Support and General Use > Hardware
N3: An open source portable audio player
linuxstb:
--- Quote from: may1937 on June 18, 2007, 02:35:02 AM ---I realize Rockbox does not use Linux, my point was that we already have a bootstrapped software environment for the hardware, including source. Surely, that would help a Rockbox port?
--- End quote ---
Of course.
It just seems odd to design an "open source portable audio player" around a CPU with no public documentation...
As I think Bagder said elsewhere, whatever hardware you choose, someone, somewhere, sometime will port Rockbox to it. However, experience has shown that Rockbox running on such targets never performs as well as ones where the documentation is freely available.
Having Linux source available will be helpful, but it's not the same as having datasheets.
may1937:
--- Quote from: Llorean on June 17, 2007, 11:35:14 AM ---How would using a CompactFlash drive for storage compare? Still flash, they can offload the cost of large storage on the purchaser, and more flexible for the user?
--- End quote ---
Yes, I was thinking along those lines, possibly include an internal 4GB CF, and have an SD/MS slot for user expansion. I certainly wouldn't call that kind of storage "tiny". Certainly not great, but in terms of development cost it may be a reasonable trade off.
--- Quote from: ZincAlloy on June 17, 2007, 06:44:03 AM ---I don't think 4/8 GB of storage would appeal to the "audiophile type crowd".
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: GodEater on June 17, 2007, 09:24:42 AM ---I agree - having such a tiny amount of storage would make this extremely un-interesting for me.
--- End quote ---
But seeing the reaction here (and there is some of the same in our community), it looks like we need to take a more serious look at including a hard drive from the start.
may1937:
--- Quote from: linuxstb on June 18, 2007, 02:50:29 AM ---
Of course.
It just seems odd to design an "open source portable audio player" around a CPU with no public documentation...
As I think Bagder said elsewhere, whatever hardware you choose, someone, somewhere, sometime will port Rockbox to it. However, experience has shown that Rockbox running on such targets never performs as well as ones where the documentation is freely available.
Having Linux source available will be helpful, but it's not the same as having datasheets.
--- End quote ---
My thought has been if we can do a good enough job commenting the code, the need for datasheets will be minimal. I know, it is not an ideal situation. We are trying to work with what we have.
Datasheets are available, by the way. Myself and several other community members have signed an NDA with Neuros to get them, with the explicit provision we will be writing open source code based on them.
Bagder:
--- Quote ---Datasheets are available, by the way. Myself and several other community members have signed an NDA with Neuros to get them, with the explicit provision we will be writing open source code based on them.
--- End quote ---
NDAs limit the number of developers quite drasticly. Some developers won't be able to sign them and some won't want to. It is just so non open source'ish.
Let me also remind you about the situation we have with this dm320 series: no open source codec and in fact hardly any open source at all is written to take advantage of a CPU/DSP architecture. Not even any of the video codecs. So, to take advantage of that combo you have to resort to the style almost every Linux-using commercial portable player do (including Neuros): use binary drivers and modules that aren't open source, so that you can include proprietary codecs that use the DSP accordingly.
Rockbox does not allow such binary-driver work-arounds and my guess is that none or just very little DSP code will ever be written open source for this target. That leaves us with a CPU+DSP combo where the DSP part is mostly annoying and the CPU parts is far less powerful than say a Toshiba Gigabeat... Possibly it will also not reach the best possible run-time either.
But then, I believe the ARM9 parts of a dm320 is powerful enough to drive Rockbox and all its audio codecs perfectly fine, and I think it is enough to also do a fair job at video playback so if dm320 is the final choice I expect Rockbox to run fine on it. The fact that we have other pending dm320 targets that can take advantage of such work is also interesting to me.
GodEater:
--- Quote from: may1937 on June 18, 2007, 02:51:58 AM ---
--- Quote from: ZincAlloy on June 17, 2007, 06:44:03 AM ---I don't think 4/8 GB of storage would appeal to the "audiophile type crowd".
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: GodEater on June 17, 2007, 09:24:42 AM ---I agree - having such a tiny amount of storage would make this extremely un-interesting for me.
--- End quote ---
But seeing the reaction here (and there is some of the same in our community), it looks like we need to take a more serious look at including a hard drive from the start.
--- End quote ---
I think you have to bear in mind that most "audiophile" types prefer their lossless codecs - 8GB isn't going to give you a lot of storage space for your music if you mostly use FLAC. Now I personally don't call myself an audiophile - I have tin ears. I just happen to have an enormous music collection - 8GB is less than a sixth of the space I need to carry it round with me - and I'm not interested enough in swapping my music between the DAP and my PC to keep only a subset of it on me at any one time. Just my personal opinion though.
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