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CHDK -> firmware

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Offline Ameglin

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CHDK -> firmware
« on: 06 / April / 2009, 14:19:15 »
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Hi all!

Is there any possibility of full replacement original firmware by CHDK (not just together using like now, but fully replace)?

p/s sorry for my bad english..)
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Offline reyalp

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Re: CHDK -> firmware
« Reply #1 on: 06 / April / 2009, 16:14:50 »
No. CHDK uses the original firmware, so it cannot replace it.

If you mean writing CHDK to onboard flash (instead of the SD card) this would be possible in theory (assuming there is enough space, which is probably tre) this is theoretically not too hard, but I suspect will never be made an option in CHDK.

If we start modifying the firmware, people will brick their cameras. Once this happens they will
1) be angry at us, no matter how many warnings and disclaimers we put out.
2) take their camera to canon for repairs, where canon will see that our firmware caused the problem.
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Offline fbonomi

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Re: CHDK -> firmware
« Reply #2 on: 07 / April / 2009, 02:29:32 »
In effects, it is exactly for this reason that CHDK is so great!

Other "permanent" hacks have been around for other cameras, but they never survived too much, for the reasons reyalp explained.

Also, a minor bug during development becomes fatal if the changes are permament!
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Offline mx3

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Re: CHDK -> firmware
« Reply #3 on: 07 / April / 2009, 03:58:14 »
Quote from: Ameglin on 06 / April / 2009, 14:19:15
Is there any possibility of full replacement original firmware by CHDK (not just together using like now, but fully replace)?

it is possible to write software which would do all the work original firmware does without erasing flash ROM.

for example assume someone ported linux to canon hardware (I believe it is highly possible):
drawbacks:
- alot of initial investigations required to start such project
- it would occupy significant part of RAM (several megabytes of 32Mb) which is usually used for multimedia processing
- slow startup due to "slow" SD-card reading speed ( code loading vs XIP)

good points:
- porting would be very easy - in most cases it would require to find out IO ports addresses only
- alot of free open source programs could be ported relatively easy - games, multimedia converters, anything over USB ( WEB-cam, USB-storage etc)
- CHDK would be much richer than it is now
- hmmm. I'm not sure but it is possible RAM code would run faster then ROM code...
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Offline RaduP

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Re: CHDK -> firmware
« Reply #4 on: 08 / April / 2009, 19:49:46 »
I think the RAM code SHOULD work faster than the flash code, but I think the CPU uses some cache so the advantage would not be that great.
Anyway, such a project would be really cool, because it's trivial to port it to any Canon camera that uses similar hardware. No need to find function signatures and stuff, just memory locations and possibly different ways to control different hardware.

But I think porting Linux is overkill, it would be better, IMHO, to just port stdlib and a few other 'standard' C libs. For this purpose, the Linux kernel is too bloated.
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