Overview
By this article I would like to start the series of articles about improving Samsung TV Software, in particular the model LE32C530 (F1W).
This article will be useful for those who already familiar with the SamyGO project, or even better who is familiar with this specific section, and also read (or at least listed) all related pages/sections of this forum.
The majority of the TV manufacturers do not create the firmware or software for their TV from scratch (since it needs a lot of investment), they use the ready-to-use software basis for their hardware (as well as most of the other manufacturers, which is usually a Linux core distributive, and on top of that distributive they build their own software architecture, so no one else could discover their “state-of-the-art” software and modify it. The main point in all of this that the filesystem of some TV models software is usually very similar to the standard Linux filesystem structure/architecture. Samsung TV manufacturer is one of the example of such approach, so many enthusiasts from around the world made a lot of research and tests (bricked a lot of TV units) and found-out that Samsung TV in some of their models (if not in all) uses this software basis (Linux) and Linux standard filesystem approaches, so enthusiasts used this knowledge to “improve” the behavior of some Samsung TV models, better said – unlocking a lot of the hardware and software related functionalities which is already built-in and were disabled by manufacturer out-of-the-box just because of the price-policy of the specific product model or product line, or any other policy or corporate rule.
So in this article series we will be talking about how to unlock the potential of some Samsung TV models.
Let’s get started
First of all we need to make sure that if anything goes wrong we would be able to recover the TV back to normal/working condition, for this we would need to do some manipulation in the settings of the TV itself:
- Go to Service Menu, press sequentially (
not simultaneously) the following buttons on your remote control: Info -> Menu -> Mute -> Power
Don’t hold all of them, just press one by one. Exactly this sequence of the buttons pressing (TV should be turned Off) on the remote control will force TV to boot in the Service Mode and show you the Service Menu. The Service Mode/Menu is used to activate/deactivate some TV hidden service settings, which will help us to recover the TV back to the working condition in the future (if anything wrong happened). Use Up, Down, Left, Right arrows and Enter button on the remote control to move and change the settings in the Service Menu. - Turning Off the Watchdog (some sort of built-in TV software firewall):
Control -> Sub Option -> Watchdog -> [Right arrow] -> On -> RETURN.
Watchdog should be turned Off for to be able to replace (override) some system files in the TV software filesystem. It won’t remove or delete any files physically but just overlay them temporary with our custom software. - Set the debug mode for the RS-232 port of the TV:
Control -> Sub Option -> RS-232 Jack -> [Right arrow] -> Debug -> RETURN.
This mode will allow us to view the boot log of TV even when it is not turning On (bricked), and also will allow us to enter some terminal commands to turn the TV back from the “brick” mode. - Change the model of the TV (it is relevant only for the particular model – LE32C530) up to the version which allows to connect to the internet. All hardware is there, in the TV, we just need to change the model version:
Option -> Model -> [Right arrow] -> LC550 -> RETURN.
Starting from model LC550, the TV software allows to use all the network related OS components and thus allows TV to connect to the internet using the built-in (or external/connected) network interfaces, such as LAN (RJ-45) or Wi-Fi (USB stick), which needs to be configured of course.
This is basically it, we are ready for the next step – uploading the special software (SamyGO) to TV, to unlock its potential.
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