idea to make executable .txt files that are bash scripts. Then try them with different permissions and see if I could browse to them and get them to execute. I may try that tonight although I doubt it will actually work.

The other thought was to try the FSK Test Environment and see if an application could be made in there to reboot the device. This one smacks of effort tho and I'm lazy

Cheers,
Bill

[Mark Nord]

Originally Posted by bbriand

The other thought was to try the FSK Test Environment and see if an application could be made in there to reboot the device. This one smacks of effort tho and I'm lazy

Bill,

Beside the effort, there are some other obstacles, too.
FSK Test Environment (Sim) deals with the kinoma-FSK windows binaries (fsk.dll, fskin.dll, a.so) and is executed on X86 processors, while the reader run the ARM Linux versions of FSK.
On the other hand, this post links to code (done by m-land) which allows to execute some linux console commands and view the piped output.

[bbriand]

Mark Nord

Thanks for the post. I am checking it out now.

[sengian]

Hello,

I am coming back to an old problem I have with this option. In my case if I activate this, my 600 freeze with the spinner blocked for more than 30min.
I assume this is not a normal behavior, so I wonder if there is an accessible log somewhere which could help to find the reasons of this bug. In my case if I don't activate the scan my reader crashes and I need to do a hard reset to restart it.

[kartu]

sengian
The only log is in PRSPInstaller folder of internal memory.
I wonder what you mean by "activate" and whether you are using anything fancy (like mount --binding fonts).

[sengian]

Yes I know this log but for what I understand it is only used for installation, isn't it?
And I install without my sd card in order to save time.

I don't do anything fancy, at least I don' think so, I tried to disable the sd scan and the reader crashes. So the only way to have an SD card is to enable (sorry for the activate) scanning.
The only option relevant to this I use is the use mount option with SD card. I tried also without this one but it still crashes.
I don't know the binding fonts option.

[pampalini]

Hi Kartu.
First of all, thanks again for your great work. I installed the new PRS+ 2.0.11beta on my 505, and it is working very smoothly.
I have one question, how can I manage to work with the "action"?
I searched the prs+ setting menu, but couldn't find any setting....are the "action" available for 505?

[kartu]

Originally Posted by pampalini

I have one question, how can I manage to work with the "action"?
I searched the prs+ setting menu, but couldn't find any setting....are the "action" available for 505?

Action is something that you assign to keys via "Key Bindings" menu.

[Analogus]

Offtopic (not relatetd to PRS+), but KARTU seems to be a person of deep knowledge:

I fear, that's the end of my 350. I finally bricked it. It runs in a boot loop (restarting every 20 seconds), trying to start (black bar running to the right for 5mm) , then booting again...

I think, there is no possibility to UNBRICK it?

There is no card slot, soft reset of course doesn't work, trying to hard reset does (of course) not work and the reader isn't ready as USB device for reflashing (of course not...).

A.

[kartu]

How did you brick it for starters?

[Analogus]

Hm, I'm a bit ashamed... the reason is my inquisitiveness and curiosity

Long story short:

Tried serveral times to upgrade/downgrade to/from newest Sony firmare as you know

Flashing with BORODAS packages worked still fine in both directions

What I do like ist to have my own fonts all over the reader, even in TXT and RTF files. Boroda doesn'n offer that

Ergo: Tried to manage it with my own hands. Read about cramfs. Extracted the original firmware offered by boroda --> modified the adobe programm with an hexeditor (found on the internet) & changed 1 font (I did it the right way including changing internal fontnames) --> compiled with cramfs --> flashed with borodas flasher.

Worked fine! Did it several times to optimize fonts and played around with changing font sizes. At the final flash something went wrong. I used a former working image (not 100% shure about that), but this time it leads into the mentioned boot loop.


A.

Edit: maybe I made a mistake and took the wrong image for extracting for the final task. For example one image (can't remember which one) has slightly other fontnames mentioned in one of the xml-files (something like XYwin95...ttf versus XY...ttf). Maybe I overlooked that.

[Analogus]

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