Rockbox Technical Forums
Installation / Removal => Manual Installation => Iriver - Installation/Removal/Flashing => Topic started by: fredheir on March 15, 2009, 01:11:17 PM
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Similar questions have been asked, but as far as I can tell no satisfactory answer has been provided on these forums...
My beloved h320 died, the harddrive stopped spinning up properly, and I decided to try the CF mod.
I have it all set up, except I can't update my bootloader because my drive is completely dead. Without the new bootloader, so it would seem, the CF card (Transcend 133x, 8GB) will not work; I always get the ata -80 error.
Is there anyway around this seemingly impossible situation? Does anyone know of a CF card that definitely works with the old v5 bootloader?
Altternatively, is it possible to patch or update the bootloader in any way by USB?
Thank you very much,
Rolf
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Rolf:
I have been waiting for one of the true experts to answer you, in the hopes that they might have a happy answer. From what I can tell, there is not a way to get your H320 to read a CF card until AFTER you have updated the bootloader from a hard drive. The original firmware simply does not recognize any CF card, and you have to use a hard drive to reflash it using the CF-mod bootloader on the CF-mod wiki page. Then you must use a version of Rockbox that is about a year or less old (e.g., the current one).
The idea of updating using USB is attractive, so I looked over on the MisticRiver web site (for iRiver enthusiasts). What you are describing is known as USB On-The-Go, or USBOTG, where the iRiver acts as a host to another storage device at the other end of a USB cable. Unfortunately, even those iRivers that have USBOTG (European and Asian models come with it, while the American model must be modified with wires and soldering) would not work right in this situation. What they can do is transfer a file to the iRiver hard drive, but they cannot run a file over the USB link while it resides on the remote storage device. So you still need a working hard drive.
Replacement 20 GB hard drives (Toshiba MK2004gal) are available on eBay for about $25-$30 plus shipping. If you go that route, get one that does not have the Apple logo on it, since they modify some of the drive's operating files specially for iPods. You'll still have to format the drive using Swissknife (a free program you can find on the Web) into a FAT32 format.
Or, maybe you can find someone in your vicinity who also has an iRiver and would be willing to loan you their hard drive for just long enough to flash your firmware.
I have done the CF mod with the Transcend 133x 8GB and 32GB cards, and with the RiData 233x 32GB card, and have got all to work successfully. I really like how the player is lighter, quicker, sturdier, and quieter now. I wish you success.
- Pete
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I have a similar problem. I have a iriver h120 and the hard drive just died. I have a proper CF adapter and CF card but it will not work unless I have bootloader upgreaded from 6 to 7. I have read that for 1xx series it is possible. How to do that. Please help!