Help opening .bin firmware files...

[Deleted-119707]

sorry if this isnt allowed or in the wrong place...

i own a mp3 player that uses a .bin file to update the firmware. my theory is that its a self extracting bin file. i used google and all i could find about .bin is that its a cd image file.

heres the firmware:
http://thep2zone.com/forum/downloads.php?v...il&df_id=31

i just need a program (free) that will open this.
thanks.

 

[FAST6191]

.bin is a generic extension across all of computing for thousands of formats common and not so common. Your media player is an embedded device meaning it this .bin file is likely to be a custom format.

I grabbed the file and opened it in a hex editor, lots of unicode text (error/install/usage messages in various languages mainly) along with a fair bit of ASCII (looked to be the user visible messages like ALBUMNAME , SAMPLERATE, ENCODINGPROFILE and so on)

The fact it reduced in size when I tried to compress it is good as it means large tracts are not compressed (compression is easy enough to work with but it can still be annoying). I did not compress by zone/section so I reluctant to say if it holds for the whole file (if unicode text is not compressed you are probably safe), indeed there is an error message at the end of the file saying failed to deal with compressed text.

Long story short it is a custom format, one that is probably fairly easy to reverse engineer (at least compared to some of the other things I have seen in the area). I suggest an aim other than total reverse engineering though.

 

[Deleted-119707]

if it helps, its a samsung yp-p3. newly released. im trying to open and look inside the firmware files.
can it be reverse engineered becase its from a company. dont i need sdk of some sort?

 

[FAST6191]

if it helps, its a samsung yp-p3. newly released. im trying to open and look inside the firmware files.
can it be reverse engineered becase its from a company. dont i need sdk of some sort?

I figured it was a p3 from the site (found myself looking at a p2 stuff when I was pulling it apart: http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SamsungP2Port ).

"im trying to open and look inside the firmware files"
My question is still to do what exactly: add support for otherwise unsupported bitrates/similar, change some text, make it play MKV files, change the loader layout......
Without looking at it properly (something I have little desire to do) I would say it is a self contained file not a "funny zip format" sort of thing you are hinting at.

"dont i need sdk of some sort?"

An SDK might help although the current SDKs I see still try to obscure things from the developers. A fundamental part of reverse engineering though is figuring out how things work that are otherwise undocumented.

If you want to pull it apart though I suggest getting several updates and comparing the changelog to the binary differences in the files to try and figure out what things do.
If you can try and get a dump of the firmware from the device; a lot of what I saw in the file was redundant and probably not included onboard giving you further chances to figure out what goes (if it does not have the option poke around the support sections and graphical installers as I often see nice tools for reverse engineering something there.

Looking around it also have support for various forms of DRM which might make it a bit harder (licenses for such things usually come with stipulations of privacy which is reflected in a somewhat obscured codebase).

 

[Deleted-119707]

the firmwares below 2.07 didnt have and application for the p3 called sketchbook. only 2.07 has it. 2.10+2.14 hasnt but has a smoother ui. basically what i wanted to do is add the sketchbook in the later firmwares as well as other functions that were lost such as changing the volum via the touchscreen etc...
first i need to figure out what does what. if i go nowhere, ill wait for samsung to hopefully put everything in. you know how companies are and there firmware updates...
if i do find a way and compile it, is it worth the risk of bricking? the p2 was known to brick doing stuff like this. the p3 is a new pmp released so it may take a while for someone to know everything inside and out the p3.
i dont its possible to dump the firmware from my p3.