Right maybe its time I give you guys a update.
Right now im busy building a PROPER rootfs.
My previous ROOTFS i used is pretty much as useful as a starved north korean.
No modules, no files in bin besides mipsel and I have to type busybox-mipsel command for every single fucking thing.
In the meantime lets go over decompiling this piece of firmware shall we.
First off its pretty insane, how much Ghirda is able to decompile, like it found EVERYTHING.
Anyways here is what we do know.
Instead of loading icons from the EPPROM it creates partitions but not in ram no. But in the programs OWN BINARY.
See that black. Thats pure FF's, megabytes. This file is 13 megabytes and the majority of it is zeros.
These zeros are alot like RAM, It moves fonts
Icons and images(NOTE, I cant extract the images from the binary, im not the best at reverse engineering in fact I kinda suck at it, if anyone wants to try and get the images out that would be cool.)
And uses it like ram? SO the programs binary is like a mini swap partition except instead of ONLY using it when its low on ram it uses it for everything all the time.
But also something interesting is the leftover and disabled features in the program.
Built in DVD playing? Hm interesting, of course on this model of tv there is no such thing but its 100% just code leftover from a era where Sony used to put physical DVD players in there tvs.
Its interesting because the TV I chose is one of the VERY last tvs to made before we entered the era where smart tvs started. This is one of the last tvs to have no internet features. But even in 2008 there was code leftover from a whole bunch of other things.
Interestingly enough there appears to be support for satellite TV. Most TV providers I had as a kid had the cable box that handled the signal and sent it to the TV, we NEVER had the tv just DIRECTLY do the cable boxes job. So it is weird seeing support for that.
Anyways lets get into the weird leftover strings that I can NOT explain or what it means.
What the hell is HDMI with analog?? That makes no sense?
Satellite support? Seems that maybe there seems to be some planned or fully implemented form of cable tv without the use of a box?
And camcorder?
(EDIT: My friend found a update file of the TV and he was able to extract SOME pngs from it. Im still looking for anyone down to get the MAIN thing I want which is the assets from the Phillips folder)
Huh. Intresting. So it was like a system where you did not need a cable box and just watched cable directly from the tv?
Oh yeah what were we talking about. OH RIGHT LINUX.
anyways im building a NEW rootfs and switching to a new kernel that can support modules, ive gotten further but this post has gone on long enough but but ive tried ALOT of different mipsel distros and solutions. I have the following problems.
1.Trying to stay old, Compiling modern linux for modern day linux on a 32bit arch that is rarely talked about would be a nightmare, its better to go fro something a little older. Problem is that means COMPILING it will be a pain. GCC and all the other things to be build and worst of all some of these dependencys have dependencies of there own.
2.IT NEEDS TO SUPPORT MODULES FOR EASY DEVICE EMULATION. This is the hard part.
Code:
root@(none):/philips/modules/custombyhunter# insmod ./shmemipc_drv.ko
[ 73.428000] shmemipc_drv: no symbol version for module_layout
insmod: error inserting './shmemipc_drv.ko': -1 Invalid module format
root@(none):/philips/modules/custombyhunter# uname -r
3.2.51
root@(none):/philips/modules/custombyhunter# modinfo ./shmemipc_drv.ko
filename: ./shmemipc_drv.ko
vermagic: 3.2.51 mod_unload modversions MIPS32_R1 32BIT
Pretty annoying.
This stage is not the stage where we will see progress but rather its making a new journey that will give us the ability to continue making progress. Once im able to load modules I will able to fake a device called shmemipc which I believe if my suspicion is correct is the framebuffer that gets used (Well not JUST the framebuffer but its stored in there)
I wish they just directly wrote to /dev/fb0 but life is never easy like that now is it.
So thats currently where im at. Ive tried debian and a bunch of others but im deciding what I should use(I have already decided) that can load modules so we can get further and maybe automate my dev environment a bit more.
Anyone whose more intrested or has ideas or questions feel free to ask cuz this is really fun to do.
