How to open an A7

[zac68]

Zac68, you think that my A5 is doing everything that a patched device should be doing. How do you know this? I mean, could I get the penguin and still have something missing? Like not actually removing the HDD securities? And, just to be clear, you downgraded (didn't turn on the A5), patch with the 1.6.43 patcher kit (didn't turn on till after and then ran DTi), and then shut down, booted to recovery and dragged the 1.7.11 pre-patched firmware and booted. Then you shutdown the A7 and swapped drives, went to recovery, selected format (what did you see when you clicked it?), and then some prompt (I have yet to see) came up and asked you to connect and load the (same as old) firmware.

Your right I can't know this for sure. I'm just making an educated guess.
After I did each and every step I started up the A7
When I clicked on format the first time I saw something like "Setting up media'
After that I selected format again, but you could also select the repair option.
You should get the prompt telling you to connect the USB cable to your computer and at that point you copy your prefered patched firmware to the archos then you press the power button and it should find the update and install it.

Just came to me: A note about DTi... it froze when I first selected the penguin "game"... and then did the green scrolly progress bar. When I hit it a second time it just flashed on the screen (it did not freeze on the second select click) and I closed out and rebooted and saw the penguin.

The DTi should look like it's frozen when you run it, that's normal

[nokiae50]

I am extremely sorry guys.
Anyways SDE means SPECIAL DEVELOPER EDITION firmware, anyways forget about that as you have not installed
the SDE FW(FW-firmware)
And when I patched my A5, I ran the game and when I clicked play the player hanged(completely normal it has to happen like that!) then saw the progress bar and it was back to the game selection menu. I closed it and shut it down completely. Then switched it on again and there it was 1.6.53 patched with the penguin pic.

And when I applied the patched FW I was on 1.6.53
Anyways will upload the pre patched 1.6.53 files (it worked for me, but not sure because I have no plans of changing the stock drive) well worth a try.

Anyways I suggest you to install a original firmware. Then downgrade, install the pre patched FW then check if the other drive works then update the Pre patched FW.

Very sorry for confusing. Well if you get confused again just ignore this post. Just trying to help.

Let others verify if this is correct only then you try it.
Sorry for my bad English language.

And WOW 2am is early for you man!!! I would be snoring at that time zzzzZZzzzz

[Archos>iPod]

Hey guys.

Quick note: I did "dd" command and made what I would consider a perfect clone of the drive. The A5 is rejecting the clone with the same bogus messages on screen "please wait..." "setting up media" or "setting up operating system". Drive spinning, but doing nothing.

It is clear to me now that I either have not been patching correctly or that the A5 is corrupted.

Also, I'm sure an A5 smarty could confirm that the A5 and A7 should behave exactly the same and respond as such.

I plan to write out a comprehensive list of what I did (wrong) in my process.

I really thought this would have worked.

[CheBuzz]

Both the A5 and the A7 run the exact same software.

[Archos>iPod]

Hey nokiae50,

Thanks for the tips.

I tried what you said... no luck.

The messages I see are "please wait...", changes to "setting up media" (doesn't sound like the HDD is doing anything but spinning), and turns off after about 30 minutes. Then, it will reboot and enter recovery again where I select format, again, and it will show "please wait..." (HDD spin, but no chatter) and then it will maybe go for 30 minutes more and turn off again and reboot to recovery menu. If I hit "repair disk" and it will just say "setting up operating system", it stay on that and eventually the screen turns off and power stays on.

I see 2 possible explanations for this:

1. My A5 is corrupted (either caused by myself or the unit itself).

2. The patcher kit and pre-patches work on the A5, but do not remove securities specific to the A5.

Just to note: I once, for the heck of it, put a new drive in my A5 last year. It behaved this exact same way. That tells me that my A5 still has the boot HDD checks in place.

Day 8... and still no success.

[generic_username]

@ a>i

maybe i'm misunderstanding your post, but after you mention going to repair disk and it staying on:

are you then copying the remaining system files etc onto the a5 which were backed up from a functioning drive?

i believe it was stated that the repair would set-up the partitions correctly but not install the files correctly

[Archos>iPod]

Hey g_u,

The A5 is rejecting the HDD. It won't even connect to the computer when the new one is in (format or repair disk). One of the firmwares (I think 1.7.02) has a mode in recovery that says something like "connect usb"... even that doesn't allow it. I cannot copy any files, it simply wont connect to a computer... the USB is disabled unless the A5 allows it.

