Rockbox Technical Forums

Support and General Use => Audio Playback, Database and Playlists => Topic started by: TheAlmightyGuru on August 16, 2018, 03:11:18 PM

Title: Sporadic freezing on Sansa Clip Zip.
Post by: TheAlmightyGuru on August 16, 2018, 03:11:18 PM
I have been seeing sporadic freezing on two different Clip Zips for about year now, and it appears to be getting worse.

When my Clip Zip freezes, it stops accepting button input and the screen stops refreshing. About 90% of the time it freezes when I switch to a new song. The screen will show the new song's info, with a time of 0:00, but never begin playing it. The other 10% of the time it will freeze in the middle of a song. The screen will freeze and buttons won't take input, but the song will continue to play for a minute or two before stopping.

Once it freezes, my only option is to hold the power for ten seconds to reboot. There is no error message.

I first started seeing this problem on my old 4GB Clip Zip well over a year ago. I would get to hear around 15-20 songs before it froze. Less than a year ago, I bought a new 4GB Clip Zip because the buttons on my old one were going, and it had the same freezing problem right after I loaded Rockbox. I've kept up to date with the latest builds, but the freezes seem to be happening more frequently; I average about 5 songs before a freeze. All my music is on a 32 GB microSD, about 24 GB is used. My music is about half MP3 and half OGG, but it freezes on either format.

I don't think the problem is from corrupt files or a bad card because no one song will cause the Clip Zip to freeze every time. If it does freeze on a song, I can reboot and play the same song all the way through without a problem. I can also plug my Clip Zip into my computer and play the same song off the card through Windows, and Windows error-checking on the card reveals no errors.

Can anyone suggest something that alleviate this problem? And, have any other Clip Zip users experienced this problem?

Thanks!
Title: Re: Sporadic freezing on Sansa Clip Zip.
Post by: disrupt on August 16, 2018, 05:17:18 PM
If 3.13 works fine for you, it may be the reduced CPU voltage causing instability.

If that's the case, try http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,52058.0.html
Solved random stability issues on my Clip Zip.
Title: Re: Sporadic freezing on Sansa Clip Zip.
Post by: TheAlmightyGuru on August 20, 2018, 01:22:22 PM
Thank you very much for the suggestion Disrupt. I put the patch on my Clip Zip from the link you specified, but the problem unfortunately, persists.

Since you also asked if version 3.13 has the same problem, I downgraded to 3.13, and I see the same problem on that version as well. I guess that rules out low-voltage as the culprit.

I've been trying to find a pattern with the freezing. My current test works like this:

I have shuffle off. I play a song from the file browser directly, no playlist or database.
When the song begins, I reboot to clear the existing memory.
When Rockbox comes back up, I wait for the song to being playing.
I wait one second, then press "next" to begin the next song.
I let that song play for one second and press "next" again.
Eventually, Rockbox freezes.
When this happens, I reboot to return functionality, go back to the original song, and start it.
I then reboot to clear memory, and follow the steps from above.

Strangely, Rockbox freezes at a different song each time. Sometimes it's the fourth song, sometimes the 40th.

If some of my files were corrupt, or my micro SD card was damaged, I would expect Rockbox to freeze at the same song each time. Also, if my tracks were somehow chewing up too much memory for the OS to function, it seems like the error should happen roughly around the same number of tracks in each time.

Does Rockbox have a debug log I can turn on?
And, can anyone think of anything else that I might try?