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Rooting the KORG Kronos

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Sonntag, 5. Juni 2016

Kronos hacking for a broader audience - Step 1: User Interface

In the last few days, the interest in this kronos hacking has increased significantly. Unfortunately this blog isn't worth much to someone without deep knowledge about Linux and other stuff. And on top of that, there is no structure since I just wrote down stuff as I researched.

Marcan (whom I deeply respect for his work on the Wii) just filled this gap with a very nice blog post that summarizes my research and adds a proper introduction for the beginners as well as some detailed background.

As he wrote in this thread, the possibility to provide feedback and to interact with the user is the foundation for a safe and clean way to bring whatever Kronos modifications we might come up with to a broader and less technical audience.

Fortunately Korg's original drivers provide some basic functionality.

The framebuffer /dev/fb1
The kernel module OmapVideoModule.ko provides a framebuffer device that interfaces the Kronos' LCD display. The resolution is 800x600 pixels and it has to be used in 8bpp palette mode. This means that you can choose up to 256 colors that can be shown on the display at the same time.

Since the display is connected to the NKS4 board, the real framebuffer is on the OMAP. This means that all changes in the fake framebuffer on the PC must be sent to the OMAP via USB. There is a special ioctl (OMAPFB_IOCTL_PIXELREGION) to trigger this update for a specific rectangle on the display. Without this ioctl, you will see nothing on the display. Unfortunately, this means that standard applications that work on /dev/fbX will not work.

There is also a ioctl to setup the palette (OMAPFB_IOCTL_PIXELREGION). Up to 256 palette entries can be populated with RGB colors.

Then, there are some less important ioctls:

  • OMAPFB_IOCTL_FILLDATA is an accelerated fill command that fills a rectangle with a specified color
  • OMAPFB_IOCTL_GETPROGRESS, OMAPFB_IOCTL_SETPROGRESS, OMAPFB_IOCTL_INCPROGRES, OMAPFB_IOCTL_ADDTOPROGRESS are helpers to draw the progress bar that you see when the Kronos is booting. This progress bar is actually handled by the OMAP so that early boot stages can increment it without knowing about graphics.
  • OMAPFB_IOCTL_INITLCDREGS, OMAPFB_IOCTL_XAXISBYTESIZE can be used to configure the LCD configuration registers in the OMAP. As the OMAP configures those registers independently of the PC when showing the title screen, we do not need to do that.
  • OMAPFB_IOCTL_GETTITLESCREENVERSION returns some version number that is probably used by the updater to determine where to draw it's messages so that they look nice with different versions of the OMAP software.
The keypad /proc/OmapNKS4
The kernel module OmapNKS4.ko creates a proc file that can be used to read part of the control surface (Keys 0-9, Enter, Exit and the scrollwheel). The interface is ugly - you can only read one keypress each time you open the file, but at least it works...

A demo application
I have hacked together a simple demo that shows working framebuffer and control surface access here. If you read through the source, you'll find definitions and wrapper for the ioctls and the keypad interface.



13 Kommentare:

  1. Dieser Kommentar wurde vom Autor entfernt.

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  2. Good day
    I have not seen any movement on this block for a long time? Can you please advice if we can do normal Korg OS updates without corrupting all the changes to date? Korg has released OS 3.1?
    Regards

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  3. Good day,
    Don't bother, I have been able to successfully upgrade to the latest OS with my hacked Kronos.

    Regards

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  4. Can you let us know how you did the update without it removing your mods?

    Regards

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  5. Good day. I made a full backup of the grub file as the new OS update replace the updated grub file based on the crack version. Run the update and once completed, replace the grub file from the backup. This was done by booting with the Linux reque cd. Once done, new OS works again.
    Regards

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  6. Hello,
    Can you tell me if it's possible to rebuild the Kronos X and convert it to a Kronos 2? My Kronos X73 is having problems and I see that I'm not alone on the kronos forums.
    Thanks in advance for your advice.

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  7. Good Day
    The Korg propriety internal boards are different between the older Kronos X vs Kronos 2. However, the motherboard can be changed with no issues. The security chip that makes your Kronos unique is on the Korg propriety card and this cannot be changed. The keybed and interface card could be changed. Kronoshacker can maybe shed more light on this. It is important to ensure that the correct drivers for the Kronos 2 is loaded as it is different compared with Kronos X.

    Regards

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  8. http://rawabiti.com/OkERvNLo korg pa600 sampling software program there

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  9. Hi there. I have a problem with my kronos 3.1.2 and i want to ask that why is not compatible my set from another kronos 3.0.2 with this? He load the set but then when i try to enter on set list or the sampling... appears empty. What is the problem?

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  10. Any way to make hotkeys mod for transpose + or -

    Like long pressing on panel buttons?

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  11. Thanks so much for this. It seems some of the Mega links have expired. The links in another post that patches the kernel and enables busybox + SSH are still working however the link for the test above that works on the OMAP controller isn't.

    Is there any possible way to re-upload? I'd also be interested in working with you to make more progress if you're interested.

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