Charging

[jollygamer]

This is not a feature request/when will this be done.  It says on the Sansa e200 wiki that Rockbox only pulls 100 mA through the USB.  I found this to be true when I tried to charge it while booted in Rockbox because it simply made the battery get hot.  Finally, my question:  Why does Rockbox only pull 100mA?  Has something not been figured out or has it simply not been implemented yet?

[Mad Cow]

It think that would be a limitation of the charging hardware. Rockbox doesn't control the charging at all, it's all done in hardware.

[Llorean]

Not quite the case, Rockbox doesn't have the ability to affect the actual charging of the battery, but USB allows two modes. I'm not sure their exact modes, but one can be thought of as "High Power Mode." You can only get it as a device if you request it, computers don't automatically give it. Rockbox doesn't yet request it, because it doesn't have USB support, so the charging is limited to the 100 currently delivered over USB rather than the 500 it could have.

This should still allow your battery to charge, but a good deal slower than normally.

[jollygamer]

Well, when I tried it, I was using a usb wall charger.  The charger is rated up to 2A.  If I use the OF, it charges.  Any idea's on why this is?  Same reason?

(sorry this has turned into hardware question).

[dreamlayers]

The host side of USB does not restrict power use to the amount requested by the device.  It just protects against overloads well over 500 mA and otherwise supplies whatever power is available (which can be <500 mA). As evidence of this you see various dumb USB devices which just use USB as a power source  and don't do anything with the data lines.  It's up to the device itself to respect the specification regarding how much it uses and inform the host if it wants more than 100 mA.  If Sansa just draws 100 mA, it is limiting itself, and something needs to be done on the player to get it to draw more, if it can.