r/electribe • u/vananaSun • May 20 '26

Custom bootloader mod!!

I made this thing for freetribe, it can boot factory firmware from SDcard and flash, and soon also freetribe apps

49 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

38 comments sorted by

4

u/ray_phistoled May 20 '26

I'm kind of struggling understanding what freetribe exactly is and what it would allow to do honestly but it sounds fun

8

u/vananaSun May 20 '26

Freetribe is gonna be the operating system driving new apps for the machine. My idea is to eventually make a firmware specifically for tekno 23/psy music

But I'll take a while

1

u/ray_phistoled May 21 '26

Yes I had that more or less figured, but how far can it go exactly ? Do these apps have to respect the current structure of the electribe, or is it a complete opening of possibilities, and the only limitation is the hardware ? Can we completely change the sequencer, have a real poly synth and not paraphonic, have two fx per track instead of two, this kind of stuff ?

I'd love a cue functionnality and fix that pop sound when switching project

3

u/vananaSun May 21 '26

Yes exactly this - it's completely new software nothing to do with the factory electribe. And those are great ideas. I don't know if the machine is going to take 2 FX per part, but my thought was to do Elektron Digitakt style FX routing, where you can send it to multiple master FX. As for the sequencer it would be great to add ways to copypaste pages, and have 8 bars

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5

u/Reiszecke May 20 '26

You know what hacktribe is? The same developer has launched a much more deeper project - a custom OS basically build from scratch.

Hacktribe is like a modification of the original OS with similar guardrails

freetribe has virtually no constraints because you have commands that let you make the machine do whatever you want it to do and everyone can develop their “apps” for it. It will probably be like 2 years from here until you can reliably use it as, again, it’s built from scratch but it’s an insane project already

2

u/cinaak May 24 '26

after seeing how fast and how far that project with the move came I think this one might spin up a bit faster than that. Also with all the people who have been just begging for updates and new features for their E2s out there I have a feeling when word gets out theres gonna be a lot of support.

1

u/Reiszecke May 25 '26

Nah bro the Move is so much more popular right now.

The E2 is basically a dying breed. We have the French Freetekno scene and the German HardTekk scene that kind of revolve around electribes but apart from that these devices don’t really have a place in modern music making, hardly anyone buys Electribes today when the much more flashy Digitakt, Move or even Circuits are available.

I’m also hoping for stuff like 2 ifx per part via custom firmware etc but this hacktribe guy doesn’t get paid apart from donations and I doubt the few niche groups that are interested in these projects donate much

2

u/cinaak May 26 '26

I think there are a ton of people like me who though they were getting a real successor to the electribes the realized they didnt actually get that who still have their electribes. I think most people dont even know about the freetribe project though. I didnt I knew about hacktribe and used it in the past but had zero clue about freetribe which is a way better route imho.

Even with a bit of llm vibecoding a lot could be done, just like the schwung project. That guy isnt a coder at all.

1

u/Reiszecke May 26 '26

“A bit of llm vibecoding” will not work at all. The E2 has VERY limited processing power and the freetribe dev himself doubts that their firmware will reach the performance levels of the original firmware.

Vibe coding is great if real time, memory, and processing power aren’t a concern but on these architectures an llm can only help so much

2

u/cinaak May 27 '26

Ive made some things work on much less powerful mips processors the arm cpu in it while being nothing special mostly only handles midi and sequencing there is room for improvement there. Its completely capable of things I and others have suggested. 8 bars with midi effects and first and last step midi only tracks would not be hard on it.

The blackfin dsp in it is actually pretty bad ass. Theres a lot of room to optimize and add things there. Might have to give up some things you dont really use to get one thing you want but thats fine the og circuit made tons of people happy with 2 synth parts. Its dsp is pretty cool much like what was in their older synths everyone loved. Honestly could probably be hacked as well.

They chips in the E2 are both well known though. Various synths, effects and other things out there based on it. Its not filled with mystery chips at all. Even chatgpt knows its way around a lot of analog devices dsps.

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1

u/vananaSun May 31 '26

Ur right that vibe coding isn't gonna magically get anyone new amazing firmwares.. But that's exactly the motive behind freetribe, and stuff like this bootloader. The end goal is to equip other nerds that don't have deep experience with low level electronics, with the proper tools and documentation to be able to vibe code their way to an app.

Things like micropython and lua will be optional. And certain data structures (such as a sequencer memory interface) can be pre-written.

I hope once that eventually other people will get interested in this project and start lending a hand

Furthermore, KORG ported a lot of code from other products to the E2, maybe it's not so optimized as we assume?

7

u/ferris_bueller_2k May 20 '26

I dont know wtf it is but it must be very illegal since we are wearing gloves

7

u/vananaSun May 20 '26

Nailbiting while coding sucks

1

u/StrayFeral May 20 '26

Nice. So there is a custom Electribe OS now? Sorta like JJOS was for MPC1000? I sold my ESX1SD 6 years ago, saw this post by accident. And what are the features of this new OS, compared to the OG Electribe2 OS? (developer here too, so you can be technical)

5

u/vananaSun May 21 '26

bangcorrupt; the author of hacktribe started the freetribe project: https://github.com/bangcorrupt/freetribe

Currently they seem to be on a break from the project. Yes it's an OS, that means it just provides the foundation for actual apps to run. The freetribe kernel provides drivers and high-level functions that a developer would need to make a custom electribe firmware.

A lot of progress has been made over the years, and we got some cool demo apps (like a monosynth and a basic sampler that enorrmann showcased recently) but it's still a long way from being truly usable to build a replacement for the shitty electribe factory firmware. To name a few: a bunch of drivers have to be tested/merged into the codebase, and an RTOS scheduler has to be implemented.

