Questions about brennan JB7 file format on internal harddrive and request for technical info

[SADES URBEX]

I was hoping to back up the harddrive as an image to my computer by simply connecting it to SATA. However the computer recognised the harddrive as having nothing on it (calling it unallocated) but using dd if=/dev/sdb of=harddrive.img  (with /dev/sdb/ being where linux mounted the harddrive from the JB7) it clearly has data inside of it.

The JB7 says it has 13 gigabytes of music on it but the disk isnt recognised by my computer.

Is there any information about the file system format for a (v20) Brennan JB7?

I was also sort of hoping to do some custom firmware or whatever for the system and was wondering if I could also have technical information (maybe schematics or its firmware) about the JB7 since you no longer make it?

[Peter Lowham]

Hi there,

Yes, I've already been down this path!  I bought a used JB7 (needing a repair) early this year to test various situations with the B2s and BB1s that I already have.

The bottom line is that the JB7 HDD uses a proprietary format that is not recognised by any common disk formatting program.  I wanted to create a fully loaded backup disk, just in case the HDD failed.  I have the music backed up via USB to a backup server but if the HDD were to fail then I would be sunk as I didn't have a correctly formatted HDD as a replacement.

I did resolve this by using a 'bit-level' HDD copier which just copies bit-by-bit from a source HDD to a target Hdd, using two 'SATA2 to USB' adapters on a server and running 'EaseUS Disk Copy' to replicate the JB7 HDD (using the 'bit copy setting rather than 'sector level').  This has worked fine, so I'm happy now!

Brennan's official support and repairs company for the JB7 is called Audiotech and they can provide formatted SSD replacements, but I have not been able to find out any more that that so far.

Regards,

Peter. 

[SADES URBEX]

> I did resolve this by using a 'bit-level' HDD copier which just copies bit-by-bit from a source HDD to a target Hdd, using two 'SATA2 to USB' adapters on a server and running 'EaseUS Disk Copy' to replicate the JB7 HDD (using the 'bit copy setting rather than 'sector level').  This has worked fine, so I'm happy now!

Yeah I've already done that with dd if=/dev/sdb of=harddrive.img  so I have a bit for bit copy of the harddrive in harddrive.img (since dd if means input file and of means output file as well as dd  being built into most Linux distributions). I was just thinking it would have been awesome if I could just extract the harddrive and view all of the files on it directly.

Im still looking for technical info about the JB7's processor as well as firmware because Id love to do some custom things with it and hacks etc

[Rob Harriman]

The JB7 web pages list the processor spec as being 400 Mhz Blackfin with Dual Mac, but not the manufacturer. Nothing about the firmware.

I suspect your best option for obtaining that info will be via Audiotech, but see what Paul from Brennan support says tomorrow.

Rob

[PMB]

Hi throwawa...,

As far as I know Martin wrote the software for the JB7 from the ground up, including the disk handling firmware. The processor  is one of the Blackfin devices from Analogue Devices.

You can try contacting Jon at AudioTech -   audiotechcontact   @   gmail  .   com - no spaces,  but as he is the sole service resource for the JB7 (he does all JB7 related repairs on our behalf now) he may be reluctant to release information.

Paul

Brennan Support.