Faulty playback on Ipod Nano 4Gb 1st Gen

[mikelx215]

What happens after a non-developer does their part? They sit around for weeks or maybe months waiting for the problem to be solved, not using the features or codecs supported by Rockbox.

Having the end users who can't code playing around with a slightly outdated revision of rockbox can't do much more harm than them using an unusable firmware.

Now, if a message were posted somewhere near the download page that looked something like this..

Recent Rockbox builds for 1st Gen iPod Nano may have broken audio playback. If you are noticing that songs are changed frequently without user input and are getting Data Abort errors, please visit the forums.

...then at least new users would know that something was up. They'd also be able to contribute.

[Llorean]

There is no such thing as a non-developer, because there is no such thing, strictly speaking, as an "official" developer. There are people who spend time working on Rockbox because they choose to, and people who don't.

A notice could be posted to help direct people, but that page is out of my control. I do think though that it'd be better for people to actually *work* on it than to simply say "Oh, newer builds may have problems, I'll not update until they go away." Which is going to take longer: Someone who has the skill, but isn't working on the bug because they have nothing to work on, or someone who has the bug but doesn't have the skill so they start learning what is necessary?

I think you're making an artificial split between "Developers" and "Non-developers." The real line is, entirely, "People who are currently working on Rockbox" and "People who aren't" in the end. Anyone can choose to join the first group, but nobody is obligated to. But the second group really has no call to have any expectations from the first group, since they've chosen not to join it. While programming may seem like a big scary thing, it's entirely a mental task, and like most mental tasks can be conquered if you spend some time on it.

[mikelx215]

I understand where you're coming from, but I hold my opinion.

"But the second group really has no call to have any expectations from the first group, since they've chosen not to join it."

I don't want to come off like I'm expecting anything. For the price (free), getting the iPod to display a picture of an alternate music player is excellent value. I'm just thinking about the people who aren't going to code themselves.

[Llorean]

Your opinion being "The problem doesn't need to be fixed, so long as people can use the old version?"

Why don't you volunteer to loan your device to a developer who's interested? The problem is not going to go away, but as is clear you and the people who are experiencing it seem to have no real desire to fix it, and just want to pretend like it's not there by going back to older builds.

[Chronon]

The message seems to be this:

Developers can't very well work on something they can't see or test.  Either someone who experiences this problem needs to dedicate some time and effort into finding the source of this problem (be a developer) or they should offer to lend their player to a willing developer so that they will have something to test and work with.

That all sounds reasonable to me.

[mikelx215]

Your opinion being "The problem doesn't need to be fixed, so long as people can use the old version?"

Not at all. My opinion is that while people who are contributing to the code are contributing to the code, the people who would like to be able to use Rockbox should be able to use Rockbox. But I can see that I'm starting to be disruptive to this thread.

I'd be happy to continue this conversation over personal messages, if you'd like.

Edit: I don't have another personal media player at the moment and iPods are fairly expensive. Since I'm a high school student and have a fairly limited income, I'd rather not ship an expensive product. Sorry.

[Llorean]

I think the big point you're missing, in entirety, is that Rockbox is a project for developers. It was created to scratch an itch, and anything that gets changed or improved is done by someone that wants it to happen. Users are nice, but in my opinion at least, a little user inconvenience to encourage someone to actually work on this problem is not a big deal.

[mikelx215]

Fair enough. Rockbox is more than fair actually, it's a free Firmware replacement with a decent GUI. I appreciate the fact that the hundreds of people developing the software are doing this in their spare time of their own free will.

If I've upset you with my suggestion then I'd like to apologize.

I intended to suggest, not demand.

[Llorean]

I may have been harsher than usual too. I've been stressed outside the forums lately, and I already went off on one users.

But in all seriousness, in the current situation it's unlikely that the problem will be fixed soon. I'd rather inconvenience people for a little while in the hopes that someone will be inconvenienced enough to take one of the steps (work on it, or loan his player for an indeterminate period) than leave the problem in existence indefinitely. In the latter case a year from now people still may be using r13990 because everybody's just bumped into the bug, downloaded the older version, said "Well, I can listen to music again, no sense sending off my player, surely someone else will" and go on with their life.

I know it's a bit of a cynical way to look at things, but you can see how long the problem's already stood up. We've got one developer who's at least curious about the problem, and I and a few other developers with Nanos have tried various things to make the problem show up on ours with the full intent to mail it to him if the problem showed up, but it just doesn't happen on all players. This also means that buying used Nanos is unlikely to help, all signs show that at least it's a small percentage of the players (I would hazard less than half) or I think we'd be hearing a lot more about it. And even if it's more than half, finding one on the first purchase isn't necessarily likely.