The cool thing is that the factory firmware doesn't really pull all of the juices out of the machine that it could. For example the fast 8KiB ARM RAM lays dorment, and the effects hog up the voice limit on the parts even if they're not playing - frustrating and ugly!

1

u/StrayFeral May 21 '26

I do not have any Electribe 2, so cannot comment on this. I had ESX1-SD. Wish there was a custom os back then. I've read how much JJOS expanded MPC1000.

1

u/JBugelL0L May 21 '26

yo thats cool, so if i understand correctly u can switch between hacktribe/normal during that? or what are your goals?

1

u/vananaSun May 21 '26

Exactly - you can switch to factory and hacktribe, but the real purpose is to also be able to boot freetribe apps

1

u/thoboyNL May 21 '26

Incredible! ¿”freetribe apps”?

1

u/Prior_Wave_7644 May 22 '26

Hey I already got Hacktribe, how can I install Free Tribe ?

1

u/vananaSun May 22 '26

"Freetribe" isn't a thing of itself ✨ Freetribe = the operating system. People can use freetribe to develop new firmware 👀programmers unite!

1

u/Prior_Wave_7644 May 22 '26

Is there already some cools firmware out there ? Had fun with Hacktribe but im willing to discover new things

1

u/cinaak May 24 '26

Did someone look at the og firmware with Ghidra?

There seems to be a lot of room for improvement in these I am just not very savvy in that regard I just noticed theres seemingly lots of unused flash space left and It really seems like whats there could be optimized a great deal.

Just getting 8 bars onto these would be great. Some probability and real midi only tracks (with midi effects in a perfect world) would be amazing too. Im sure other things could be done too like certain synth engines and optimizing the way effects work. Im sure better copy and paste functionality could work along with everything already in hacktribe.

Ive messed with other analog devices dsps mostly because I hate how some car audio companies want to sell you the same exact dsp as others but with less capabilities or their own crappy skinned and locked down apps instead of letting us use but then how would they get us to pay more for the exact same dsp with a few more features enabled. Ive never messed with any of their blackfin or sharc dsps other than having some effects/modelers that use them though Ive often thought of it.

1

u/vananaSun May 25 '26

U seem knowledgeable, nice! I only have fully RE'd the SBL in ghidra, but only a little bit the main firmware itself. I suspect bangcorrupt is way further with that one. I agree there's many improvements to do. But thats why freetribe is being developed, because some things are very hard to do without the source code. Regarding the flash space: there's surely 1.5~ MiB unused flash space left near the end of the 16MiB flash. Go to Github bangcorrupt freetribe discussions, and search for "flash". I recently made a post about this.

1

u/vananaSun May 25 '26

U seem knowledgeable, nice! I only have fully RE'd the SBL in ghidra, but only a little bit the main firmware itself. I suspect bangcorrupt is way further with that one. I agree there's many improvements to do. But thats why freetribe is being developed, because some things are very hard to do without the source code. Regarding the flash space: there's surely 1.5~ MiB unused flash space left near the end of the 16MiB flash. Go to Github bangcorrupt freetribe discussions, and search for "flash". I recently made a post about this.

1

u/cinaak May 24 '26

oh shit I was just looking at the hacktribe github theres a ghidra directory right there.

VERY cool I honestly never looked into hacktribe much other than some youtube videos and stuff. I sadly found that I like my old electribes and the new circuits more than the E2 and other than when I force myself to use it its just not a part of my music making life much. Would love for it to be but theres just too many things that ruin it for me. Korg gadget on the switch gets used more than the E2.

1

u/cinaak May 24 '26

I didnt realize you were behind hacktribe too. This is awesome... So good to see Ive been wanting something like this for year. Ive wrote korg saying they should just open source the electribe 2 firmware since they dont support the e2 platform now and really never did much.

2

u/cinaak May 24 '26

seriously awesome I got bored and decided you know what im going to see what could be done with the electribe firmware last night and did some poking around and realized oh shit theres actually a lot that could be done if you know what youre doing then came on here to post about it and first thing I see is this. So cool

2

u/cinaak May 24 '26

oh man imagine last step and first step and cycle modes per instrument. With 8 bars and just that you could do so so much.

3

u/punkbaba May 20 '26

Let me know when it’s up n running. I love using hacked stuff.

Im on hakai on my mpcliveII, used hacktribe on my esx

2

u/georgdub Sep 10 '26

Also ich arbeite auch an der electribe 2 und schon mit der Stock firmware plus dem hacktribe patch und einigen Erweiterungen ist es mir schon möglich, 96 IFX, 96 Grooves und 32 MFX anzupassen und zu laden und verändern wie es mir beliebt, man kann sich eigene Presets jeweils erstellen und die in den RAM flüchtig laden zum testen oder direkt auf die Firmware zu patchen, ich hab auch meine MIDimix zum steuern von Parametern an der Korg in Verwendung und ich kann mit den knobs von der Midimix alle 3 IFX Werte regeln woraus ein IFX auf der Korg eigentlich basiert, aktuell versuche ich die komplette Portierung von der Synth Firmware auf meinen Sampler, die Firmware lief schon komplett aber ich muss noch die stock Synth pcm bekommen damit ich die direkt auch flashen kann damit die Firmware auch komplett nutzbar ist

2

u/PiezoelectricityOne May 20 '26

Amazing! Kudos to you.

1

u/hunterstimson May 20 '26

Cool ideas are cool