I did a "dd" command in ubuntu to clone the HDD... Any computer now thinks my new 500gb is only 250gb and that it is "ARCHOS5"... BUT the startup boot in the A5 knows that it's not the original so it is rejected.

Obviously the A5 doesn't say "rejected" or "wrong HDD"... it just says "please wait..." or "setting up media" with no positive end result.

Really scratching my head over this one.

[generic_username]

@a>i sry if i'm not helping as i dont have a a5/7 to try test etc with, but:

the way i understood it you might want to try to start with a totally blank drive (ie open gparted create one big partition)

then pick format to set up the drive

then in linux mount the drive and just copy all the files in nautilus(rather than a dd, which will undo any drive setup the archos just did with the hidden partition etc). its not really clear in aa123's post he may have had to remove the drive from the archos in order to verify the filesystem?

don't know you could ask aa123 but you may even need to mount the hidden partition and verify those files too

afaik as long as your bootloader is patched the HD check should be too

[Archos>iPod]

Does anyone know how I could copy the ext3 system partition on the original 250gb onto the 500gb?

If so, what steps would I go about doing that?

I cloned the 250gb to the 500gb, but it doesn't seem to have transfered the ext3 system partition.

Thanks

[Archos>iPod]

WHOA... I got close... but no cigar.

I created a random ext3 partition on the 500gb drive at 196mb (it's 195.4mb on the 250gb, but gparted wouldn't let me make it like that).

I don't know how it works on the A5 because when you look in gparted, it only shows one FAT32 partition for the 250gb. When I made the new one and mounted it, it made 2 "automagically" formed folders one said ARCHOS5 and the other was just random numbers. I copied all the files from the hidden system partition into the all numbers ext3 partition and poped it into the A5.

When I hit repair disk... it said "connect your device to your PC and install an update file"!!!!

BUT... When I connected it, it didn't register with any computer... and I found out that it froze the A5.

Trust me, I tried another few times.

SO CLOSE

[generic_username]

im not sure what the last bit is? i might seriously consider letting the a5 make the partitions though, as addressing in programs could be bit specific if archos programmers have gotten lazy (or had no particular reason to test their hardware under unexpected situations like partition table movements)

edit: also you might be sure to power cycle after adding the system files and directory structure

also: after re-reading it seems after formatting the disk with one big partition you may have to select the format disk option twice for it to work

[Archos>iPod]

I just tried the method described above on the other 500gb drive, the one above is the clone. Same result. Says to connect, but freezes the unit.

Weird to come so close to have it lock up like that... oh well.

[nokiae50]

Hey A>i

Any luck???

[345742D]

i been wondering the same thing..

[Archos>iPod]

Hey everyone...

My A5 sits dismantled on my desk since my last post . The constant attempts of formatting and patching makes me worry that I will soon brick the device or drives. I'm not sure what to do. On the positive side, I just got a Motorola Droid, it has done a good job of distracting me for the time being.

Have I given up? No. I don't give up, it's not my style to give up. I'm just patiently waiting for another A5 user to come forward and join me in this.

I'm thinking of trying again this weekend. If anyone has any new findings... let me know, I will certainly keep you posted on what's happening on my end.

I PM'd Einstein RE my issues a couple weeks ago, but never got a response. I eagerly await a response as well.

Thanks for thinking of me guys

[nokiae50]

Hey everyone...

My A5 sits dismantled on my desk since my last post . The constant attempts of formatting and patching makes me worry that I will soon brick the device or drives. I'm not sure what to do. On the positive side, I just got a Motorola Droid, it has done a good job of distracting me for the time being.

Have I given up? No. I don't give up, it's not my style to give up. I'm just patiently waiting for another A5 user to come forward and join me in this.

I'm thinking of trying again this weekend. If anyone has any new findings... let me know, I will certainly keep you posted on what's happening on my end.

I PM'd Einstein RE my issues a couple weeks ago, but never got a response. I eagerly await a response as well.

Thanks for thinking of me guys

Hi there,
Hmm keep the spirits high. I will be having exams coming soon so will be busy for a couple of months, but once I am finished with that I will be upgrading to 500GB hopefully with success.
Anyways I suggest you to start afresh.
Install the latest original FW through the repair disk option, then downgrade then try replacing the HDD, then upgrade to the latest patched FW. Just try this procedure. Hope you will be successful, so that you can the best of DROID and ARCHOS

[skubasteve]

Long time lurker, first time posting.

