need advice for settings to keep the battery lasts longer

[jimmy8269]

I'm using iPod 4g (grayscale 20gb) with new battery installed.
I'd to seek for your advice in Rockbox settings to keep the battery lasts longer.
At hte moment, it can last by less than 2 hrs. Battery drained so fast comparing to orignal apple firmware.

Thanks,
Jim

[saratoga]

2 hrs indicates something is wrong with your player.  You should be getting at least 5-6 hours with the 4G.

[LambdaCalculus]

2 hours could mean a battery that's already worn down to the end. You may have to have the battery in your iPod replaced.

[scorche]

As well, do you have the latest SVN build?  There were some improvements made a bit ago to this respect.

[jimmy8269]

Guys,

Thanks for the inputs.

Actually my iPod is iMod 4g greyscal.
The reason of my doubt is I used normal run-time of default Firmware to compare with Rockbox (the most update version). The battery runtime significant decreases real fast and can be noticed by a few songs (under Rockbox).

That's why I'm trying to figure out some tricks in adujst settings from you guys.

It seems weird for the battery drained.

Thanks & Cheers,
jim

[Llorean]

Well, you do have modified hardware. Are you sure the modification was performed 100% correctly?

As well, under identical conditions (same playlist, no equalizer, no special sound altering settings) do a comparison between Rockbox runtime and the Apple runtime.

[shoe]

I have the ipod 4g greyscale as well.  I recently removed most of the music I had on it, and added about 20gb of new music, and I had a problem where the harddisk would not stop spinning.  My battery would completely drain in less than 2 hours.   I booted into the Apple firmware, and the disk spun down as it should, and battery life was fine.  

I ran chkdsk and it fixed some problems, but still with no luck with the RB disc spindown problem.  I tried playing with all the settings relating to the database, spindown, and turned off the dir cache, reinitialized the database again.  No luck.  I tried old versions of firmware, tried both initializing and updating the database.  I tried setting all the RockBox settings to default.  At one point I browsed in the database, and I saw many songs were repeated twice, for some reason.  I then updated the database again, rebooted, and everything was ok after that.  I can change all the settings back and everything works as it should now.

I'm not sure what exactly fixed the problem.  It may be that every time I tried to update or initialize the database, the battery was running out before it was finished, and causing problems.  Just speculation, I don't know.

If your bad battery life is related to the disc always spinning (you can hear it), then I suggest making sure your filesystem is ok, and update your database with the player plugged in so the battery doesn't run out.

[jimmy8269]

Thanks Shoe,

Actually I updated my music database under RockBox already since I loaded my musics by iTunes earlier. It made disk spinning til finished updating the databse.

However, I encountered another issue twice today. My music stopped playing under normal playing with RockBox and it showed error message number that I couldn't remember.

Any way, I'll keep trying by reinstall and redo the whole process again. Let see

[shoe]

I have had that problem 5-10 times in the last week.  'Undefined instruction at 12345' or something along those lines.  I updated to the latest build yesterday, and if it happens again, I'll make a note of the actual number and file a bug report.

[jimmy8269]

I have had that problem 5-10 times in the last week.  'Undefined instruction at 12345' or something along those lines.  I updated to the latest build yesterday, and if it happens again, I'll make a note of the actual number and file a bug report.

Wow Too many !
Hope this can be fixed

[Febs]

I have had that problem 5-10 times in the last week.  'Undefined instruction at 12345' or something along those lines.  I updated to the latest build yesterday, and if it happens again, I'll make a note of the actual number and file a bug report.

Wow Too many !
Hope this can be fixed

Until you can confirm that it happens with a current official build, there is nothing TO fix.

[shoe]

It happened 4 times last night and this morning with yesterdays (7/18) build.  While playing an mp3, the player suddenly gives "Undefined Instruction at 00057948" error message on the screen.  Always the same number. It doesn't seem to depend on which mp3 I am playing.

The sound stops, backlight goes on and stays on, sometimes stays off, the disc is sometimes spinning, sometimes not.  Stays that way until I do a hard reset.  Happened with mp3s of various bitrates, I wasnt doing anything else with my player at the time (adjusting settings or what have you).  I'll file a bug report on Flyspray.

New thought:  maybe my boot loader is out of date?  I don't know how to check the version.  I just loaded it on my ipod now, maybe that will fix it...

[GodEater]

New thought:  maybe my boot loader is out of date?  I don't know how to check the version.  I just loaded it on my ipod now, maybe that will fix it...

Hold the fast forward button when you turn on your ipod to see the bootloader version (and a bunch of other messages).

[shoe]

Hold the fast forward button when you turn on your ipod to see the bootloader version (and a bunch of other messages).

I can see the info if I hold down the FF button, but only for a moment, before the RB startup screen takes over.  I tried holding down the FF button the whole time, or just pressing it once (didn't work), also I tried releasing the button as soon as I saw the screen with the bootloader info, nothing will keep the info on the screen long enough to read it.  Am I missing something?

I haven't gotten the 'Undefined Instruction' error since I put on the latest bootloader, maybe that was it.  How can I tell when I need to update the bootloader, ie when a new version is available?  Sorry if this is somewhere obvious, but I searched all over the RB site/wiki, the only thing I found about the bootloader is the link to download it in the manual.

[jimmy8269]

Hold the fast forward button when you turn on your ipod to see the bootloader version (and a bunch of other messages).

I can see the info if I hold down the FF button, but only for a moment, before the RB startup screen takes over.  I tried holding down the FF button the whole time, or just pressing it once (didn't work), also I tried releasing the button as soon as I saw the screen with the bootloader info, nothing will keep the info on the screen long enough to read it.  Am I missing something?

I haven't gotten the 'Undefined Instruction' error since I put on the latest bootloader, maybe that was it.  How can I tell when I need to update the bootloader, ie when a new version is available?  Sorry if this is somewhere obvious, but I searched all over the RB site/wiki, the only thing I found about the bootloader is the link to download it in the manual.

I will try to get the most current version both bootloader and rockbox (my last re-installation also had the same error as mentioned by Shoe). Then I will get here again to let you know how will this be.