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I would be interested to know what teenage engineering say about this. Hopefully they'll approve and provide more details. If it's "You will void your warranty"

I would be interested to know what teenage engineering say about this. Hopefully they'll approve and provide more details. If it's "You will void your warranty", then I would avoid buying from them.

tomashubelbauer 6y ago
TE are known to not be fans of modifying OP-1. The OP-1 repacker project which is used to patch and load new firmware had its maintainers reach out to TE on their official forums and the thread got deleted by admins if I'm remembering things correctly (it was a while since I hacked on the OP-1). In any case, they definitely did not publicly endorse modding the OP-1s and they do not like to see it done.
- gnu8 6y ago
  Evidently, only they are allowed to do engineering. The rest of us are expected to shut up and buy the products.
- devin 6y ago
  Yeah, and dumping firmware on OP-Z has proven extremely difficult if not impossible. It's encrypted in AES + CBC with an unknown key size. You can upload unencrypted firmware, but if you can't decrypt the original, well... good luck.
- wayvey 6y ago
  TE wasn't very exited about the modding but I think they we're more annoyed by the OP-1 beta firmware leak. I'm the one who wrote op1repacker. There was never any pressure from them to stop modding the firmware and as far as I know no thread was deleted. Main thread is still here, it's a long but interesting read https://op-forums.com/t/custom-firmware-on-the-op-1/4283 https://op-forums.com/t/custom-firmware-on-the-op-1/4283
gnatman 6y ago
On one hand, I think companies should make their hardware easy to hack on- all sorts of cool creativity comes out of those projects. On the other hand, I think of the customer support team we have at my small company, and understand that TE (or other companies) might not have the bandwidth or skill set in that department to help customers that are bricking their devices in novel ways. I’m curious how to balance that.
- tomashubelbauer 6y ago
  Personally I think the correct balance is this: you mess with your device = you void your warranty, but we don't issue take down requests for reverse engineered firmware, schematics, tools etc. Just let the parallel hacker universe exist without C&Ding it into oblivion, but don't encourage it if you don't want to. I'd be curious to hear counterpoints to this approach, the most obvious one I can think of is customers either pretending they didn't break their device by modding it when they in fact did or not even pretending and instead trying to cancel the company for having this policy because they feel entitled to support even if they venture on their own path and are warned beforehand it's a territory outside official support. "True hackers" IMO would not try to do this, but I think there is a certain group of people who want to try these cool hacks, but don't want to suffer the consequences.
  - dillutedfixer 6y ago
    >>the most obvious one I can think of is customers either pretending they didn't break their device by modding it when they in fact did or not even pretending and instead trying to cancel the company for having this policy because they feel entitled to support even if they venture on their own path and are warned beforehand it's a territory outside official support.<< That would be my guess. The device is $1300 now. If faced with losing that much money my guess is most people would try to return it to TE and say it just failed.
- jlarcombe 6y ago
  Korg have been excellent at this in recent years.
droopyEyelids 6y ago
You're pretty explicitly allowed to load patches into the op-1. This isn't really reverse engineering or modifying the hardware - rather, the file format and a software workflow to create those files.

I would be interested to know what teenage engineering say about this. Hopefully they'll approve and provide more details. If it's "You will void your warranty", then I would avoid buying from them.

tomashubelbauer 6y ago

TE are known to not be fans of modifying OP-1. The OP-1 repacker project which is used to patch and load new firmware had its maintainers reach out to TE on their official forums and the thread got deleted by admins if I'm remembering things correctly (it was a while since I hacked on the OP-1). In any case, they definitely did not publicly endorse modding the OP-1s and they do not like to see it done.

gnu8 6y ago
Evidently, only they are allowed to do engineering. The rest of us are expected to shut up and buy the products.
devin 6y ago
Yeah, and dumping firmware on OP-Z has proven extremely difficult if not impossible. It's encrypted in AES + CBC with an unknown key size. You can upload unencrypted firmware, but if you can't decrypt the original, well... good luck.
wayvey 6y ago
TE wasn't very exited about the modding but I think they we're more annoyed by the OP-1 beta firmware leak. I'm the one who wrote op1repacker. There was never any pressure from them to stop modding the firmware and as far as I know no thread was deleted. Main thread is still here, it's a long but interesting read https://op-forums.com/t/custom-firmware-on-the-op-1/4283 https://op-forums.com/t/custom-firmware-on-the-op-1/4283

gnatman 6y ago

On one hand, I think companies should make their hardware easy to hack on- all sorts of cool creativity comes out of those projects. On the other hand, I think of the customer support team we have at my small company, and understand that TE (or other companies) might not have the bandwidth or skill set in that department to help customers that are bricking their devices in novel ways. I’m curious how to balance that.

tomashubelbauer 6y ago
Personally I think the correct balance is this: you mess with your device = you void your warranty, but we don't issue take down requests for reverse engineered firmware, schematics, tools etc. Just let the parallel hacker universe exist without C&Ding it into oblivion, but don't encourage it if you don't want to. I'd be curious to hear counterpoints to this approach, the most obvious one I can think of is customers either pretending they didn't break their device by modding it when they in fact did or not even pretending and instead trying to cancel the company for having this policy because they feel entitled to support even if they venture on their own path and are warned beforehand it's a territory outside official support. "True hackers" IMO would not try to do this, but I think there is a certain group of people who want to try these cool hacks, but don't want to suffer the consequences.
- dillutedfixer 6y ago
  >>the most obvious one I can think of is customers either pretending they didn't break their device by modding it when they in fact did or not even pretending and instead trying to cancel the company for having this policy because they feel entitled to support even if they venture on their own path and are warned beforehand it's a territory outside official support.<< That would be my guess. The device is $1300 now. If faced with losing that much money my guess is most people would try to return it to TE and say it just failed.
jlarcombe 6y ago
Korg have been excellent at this in recent years.

droopyEyelids 6y ago

You're pretty explicitly allowed to load patches into the op-1. This isn't really reverse engineering or modifying the hardware - rather, the file format and a software workflow to create those files.