The Herd Of Kittens Python Development - Sony Librié

In late 2005 I picked up a Sony Librié ebook reader, with the most amazing ever E-Ink screen. Looks better in full daylight than it does under office lighting. Plenty of information about it has either been published or pried out, and after a Make Magazine article on it, I decided to take a shot at it myself.

Right now, I've just got a few pieces of code, mostly written from the specs and sample code on sven.de - I didn't puzzle out any of this, just turned it into Python code.

• LrfFile.py - parse out the front-cover GIF and the compressed XML metadata block. Mostly cribbed from LrfFile.cs in the booklistgen sources, without all of the C# noise.
• MgrTbl.py - look at a mounted Memory Stick card and update the MgrTbl.dat index file. Written directly from The MgrTabFormat Wiki Page on the sven.de wiki; I double checked some things against the booklistgen-0.3.4 sources afterwards, but they didn't actually resolve anything, the wiki was enough.
• soon to come - python port of makelrf.c

Pointers

• sven.de archive - the Wiki has lots of info, but it also has most of the files that are locked away in yahoogroups - booklistgen, fw_dumper, and makelrf are here.
• librietrans - the translation project, which has new firmware and how to cook it.
• Dan at CCG has examples of downloading small bits of code and running them via the backdoor.
• ManyBooks.net - one of many free-ebooks sites, but the only one that at this time actually has Librié support. Good place to pick up Accelerando, some Sherlock Holmes, random Gutenberg books pre-converted. Note that currently all the books end up with the same "book cover" icon, but that doesn't particularly get in the way, and it is just a beta.

Hardware

I got my unit from Dynamism, and it came with LIBRIe Applications: ver 1.0.00.06160 and NSC Linux Version: 1.2.0 Patch 4.2 pre-installed.

I'm writing memory sticks with an MSAC-US1 Sony branded Memory Stick Reader/Writer; it shows up as /dev/sda1 under Debian.