Author Topic: Let's hack the HP Prime!  (Read 117495 times)

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Offline ordelore

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #240 on: July 14, 2014, 05:52:59 pm »
Perhaps it's a place for us to put our own software on :3 (it's a stretch)
Or maybe a swap partition?
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Offline Shibe

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #241 on: July 14, 2014, 06:01:21 pm »
Or maybe a swap partition?
I doubt it. The HP Prime's RAM is around 32mb mDDR and I doubt that they would make a swap partition that small if anything, but I could be wrong.
 

Offline Keoni29

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #242 on: July 14, 2014, 06:06:12 pm »
But why would a swap partition be called HP calc dev?
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Offline Deep Toaster

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Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #243 on: July 14, 2014, 08:30:33 pm »
Could be used internally for developing calculator software? Since it's accessible from recovery mode. Just throwing ideas out there.




Offline bb010g

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #244 on: July 14, 2014, 09:50:27 pm »
Could be used internally for developing calculator software? Since it's accessible from recovery mode. Just throwing ideas out there.
If so, it could be useful for hooking Linux in.
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #245 on: July 15, 2014, 12:05:58 am »
I know this isn't related to hacking the calc, but  if someone is going to make a patched version of the official firmware, I think a good feature addition would be to show how much RAM and Flash are left from the program and application menus. I know the calc has a lot of both, but it's kinda annoying to not even know how much is left.

Offline cyrille

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #246 on: July 15, 2014, 02:45:51 am »
Hello

Quote
When the HP Calculator is set to recovery mode, there is a partition available named "HP CALC DEV"(around 247.12mb is still free)

This is the data partition where user data is saved...

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Offline iconmaster

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #247 on: October 06, 2014, 03:52:15 pm »
I loaded the .BIN file from the old SDK OS into a ARM dissassembler (armU, to be exact), and I found that I can emulate it's basic operations from there. I discovered what memory addresses correspond to the splash screen bootup and the main input loop.

I'll post more specifics later.

Offline TIfanx1999

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #248 on: October 06, 2014, 04:53:37 pm »
Sounds pretty sweet! :D

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #249 on: October 06, 2014, 07:52:06 pm »
I loaded the .BIN file from the old SDK OS into a ARM dissassembler (armU, to be exact), and I found that I can emulate it's basic operations from there. I discovered what memory addresses correspond to the splash screen bootup and the main input loop.

I'll post more specifics later.
Interesting, let us know :). What I still wonder is if it's possible to run native code directly from the official OSes or if it really has to be done via an hacked/modified OS. It would also be interesting to see if the community would be able to help HP fix some of the OS bugs.

Offline chickendude

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #250 on: October 19, 2014, 08:34:42 am »
I'd love to work on opening the Prime up to native code, but that's all way above my head. Lack of native code execution has been the one thing holding me back from picking one of these up :/

Offline Streetwalrus

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #251 on: November 09, 2014, 01:26:09 am »
So um. The Prime is pretty open already. With the OS being a simple ELF I think we should instead of modifying it try to focus on writing a standalone shell that can boot the OS. That would make it much simpler, especially considering we won't have to update the shell for each new OS. We can figure out later how to load it as a library to access math functions and such from unofficial code.
HP made us a really awesome present by not putting any kind of code signature on this calc

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #252 on: November 09, 2014, 02:10:54 am »
I didn't think about that idea before actually. I am unsure if it would work, but if it did, then it would be kinda the opposite of Z80 calcs, in the way that instead of running a shell from an OS, you would run the OS from a shell, right?

The thing with modifying the OS directly is that it would be more work for the user to patch it and there would be high risks of bricking their calcs if they use the wrong IPS patch or something. Plus would IPS Patches even work with such file format anyway? And to find an exploit inside the OS itself it will be much more work, not to mention it might end up getting patched by HP if it was the result of a glitch. So your idea could be something worth investigating.

Offline Streetwalrus

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #253 on: November 11, 2014, 03:49:13 pm »
I didn't think about that idea before actually. I am unsure if it would work, but if it did, then it would be kinda the opposite of Z80 calcs, in the way that instead of running a shell from an OS, you would run the OS from a shell, right?
Exactly.

The thing with modifying the OS directly is that it would be more work for the user to patch it and there would be high risks of bricking their calcs if they use the wrong IPS patch or something. Plus would IPS Patches even work with such file format anyway? And to find an exploit inside the OS itself it will be much more work, not to mention it might end up getting patched by HP if it was the result of a glitch. So your idea could be something worth investigating.
You can't really brick the calc as long as the recovery firmware works afaict.
IPS patches are universal binary patches.
As for the exploit there's none to find. We can freely patch the OS, all we need it to hook a couple functions somewhere and we're all set.
My idea is still much easier to implement and won't require us to update the patches for each new HP OS. As long as we don't mess with exam mode we shouldn't have to fear HP.

Offline Vogtinator

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #254 on: November 11, 2014, 04:36:53 pm »
Quote
My idea is still much easier to implement and won't require us to update the patches for each new HP OS. As long as we don't mess with exam mode we shouldn't have to fear HP.
The bad thing about a shell is that you can't see whether it's active. For ndless, you have a way to remove it certainly (filesystem format) but is there a similiar way on the HP?
Also, I'd it visible that there is possibly custom code running by displaying a message like ndless does on the home screen, that way you'll likely not get in trouble. At least I hope so :)