Hisense

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DB-2010.jpg

US Digital (USDTV http://usdtv.com/) sold an HDTV Receiver called the DB-2010 manufactured by HiSense. The unit runs an embedded Linux 2.4.18-12 kernel, with usb-storage compiled into the kernel. They swap MTD flash RAM partitions 1 and 4 with each new firmware update (similar to Tivo).

The box has a card slot on the front, but there is no card reader behind the slot. It has a single USB port on the back that can be used to upgrade the firmware. This uses the AMD/ATI Xilleon 225, a MIPS processor.

Tim Riker wrote USDTV requesting the source code on 2006.03.22 and got this reply on 2006.03.31:

Dear Mr. Riker,

Your request for access to the GPL and LGPL source code used in the USDTV DB-2010
receiver was recently forwarded to me.  First of all, let me assure you that we
at USDTV are fully aware of the terms of these software licenses.  Many members
of our development team are long-time users and supporters of free and
open-source software.

As you have requested, we will make available for Internet file transfer copies
of the software used in the USDTV receiver that is covered by these licenses.
Unfortunately, your request has caught us at a bad time.  The USDTV development
offices are currently in the process of moving to a new location, so we do not
at this time have a server to host copies of the software to download.  Once our
move is completed and our full Internet service is restored, we will set up a
site with the requested software available.  In the meantime, I have attached
below a list of software that we use; all of these packages should be available
for download elsewhere on the Internet.

   Linux kernel version 2.4.18
   glibc version 2.2.4
   libpthread version 0.9
   busybox version 0.60.0
   GNU tar 1.13.19
   gzip version 1.3

Thanks,
Jim Burmeister
Technical Lead, Set-Top Box Software Development
U.S. Digital Television

Some other emails have gone back and forth, but no sources have yet been made available to Tim Riker.

USDTV filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the US District Court of Delaware, and approximately 6600 receivers (still new in box) will be sold on July 17th at 10:00AM at 12552 SOUTH 125 WEST, STE 200 DRAPER, UTAH (UPSTAIRS @ DAW GROUP BLDG).

For those of you that never received a firmware update, here is the update. It contains GPL code yet I have no method of extracting only that code. As the GPL portions are freely copyable, and not extractable, the package itself must also be copyable. Were it not so, the GPL would be violated, and I'm sure they would never do that. With no further ado, here are the packages. REMEMBER TO NOT INCLUDE THE DELETEME.txt ON THE USB STICK or the upgrade WILL FAIL.

The two different installed firmware images appear to use different digital signatures. This is why one firmware update will not run on the other machine. It is expected that they can be swapped, but we are not publishing this information yet. We expect to publish extracted filesystem images here soon.

File signatures compatible with the 2.7.15-FTA upgrade are computed by obtaining the 32-character MD5 checksum of the file, then performing an MD5 hash using the salt $1$@M&k=Ba}$

The low-level boot code is ATI's (now AMD's) proprietary version of MMON, very likely derived from Eric Smith's mmon MIPS monitor - http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/software/mmon/


If you have other GPL-containing firmware updates you would like posted here, please contact Tim Riker.