Archos Generation 5 players cracked

Archos' Generation 5 players may have been left in the dust by the shiny new Generation 6 players, but they still have quite the fan following, some of whom have been busily doing their best to get around Archos' stock software offerings. Now it seems that one of them, a member of the ArchosFans forums, has finally managed to crack things open by hacking the bootloader, which opens up a number of possibilities including the ability to remove the hard drive volume limitation. It also seems to have had the "side effect" of revealing a few plug-ins that had been previously hidden, including "Screen," and "C" (for Core) above, although they don't appear to be of much use. The workaround apparently won't work on players with a firmware version higher than 1.7.13 though, and there aren't exactly any clear instructions for modding your own just yet, but those that really know what they're doing can try to follow along by hitting up the read link below.

[Via Archos Lounge]

[chefgon_ign @ Sep 18th 2008 1:12PM]

I don't understand the logic behind the lock-down design on PMPs. Unless you're rocking an integrated music store like MS or Apple, all you're really trying to do is sell hardware. Once it's in the customers hands, why do you care if they hack it? Somebody needs to come out with a well designed media player running Android in the background and just let everybody go to town on it and customize it any way they want. What harm could it possibly do?

[Chris @ Sep 18th 2008 1:34PM]

EXACTLY my thoughts. Even if Apple / Sony / Microsoft or anyone let you change the skins or theme. Anything more would be awesome.

[Chad @ Sep 18th 2008 1:37PM]

it's usually because they build one piece of hardware and then increase or decrease the features in software. Having to fab multiple devices increases manufacturing costs.

[Jeremy K. @ Sep 18th 2008 1:59PM]

There already are PMPs that run WinCE and allow you to play basically anything you want. Cowon Q5 is one of these players. The only limitations have been processor power not enabling hi-def content. Also, the Cowon Q5 is really too expensive, big and heavy to be in the mainstream.

With Android coming out, I hope that some good PMP manufacturers will jump on the boat and make killer players.

[Artemiy @ Sep 18th 2008 2:35PM]

Legal issues and well-paid contracts. It's a long story...

Still, I hope Archos wouldn't mind to create a PMA-esque device some time in the future.

[Pingmeister @ Sep 18th 2008 1:30PM]

A great little player and it's just nice to know that folks still try to get more on these devices than the manufacturer intends. Some of them could really turn into nice little PDAs.

[BluesK1d @ Sep 18th 2008 1:31PM]

It's so sad we have to resort to such measures just to use the products we buy =/

[ethana2 @ Sep 18th 2008 2:03PM]

Absolutely.

..so what, does this mean they can put rockbox on this thing now?

[Jason Litka @ Sep 18th 2008 3:11PM]

I don't get it, aside from the option to use a larger hard drive, what exactly does this buy you? If the extra functionality that is there is disabled, it's probably because it doesn't work right.

[thethirdmoose @ Sep 18th 2008 6:39PM]

It allows us to install a custom linux firmware on it (potentially including rockbox, unless i'm mistaken). However, the current OS of choice looks to be based on Qtopia, which Nokia recently acquired.

[oZ @ Sep 18th 2008 1:35PM]

With regard to being able to hack on a device -- we have products like the Nokia tablets which are almost fully wide open, and no one cares. People like to whine, but really, that's all it is.

[BluesK1d @ Sep 18th 2008 1:48PM]

I disagree. Just because there happens to be some alternative out there somwhere doesn't mean everyone who likes a particular product for whatever reason/feature should be forced to switch just to be able to use something to its fullest potential.

[uwaga dude @ Sep 18th 2008 3:05PM]

Everyone should be doing it, not just nokia

[Nick @ Sep 18th 2008 2:31PM]

Sweet, now all 3 of us can put a different OS on our Archos'...by the way, anyone want to buy mine? 605 WiFi 160GB works perfectly and has all sound, video, internet plug-ins as well as an extra battery/tv out dock...

[YpoCaramel @ Sep 21st 2008 10:53PM]

I'm assuming Rockbox on this now... With a few new skins, maybe.