[Febs]

I have to say, I agree with Chronon and mikelx215.   If we have a bug that is significant enough to actually prevent a user from playing music on a player that has in the past supported music playback in Rockbox, I think that users should be advised that they will experience this bug if they upgrade to a current build.  I don't see how it would hamper development or squashing of the bug to say to users:

"This build is known to have a bug that prevents music playback.  Please read this [link to FS task] for information on how you can help us to identify and fix this bug.  Otherwise, we recommend that you want until this issue is resolved before updating."

That is, after all, the basic message that people get when they ultimately find threads like this one after experiencing the problem.  I don't see any legitimate downside to conveying that same information to people before they experience the frustration of installing a non-working build.  A warning on the current build page would serve three purposes:  (1) it would clearly and distinctly advise people how they can best help to resolve the bug, (2) it will lessen the support load in these forums and on IRC, and (3) it will help ease end-user frustration and prevent people from forming a negative opinion about the stability of Rockbox.

[Llorean]

I think a notice like "Warning: Some users of iPod Nano may experience playback issues. Keep a backup of your old build before updating. If you are one of these users, Rockbox needs YOUR help, see FS####" might be okay.

But I really do fear that without some sort of stronger encouragement to help, it will be a very, very long time before this is fixed. The problem I have is with the idea that an explicitly "working" build should be made available, as that suggests it's "Rockbox without the bug." We've already had one person file a bug report on a 700 revision old build, and I'm almost sure he knew better anyway.

[LambdaCalculus]

I know this was referred to before, but I think one of the biggest problems that we have is that we get a lot of users that just don't care about what we do or what Rockbox is about. There seem to be a lot of kids coming in to use Rockbox just to show off Doom and Game Boy games on their iPods to their friends, and personally don't give a rat's ass about the developers or what we do to improve the project.

This was also mentioned before as well: few of the many iPod users are also developers, or even have programming experience. But to hell with that. I'm learning C again because I want to contribute something back. Rockbox freed my iPod from its restraints. I've got Vorbis playback. I've got FLAC playback. I've got some games to fiddle with. But best of all, I've got an open source project that's fun to tinker with, and to learn from! I even picked up my Archos to help further test the project. I'm looking to help start a new port for another device: the Dell Digital Jukebox. To me, this project means a LOT, and I want to help these guys out in any way, shape, or style that I can.

Every day that I use the iPod video (for 30GB) build means that I'm doing my part by testing SVN builds. So far, every single build that I've used since December 28th, 2006 have been quite solid and stable. Sure, there's the occasional hiccup or two, but they have solutions already. My Archos has been as solid as a tank since day one with Rockbox.

If these guys ever need help with finding bugs, testing SVN builds, or information for new ports, I'm here to help them out. I'm part of this community, and I want to do my bit for it!

[Chronon]

I'd rather inconvenience people for a little while in the hopes that someone will be inconvenienced enough to take one of the steps (work on it, or loan his player for an indeterminate period) than leave the problem in existence indefinitely.

Tough love, eh Llorean?  

I can dig that.  

I had been planning to give this nano to someone as a gift in a couple of weeks.  But perhaps I can make other arrangements and send this one to that interested developer.  

[Llorean]

Honestly, the instant there's a problematic Nano in the hands of Amiconn or whichever other developer takes an interest, I'll be all for posting a giant sign saying "NANO USERS: The current build is unusable for day to day use on many Nanos. If yours experiences strange bugs, please use this build (a link to one made from 13990, or one with the changes to circumvent the problem) but do not file any bug reports for other problems the build may have, as it is outdated code."

I'd just rather have people see clearly that this is a problem, and it needs to get solved, rather than just look away and cover their ears and hope, which is what it feels like they want to do. People are willing to give you output from the debug screen, but as soon as you mention that someone needs to actually work on it, the response is "Well, I'd rather just go back to an old build and let someone else do it."

I know it's a bit cynical, but we've all seen issues sit around for incredible amounts of time without anyone having the time or ability to look at it, and while this one is more serious than most, it's also a case where at the moment there's not really a likelihood that developer *can* fix it if the current situation holds.

The possibility still remains that a developer can study how the Apple firmware initializes things and learn what's necessary from that, but it may also be that nothing useful is learned, or that after something is learned it will need testing, and tweaking, for some time, which will again require almost immediate access to a problematic Nano.

I want to see your Nanos playing music more than anyone, but I want that to be because Rockbox is capable of it again.

Surely any Nano shipped off to an interested developer will be returned once things are fixed, and I'm almost as certain arrangements can even be made to cover shipping, the problems are simply that
1) We need someone with a problematic Nano willing to part with it (we have plenty of people willing to part with Nanos, but they all seem to work fine)
2) We need a developer to agree to receive said Nano and investigate. I think the most likely bet for this is Amiconn, as I've said, but I don't want to sound like I'm volunteering him for it, just that he seems to have taken some interest already.

The best thing to do if you're one of the people with a Nano and are willing to consider it is to go to the IRC channel, and talk with the people there.

[Chronon]

I posted a message in the channel mentioning that I had one of these units and said that interested parties should PM me on the forums.  We'll see what happens.