• ZipItTechDetails

ZipIt wireless IM device

• Discussion of ZipIt modification http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zipitwireless

• Details on how to flash new firmware into ZipIt http://aibohack.com/zipit/

• Info on adding MMC memory to ZipIt ZipItMMC

• large scan of main board

• really large scan of main board

• directory listing Upload new attachment "ls-lR.txt" [slightly out of date]

  • /bin/busybox appears static linked to uClibc

  • /sbin/iwconfig is static linked to uClibc

  • /usr/bin/Zipit is the main binary, static linked to glibc and likely more

• Made by Aeronix and imported

• GPL/LGPL sources are available or documented
  • Note: object file for Zipit binary is not available for re-linking so they are in violation of the LGPL license for glibc

  • http://www.zipitwireless.com/linux.html

• ZipItPeeks&Pokes

Hardware

• Cirrus EP7312

• 2M flash - MX 29LV160ATxBC-70
• 16M SDRAM - Hynix HY5V26D
• 320x240x4 LCD (grayscale)

• Agere WiFi chip - WL600114LY (basically "WL60011", a Wavelan Hermes-II)

• Wolfson Micro WM8751L Stereo DAC

amazon

http://www.elkgrovewireless.com/zipit/

Source Code

• Zipit Wireless Messenger Release 1.00-1.12

• http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/linux-2.4.21.tar.bz2

  • patch-2.4.21-rmk1.bz2

  • http://www.zipitwireless.com/linux/patch-2.4.21-rmk1-zipit.gz

• http://ftp.sf.net/pcmcia-cs/pcmcia-cs-3.2.1.tar.gz

• http://www.agere.com/mobility/docs/wl_lkm_722_abg.tar.gz - Agere Wireless Driver

• http://www.zipitwireless.com/linux/patch-wl_lkm_abg_alfa2-zipit.gz - Aeronix Patch

• http://busybox.net/downloads/legacy/busybox-1.00-pre1.tar.bz2

• http://uclibc.org/downloads/old-releases/uClibc-0.9.15.tar.bz2

• http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/glibc/glibc-2.2.5.tar.gz

• http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/wireless_tools.26.tar.gz

• Note: as stated above the LGPL license requires that the object file for the Zipit binary be made available for re-linking with glibc and this has not happened.

Serial Port Access

• ground on GND
• debug on DBG

• RxD1 on left side of R121

• RxD2 on right side of R122

• TxD2 on unlabeled point near midpoint from R42 and R53

• TxD1 is not available

• you will need a level shifter circuit with something like the MAX233A or MAX233 to convert to to rs232 signal levels.

How to find the Firmware Version

<to be supplied>

What's in ROM

From ZipitPet's post on the subscriber only Yahoo group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zipitwireless

Updated to 1.16 version

The ZipIt device has 2MB or Flash ROM and 16MB of RAM

The Flash ROM contains a small boot loader, a zImage compressed Linux kernel and gzip compressed ramdisk. These get expanded to RAM when the device boots. At the end of the Flash ROM is a small area where settings are saved (eg: passwords, SSIDs etc).

FlashROM Memory Map: (version 1.16)

Linux

The linux kernel build string is:

Linux version 2.4.21-rmk1 (root@sambaman) (gcc version 3.2) #15 Wed Apr 21 16:01:33 UTC 2004

Most components were built a long time ago (2002 or 2003). Not customized for the ZipIt.

in /lib/modules are a few dynamic loaded modules:

• audiodrv.o [audio, not GPL],

• wlags49_h25_cs.o [WiFi, GPL]

  • http://www.agere.com/mobility/wireless_lan_drivers.html

init script

The brief init script, /sbin/init

[a bunch of echo statements]
/bin/mount /proc
/sbin/ifconfig lo 127.0.0.1
insmod /lib/modules/audiodrv.o

cd /usr/bin
/bin/ash &
./Zipit
/bin/ash

ramdisk - custom app "Zipit"

The /usr/bin/Zipit app is ~1.6MB program that has all the goodies in it. It uses a number of support files for the user interface

• Sounds are in standard WAV format (/usr/bin/Sounds)
• Images are in standard BMP format (/usr/bin/GUI)
• The user interface is stored in .SDF data files for the different pages (/usr/bin/SDFs) Looks like a proprietary format
• The string "insmod /lib/modules/wlags49_h25.o" is buried inside /usr/bin/Zipit

Release history

A URL for a checking/getting a release looks like:

http://www.zipitwireless.net/~zippy/90300089.txt <- with different numbers on the end.

TimRiker only has partial info, but wishes we kept track so here's a start: