WebDT 366 GX Internal Documentation

The Collective will serve as a tips and tricks area. Information here will be contributed only by moderators and will hopefully act as a reference point. If you have information that should be in here please let us know
Post Reply
Foxx
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 93
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2009 6:41 pm
Contact:

WebDT 366 GX Internal Documentation

Post by Foxx »

Not many hardware people here, so I might be of use for once. Here is a main internal photo of the WebDT 366 GX I have, and some side notes of what I found. Click my picasa link for a more detailed picture. If anyone wants closeup shots, please ask. I have a few closeups now, and would be willing to take a queue of requests for the next time I open my WebDT.

Image

http://picasaweb.google.com/FoxxOTG/TechCrapGizmos#5323705922529643682  Click the Magnify Icon for a larger size picture, for those of you that like those fine sexy details.

Some things I have been able to discover:

The FlashROM board itself has missing chips. It might be possible to retrofit a 512MB board to hold more. I would need someone to donate a 512MB board to me, and help from someone with a 1GB or higher board for comparison. The main FlashROM chip itself is a Samsung K9K4G08UOM - Datasheet here http://www.alldatasheet.com/view.jsp?Searchword=K9K4G08UOM

There is also a TDK GBDriver RA3 http://www.tdk.co.jp/tefe02/ew_002.pdf This chip turns the typical NAND FlashROM into an IDE device. This is the bugger that does all the magic. This reinforces my idea to rework a 512MB Board with more NAND Flashrom, but alas, I am not about to put my only FlashROM on the chopping block just yet.

There is a typical dual channel IDE bus, we know the FlashROM as HDD1, on the board is JHDD1. Notic I marked JHDD2 on the board under the compact flash slot. This looks exactly like compact flash header pads. Unfortunately there is no way to have a full size compact flash card installed even if this header is put back in place. The compact flash card slot on the board gets in the way. I would not risk removing it in any way... Although this does give us some options. Hook up a cable adapter into a CF header and decent size Microdrive/CF card, use a small iPod 30GB HDD, or hell, wire in a full 44 pin laptop HDD. Those are all options, the main issue is the lack of space. I have some parts coming in (I hope) so I might be able to take my iron to my board and let you know how hard each option would be, as I have all the spare drives already, minus a few adapter boards which I can get pretty easy and cheap.

I have no idea what SW1 does. It is a SPDT switch, I assume its for master/slave of the IDE2 chain. Once I get a drive installed (give me a LONG time) I will be able to tell. When this switch is put on its alternate setting, all I notice is my right speaker will hiss with what sounds like EMF from the system. *shrugs*

The BIOS is a typical SST 49LF002 Firmware Hub (FWH). Datasheets are YUMMY! http://www.datasheetcatalog.com/datasheets_pdf/4/9/L/F/49LF002.shtml

The Bluetooth is actually a Cambridge Silicon Radio (CSR) Bluecore 4 chipset. http://www.csr.com/products/bc4range.htm. This is a pretty bad-ass chipset. They are very reliable, hackable, linux friendly, and can even do some cool things under a linux OS. I am very familiar with this chipset under both windows and linux, and it can be very fun with a beefed up antenna. Ahhh yes, the Bluetooth Antenna... yes, it can be modified with a proper RF jack to allow a better rubber duck, or even directional 2.4GHz class antenna. Any of you that really know me, or poke around my picasa page know I do quite a bit of 2.4Ghz stuff. >:}

The system RAM is not safely upgradable. I would not risk it. The chips would need to be removed from the board. With the amount of surface mount devices in the local areas, it could risk damage or accidenal displacement.

From what I can tell, the Compact Flash is tied right into the USB 1.1 as an onboard USB Card Reader. This will make any OS install or loading from Compact Flash slow... painfully slow. I have been playing with it, I have not been happy with its performance.

Regarding USB 2.0... You should be able to add a PCMCIA USB 2.0 adapter, but this will add quite a bit of bulk, and I do not know if it would be bootable, or even detected by the BIOS. I have a PCMCIA USB 1.1 card, I will try that in a few days to see if the proof of concept is viable.

The bottom cradle connector is a typical gender bender setup. You can get standard pin headers and make yourself a breakout board to do as you please. I dont have a pinout right now, if anyone has it please post. Getting interfaced into this is very simple. Give me a little bit and I can do a how-to tutorial with pics if anyone is interested.

I will post more down the road, I just wanted to take this topic off.
Last edited by Foxx on Sun Apr 12, 2009 1:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
Hacking is not a crime, It's a passion - www.BSoDtv.org
If you need someone to IDE mod your DT366 toss me a PM.
matt
Developer
Developer
Posts: 36
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2009 1:58 am

Re: WebDT 366 GX Internal Documentation

Post by matt »

You rule!

Also, I can add one more thing to your documention. The soundcard chipset is in the top-left corner of your photo, immediately to the left of the 'Y' on your compact flash sticker.

I'm pretty keen to get a pinout of the dock connections... there's 2 extra USB and 1 ethernet available there. I guess some trial-and-error would figure it out.

Also - is there an onboard RFID reader perchance? There's mention of it in the onboard CE software. I kinda figured that the BT Antenna was part of it.

Bad news that the compact flash is just a USB card reader. That's pretty poor implementation. Looks like the IDE connection is the best bet for a higher-speed drive. I was actually thinking of hacking apart an IDE-SATA converter because the 7-wire SATA interface would be much easier to pass out into the internal battery bay than a fat 44-pin ribbon cable.

For example: http://cgi.ebay.com.au/New-7-15-Pin-SATA-TO-2-5-IDE-Female-Upright-Adapter_W0QQitemZ140312834621QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPCA_Cables_Adapters?hash=item140312834621&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=66%3A2|65%3A1|39%3A1|240%3A1318

Image

This adapter card could be made to occupy only the same space as the original flash card. The SATA header could be removed from the adapter and just hard-wired. You only need 7 wires.
Foxx
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 93
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2009 6:41 pm
Contact:

Re: WebDT 366 GX Internal Documentation

Post by Foxx »

matt wrote: You rule!

Also, I can add one more thing to your documention. The soundcard chipset is in the top-left corner of your photo, immediately to the left of the 'Y' on your compact flash sticker.

I'm pretty keen to get a pinout of the dock connections... there's 2 extra USB and 1 ethernet available there. I guess some trial-and-error would figure it out.

Also - is there an onboard RFID reader perchance? There's mention of it in the onboard CE software. I kinda figured that the BT Antenna was part of it.

Bad news that the compact flash is just a USB card reader. That's pretty poor implementation. Looks like the IDE connection is the best bet for a higher-speed drive. I was actually thinking of hacking apart an IDE-SATA converter because the 7-wire SATA interface would be much easier to pass out into the internal battery bay than a fat 44-pin ribbon cable.

This adapter card could be made to occupy only the same space as the original flash card. The SATA header could be removed from the adapter and just hard-wired. You only need 7 wires.
Yes, its a realtek sound chipset. There are a bunch of things I didnt mention in this, I will fill in the blanks as we go along.

Your idea is very sound, however space is an issue in the WebDT. Lets hope my Compact Flash Headers, and 44 pin IDE headers as well come in soon. If anything perhaps I can manage to create an easy 44pin IDE cable and tutorial so we can just slam a native 44 pin laptop IDE drive on HDD1. All the theory in the world is for naught if its not practical. If you have the extended battery panel, you have lots of room to add in mods. I dont have one. Hell, I was even thinking about mounting an old $10 external aluminum drive enclosure to the back, just to hold a 2.5" HDD, but to be honest I think I would rather try to get a 4 or 8GB Compact Flash card instead. I like the idea of no moving parts.

I havent noticed any RFID Chipsets in here, or an RFID Antenna. Perhaps a PCMCIA RFID card? I know there are Serial and USB RFID Readers on the market now. I think connector J1 might be Com 2 on the board, I will test that next time I open my unit. If it is, this means we can add in GPS, RFID, or many other nifty serial based devices. Hell, I wouldnt mind having an external connection so I can use Minicom or Hyperterminal as a serial terminal for some of my other devices.

Some things I left out of this initial documentation:

LCD Encoder: http://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet- ... DM83R.html
Hynix RAM: HY5DV641622DT J (I can only find datasheets for the HY5DV641622AT)
AMD Geode Companion Chip CS5535-UDC:  http://www.amd.com/files/connectivityso ... tabook.pdf
TI PCI1520GHK PCI Controller: http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/p ... i1520.html
Main CPU AGXD533AAXT: No datasheets found yet
Atmega 8L8 MCU with Unknown function
Xlinx FPGA/CPLD with Unknow function, probably glue-logic and bit-bashing routines for bus steering, perhaps CF USB Interface.

The Realtek chip, I cant read the ID on it, not sure if its audio... the drivers I have on my OS right now come up as the Geode GC Audio Drivers, which lead me to believe the AMD Geode Companion Chip is doing the codec, but hey, only one way to fin out, eh?! Next time I am in the unit I will take a look and post my findings.

If anyone has a pinout to the cradle, please post. Im on a busy schedule, and my project table is already full, so it might be a while until I get a chance to really make any breakthroughs. Im still tying to finish my WebTV 2 hacks, among other things my tech show, ham radio stuff, wifi stuff, and the list goes on.... so please be patient. I really cant do much until I get some parts in anyways. Oh, and I am also trying to get a decent Windows XP Embedded image going, there is a lot for me to learn on that topic as well. I know there are plenty of linux hackers working on that. Right now I want to focus on a better form of inexpensive storage. Either modding a new Compact Flash card to the IDE bus, Laptop/iPod HDD, or  possibly retrofitting the 512MB boards with more NAND FlashROM. I hope this post gets a few people jump started into getting a little more excited at the potential of these little units and gets some knitty-gritty work done, lord knows we need it.

Happy hacking everyone!
Hacking is not a crime, It's a passion - www.BSoDtv.org
If you need someone to IDE mod your DT366 toss me a PM.
matt
Developer
Developer
Posts: 36
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2009 1:58 am

Re: WebDT 366 GX Internal Documentation

Post by matt »

If you have the extended battery panel, you have lots of room to add in mods. I dont have one. Hell, I was even thinking about mounting an old $10 external aluminum drive enclosure to the back, just to hold a 2.5" HDD, but to be honest I think I would rather try to get a 4 or 8GB Compact Flash card instead.
Granted, I do have the external battery pack. All up I get about 8-12 minutes of juice from both batteries combined. Hooray!

I'm guessing that your current battery life is probably poor if you got the tablet off eBay, so you'll be looking to replace it sometime. The internal battery is a fairly generic one, and you can easily source ones that are half the width. For example (and I *haven't* confirmed that this is a suitable replacement) - http://www.all-battery.com/74v875mahli-polybatterypack.aspx. A new battery would last a fair while, and leave room for some mods. Personally, I treat batteries as a convenience to allow me to boot the device while I carry it to the nearest power point.

I haven't read the details off the internal battery, but I can confirm the specs of the external battery are 7.4VDC, 3600mAh. My one has the model number ACC-006-07B
angrymeat
Global Moderator
Global Moderator
Posts: 135
Joined: Sun Mar 29, 2009 10:02 am

Re: WebDT 366 GX Internal Documentation

Post by angrymeat »

im not sure you can use a laptop hdd on these at least it didnt work on hdd1 when I tried. I think the hdd1 is only 3.3v but i haven't confirmed yet.
Foxx
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 93
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2009 6:41 pm
Contact:

Re: WebDT 366 GX Internal Documentation

Post by Foxx »

HDD Ports are in fact 3.3v to comply with FlashROM requirements. It would be possible to 'steal' power from the onboard dock connector USB port though. I will test that in good time.

I have some more news. I did some more research into the Flashrom Board, it is nothing more than a super slim horizontal Compact Flash card with an altered pinout. I am awaiting datasheets from the OEM. It would be possible to gender bend the 44 pin 2mm IDE header into a standard CF card, however the pin connector is half-height. I have some 44 pin IDE cables coming in as well, I will see if I can sand them down and find a way to make them stay in, and that will lead to one of many different storage solutions I have on the way.

Since the onboard FlashROM board is a typical NAND Flash device with little to no onboard wear protection, be warned that excessive write access will damage the memory chips!! I would NOT recommend anyone installing any other OS until they fully understand the issues behind constant swap / pagefile writes to a compact flash card are!

I went ahead and removed the Compact Flash connector and hooked a recycled one to HDD2, assuming it was a standard CF card port. It blew out my CF card. HDD2 is NOT a standard Compact Flash port. I will work on this some more at a later date when I have the parts, time, and patience.
Hacking is not a crime, It's a passion - www.BSoDtv.org
If you need someone to IDE mod your DT366 toss me a PM.
Foxx
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 93
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2009 6:41 pm
Contact:

Re: WebDT 366 GX Internal Documentation

Post by Foxx »

Im still doing what I do best, hardware stuffs.

