Home > Development > Unlocking the HP Digital Entertainment Center (DEC)

:: gregory zwart ::

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Unlocking the HP Digital Entertainment Center

If you plan on hacking the DEC, one of the first things you'll need to do is unlock it. The following instructions provide details on how to unlock your DEC. Please note, this will void any warranty you may have and you run the risk of making your DEC a useless heap of hardware, so perform these steps at your own risk!!! Also note, these instructions assume you have your DEC connected to a network, as opposed to a dial-up connection.

What you'll need:

HP Digital Entertainment Center (DEC) - of course
DEC Serial Number - can be found on the label on the bottom of the DEC
Network connection - I suppose you could probably try to do this with a dial-up connection, but I wouldn't recommend it
A new hard drive (optional) - only required if you plan to upgrade your hard drive. As a very rough estimate, an average album is 50MB-60MB when ripped to MP3 format at 128kbps. In other words, you'll be able to store ~370 albums for every 20GB of storage. I personally purchased a Western Digital, 120GB, 7200rpm IDE drive, but any ol' hard drive should suffice.
Fail-safe recovery disk (optional) - only required if you plan to upgrade your hard drive. The latest ISO image should be downloaded and burned to a CD.

Instructions:

Setup the DEC
First things first, you'll need to setup the DEC. Plug it in, connect the ethernet connection, blah, blah, blah...
Update the DEC firmware
The DEC will need to be updated to the latest firmware (version 091702_1.4.201). The easiest way is to let the DEC install the latest firmware during its scheduled auto-update, which occurs once per day. To force an auto-update, from the Home menu, hold down the 'CD', 'Internet Radio', and 'Record' buttons simultaneously. (This must be done on the front-panel buttons... the remote control buttons will not work for this.) When prompted to perform an update, use the navigation keys to select 'Yes'.
Telnet to the DEC
Once the DEC has been updated, you can telnet to the DEC. From another computer, go to the command prompt and type 'telnet <ip_address_of_dec>', where <ip_address_of_dec> is the IP address of your Digital Entertainment Center. You can get the IP Address by going to Home > Settings > Network Settings from the DEC user interface.
Obtain the DEC password and login
Once you telnet to the DEC, you will receive a login prompt of the form:
```
    Linux 2.4.7-17emso (dec) (1)

    login:
    11 Password:
```
Use 'root' for the login name. Pay attention to the number before the 'password' prompt. Until you unlock your DEC, this will change each time you attempt to login. Go the HP DEC Bios Password Retrieval tool, type in your serial number (this tool is case-sensitive), and click the 'Submit Query' button. A series of rotating passwords will be displayed. Match the number before the 'password' prompt to the number in the password tool and use the corresponding string for the password. This will log you into the DEC.
Change the root password
At the DEC command prompt, type passwd. When prompted type (and confirm) your new root password.
Unlock the DEC
Once a new root password has been set, change to directory /opt/fiji/utils/. Execute the command ./unlockDec. This will unlock the DEC. You will also lose your telnet connection to the DEC.
Reboot the DEC
Perform a hard reboot of the DEC (power down the DEC by holding the power button down for 5 seconds, then power the DEC back up).
Telnet to the DEC
Once the DEC has been powered up, you can now telnet to the DEC with the login name 'root' and the new password you selected in Step 5.
(Optional) Replace the hard drive
Now that you've unlocked the DEC, this is a perfect opportunity to replace the hard drive with a larger drive. Put the fail-safe recovery CD in the drive, power down the DEC, open the case, and replace the hard drive with the new drive.
(Optional) Reload the OS
As the DEC comes up, it should boot off the fail-safe recovery CD and load the DEC operating system onto the new drive. If the DEC doesn't boot off the CD, the CD may not have been burned properly.
(Optional) Unlock the DEC... again
Once the OS has been loaded onto the new drive, the DEC should reboot. Remove the fail-safe recovery CD from the drive and boot off the new hard drive. Once the DEC boots, you'll need to perform Steps 3-8 again to unlock the DEC again. Once you've completed these steps, you're done! You'll now have a DEC with sufficient space for most MP3 music collections!