I just successfully swapped out my 120GB for a 500GB drive. The new drive is a Hitachi Travelstar 7K500-500. I almost went with a 640GB drive, but I figured 500GB would be plenty enough room for me. I have to admit that reading about A>I's plight had me a little nervous, but it went rather smoothly for me. I started out with a pre-patched 1.6.54 firmware already applied (followed these instructions). The procedure I used was...

1. Mounted and copied the hidden partition to an Ubuntu VM for later use. (really only needed the rootfs.cramfs.secure file)
2. Swapped out the drives. (used these instructions)
3. Booted to recovery mode and selected "Format Disk". It went pretty fast, maybe 20 or 30 seconds, and rebooted to recovery mode. I did this twice just to be sure it was supposed to happen so fast.
4. This time I selected "Repair Disk"
5. Downloaded the pre-patched 1.6.54 firmware from here. Renamed the downloaded file to firmware_archos5-7.aos and copied it to the root of the Archos.
6. Selected "Done" on the the Archos and it picked up the firmware and applied it. This took about 5 or 6 minutes.
7. Upon reboot the Archos initialized the "set up" like a brand new machine.
8. After the "set up" I rebooted to recovery mode again, selected "Repair Disk" again, mounted the hidden partition, and copied over the rootfs.cramfs.secure file from step 1.
9. After one last reboot I had a 500GB Archos 5 with the GF hack applied.

Pics...

Before begining


New drive (still packaged)


After successful swap


After copying over the rootfs.cramfs.secure file



I'd really like to thank archilles for the GF hack and everyone else who contributed to making this possible. What a great community you guys have made here. Thank you all very much.

[Archos>iPod]

Excited for you Skubasteve! Congrats on the success!

I unfortunately have no such luck with this... I have 2 500 gb HDDs at my disposal and have found no success on either. Really no idea what I'm doing wrong... quite strange to say the least. The closest I got was when it asked me for a firmware file in recovery mode only after I created a hidden ex3 partition since it didn't seem to want to format (see my earlier post for more details... it was weird).

Your success gives me a glimmer of hope at least.

I wonder if, since my current A5 has a Hitachi, I need to use a Hitachi... sounds silly, but you never know... I've been trying Scorpio WDs.

Questions for you, skubasteve:

-Did you just put the drive in out of the static bag? Do you know if it was NTFS when you put it in?

-You said first format select took 20 or 30 seconds... that was the same for me... but second format seemed to go forever. Eventually the screen would go black forcing me to do a hard power down. SO, your second format "select" in recover, did it take the same amount of time as the first?

-Could you fill in a few steps that you did during the patching? (aside from what is in the tutorial, expand... i.e. "I powered it on and saw____" and "I used ____" etc). I fear I am just repeating the same mistakes multiple times thinking it's "normal procedure" at this point.

I'm going to give it another shot tomorrow maybe...

And, as always, thanks for your kind words, Nokiae50.

[skubasteve]

I wonder if, since my current A5 has a Hitachi, I need to use a Hitachi... sounds silly, but you never know... I've been trying Scorpio WDs.

I'd imagine if the two drives you've tried are identical make & model that it could be a compatibility issue, but I don't know enough to say for sure. The drive I used looked nearly identical to the old drive. Other than the info on the label the only noticable differece was that the circuit board was blue on the new drive and green on the old drive. I doubt it would hurt your chances to try a Hitachi drive.

-Did you just put the drive in out of the static bag? Do you know if it was NTFS when you put it in?

Yeah, it went straight from the bag into the archos. I didn't do anything to the new drive before the swap.

-You said first format select took 20 or 30 seconds... that was the same for me... but second format seemed to go forever. Eventually the screen would go black forcing me to do a hard power down. SO, your second format "select" in recover, did it take the same amount of time as the first?

Yes, the second format went just as fast as the first.

-Could you fill in a few steps that you did during the patching? (aside from what is in the tutorial, expand... i.e. "I powered it on and saw____" and "I used ____" etc). I fear I am just repeating the same mistakes multiple times thinking it's "normal procedure" at this point.

I pretty much just followed the tutorial step for step. I believe if your archos displays the penguin on boot & all the plugins show up under "Firmware and Plug-ins" you're achos is succesfully patched. I could be wrong but I think the "Online Firmware Update" button shows up under there too after a successful patch.

Sorry I couldn't be much more help.

[ArchAngel123]

Excited for you Skubasteve! Congrats on the success!

... I've been trying Scorpio WDs.

I used a 500Gb Scorpio WD in my A7 (see photos)