Just found out the TDK GBDriver chip can only address a max of 4GB total. I Swapped out my 512MB Chip with a 1GB one, but the chip was damaged and only reported as 54MB.

More to report later...


Many thanks to TKMedia for the spare 512MB board!
Hacking is not a crime, It's a passion - www.BSoDtv.org
If you need someone to IDE mod your DT366 toss me a PM.
casm
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 22
Joined: Sat Jul 25, 2009 10:22 am

Re: WebDT 366 GX Internal Documentation

Post by casm »

Foxx wrote:Just found out the TDK GBDriver chip can only address a max of 4GB total. I Swapped out my 512MB Chip with a 1GB one, but the chip was damaged and only reported as 54MB.
Quick question: do you happen to have a source and/or part number for the 4GB FlashROM?  I've got a GX sitting around unused because of the whopping 512MB of stock storage.  Not that I didn't know that that was what I was in for when I got it, just that it's proved more, uh, *challenging* to get something workable onto it due to the restraints.

For speed reasons, it's a shame that the CF drive sits off of the USB 1.1 chain.  However, this may make it bootable with some changes to the BIOS - after all, it already recognises USB CD-ROM drives as boot-capable, and I'm going to take a shot in the dark here and guess that USB devices all hang off of the same chain.
zulus
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Aug 15, 2009 7:29 am

Re: WebDT 366 GX Internal Documentation

Post by zulus »

did someone  try to  upgrade RAM chips ?
i found some documentation for the chips
http://www.chipcatalog.com/Hynix/HY5DU121622BT-D43.htm
it`s shows 512 mb
Foxx
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 93
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2009 6:41 pm
Contact:

Re: WebDT 366 GX Internal Documentation

Post by Foxx »

If someone can send me the physical chips I will take a whack at it, but like I mention in the FAQ, this could be a suicidal attempt on your DTs life if you are not familiar with surface mount solder rework.

If you meant the FlashROM... yes, I tried, was successful, but that is even more suicidal. The 512MB Board using the TDK GBDriver NAND to IDE driver chip can only handle a max of 2GB though.
Hacking is not a crime, It's a passion - www.BSoDtv.org
If you need someone to IDE mod your DT366 toss me a PM.
Foxx
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 93
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2009 6:41 pm
Contact:

Re: WebDT 366 GX Internal Documentation

Post by Foxx »

Small note about the 512MB FlashROM boards. They are in a very VERY slow PIO Mode 1 - a Whopping 5MB/s, compare that to a modern UDMA 133MB/s drive, or SATA 300MB/s. TKMedia donated a 1GB Flashrom Board to me and it ran in UDMA mixed mode 2 which clocked at about 33.3MB/s - huge speed and performance increase! After I did my IDE cable mod and took a 44 pin to CF adapter to the DT I tested some Compact Flash, microdrive, and even 1.8" IDE drives. I have been able to get major speed increases out of the unit. Compact Flash is hard to get out of PIO modes, they are *expensive*. I was able to find some memorex traveldrives which were old school USB thumbdrives before they used flash, for $8 each and on a hunch I got a few and they were all 8GB Microdrives. Old ipods use Microdrives too... That gave me UDMA modes up to 33.3MB/s or 66.7MB/s - compare that to the original 512MB Flashrom speed of... FIVE megabytes per second. Using a salvaged 1.8" 30GB drive and proper adapters gave me UDMA mode 4/5 with speeds up to 100MB/s. Although in one test one of the FPC cables that attach to the ZIF connectors on the drive & adapter literally went up in flames! And I do not exaggerate when I say FLAMES. Keynote though, 1.8" HDDs work at 3.3V and a "44 pin to 1.8" ZIF HDD" adapter needs to be modified. The onboard LDO regulator needs to be removes and the main VCC (Thats Positive Voltage) need to be re-routed to the proper pads.

Here is my current 44 pin IDE cable mod, dubbed the 'Dingleberry mod' by friends and minions alike.

[img width=480 height=360]http://lh3.ggpht.com/_i7ymkA4U878/TEJYE ... G_1238.JPG[/img]

My WebDT Image Gallery
http://picasaweb.google.com/FoxxOTG/WebDT#
Hacking is not a crime, It's a passion - www.BSoDtv.org
If you need someone to IDE mod your DT366 toss me a PM.
Post Reply