Beosound 1 (CD version) data link???

[pestria]

Although these units have been around for ages, I never really took much notice of them until seeing one being used in a hotel where we stayed recently.

In the right context it looked and sounded great.  This made me think about getting one (or two!) for home.

I see they have AUX-IN which Steve from Sounds Heavenly has a video demonstrating being used to connect (say) an Airport Express.

I wondered if there’s any way this concept could be extended to receiving input from one of Beolink ‘black boxes’ to received input from a remote ML device.

 

[Madskp]

pestria wrote:

I wondered if there’s any way this concept could be extended to receiving input from one of Beolink ‘black boxes’ to received input from a remote ML device.

Well I have had the same thought. The Beolink active has a fixed  audio output of whatever is playing on the ML network according to this post https://forum.beoworld.org/forums/topic/beolink-active-1636-pc-input/#post-14762

However activation is another thing. For the Beosound 1 to play sound from AUX the tape command has to be used. But when that is used the Beolink active will also switch to that source. Same problem if you wan’t to play CD from the Audio master on the ML network. By pressing CD you will also trigger the internal CD in the Besound 1.

A work arround could be to put the Beolink active in option 4 so it will only respond to Link + commands. This will of course make for some extra key presses to active both the AUX on the Beosund 1 and the source on the Beolink Active

[Madskp]

I am at my parents now and have the logic analyzer hooked up to pin 6 and 7 on the AUX connector on their Beosound 1.

As might have been expected I don’t see any reaction to any commands I try to use on the remote including A.MEM which activates the AUX connection.

So i guess that we can put down any hopes of control options through this connection

[Madskp]

Guy wrote:

One other thought: My original BeoSound 1 (used for tests) is at SW version 1.3, and my newer one at SW1.4. I think that the later BS1s (with built in clock) have SW versions 2.X. – I doubt that there are any differences and if anything B&O would probably reduce any link capability in the newer versions. Any idea of your parents’ BS1 SW version?

I just checked this as I am here. There are two different version numbers. The APP version is 2.5 and the OS version is 1.0.

[Guy]

Madskp wrote:

I just checked this as I am here. There are two different version numbers. The APP version is 2.5 and the OS version is 1.0.

So your parents’ is the newer model with clock.

I doubt that the aux/data connections are any different on my APP1.X versions (both OS1.0), but it wouldn’t be the first time that features had disappeared from newer models!

The Beosound 1 is still a great bit of kit, so I will continue to use mine with FM, Airport Express (for AirPlay 2) and of course the occasional CD to check that the laser module still works!

[B3OHACK3R]

Madskp wrote:

So i guess that we can put down any hopes of control options through this connection

Okay, a bit disappointing. So likely for development or (undocumented) service only. There is still the chance that by default it only listens and waits for the right command to be sent. Figuring that out would mean to download and decompile the firmware. Things like that are super time intense and just not worth it for the BS1.

[pilatomic]

B3OHACK3R wrote: Figuring that out would mean to download and decompile the firmware.

Just curious, how would you recover the firmware from such a device ? Is it still in a separate mask rom like the older B&O products ?

[B3OHACK3R]

pilatomic wrote:

Just curious, how would you recover the firmware from such a device ? Is it still in a separate mask rom like the older B&O products ?

Haven’t looked too closely at the BS1 internals but chances are high that the firmware is stored in an external EEPROM. You could extract it from there using standard tools and then spend countless hours with Ghidra figuring out how the firmware works in detail.

[Author]

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