Installation on Ipod Nano (1st gen)

[hexed]

Hi,

I've been using Rockbox successfully on my Iriver for ages and love it.  I thought it was time to take the plunge with my Nano.

I followed the instructions:

- Connected Ipod
- Confirmed it's FAT32 (using Windows XP)
- I restored my Nano using Itunes as I wanted to clear everything off it
- Downloaded and ran ipodpatcher.exe which worked
- Downloaded the latest daily build of Rockbox and used WinRar to "Extract Here" and pointed it to the Nano drive letter
- Checked that the .rockbox was created.

First time I rebooted the Nano, it went into Rockbox successfully.

I've since had problems where it says "no .rockbox directory" and then "installation incomplete".

I've tried various things like booting to the original Apple firmware, restoring and trying the above again.  Even removing the bootloader with ipodpatcher.exe and reinstalling it.


Has anyone experienced this?  Is there you think I could have overlooked?


Thanks in advance!!

[Chronon]

If it was there and suddenly went missing I would suspect file system errors.  Have you run chkdsk?

[hexed]

Thanks for your quick response - No, but I would have thought doing a restore in Itunes every time would have formatted the disk and got rid of everything...

I got it to work by reinstalling the bootloader again, but it wouldn't play mp3s and I got a *panic* screen.  I've read a few people talking about problems with builds - can you recommend a stable build?  I'm not sure what the Ipod custom firmware scene is like compared with Iriver where there are numerous alternative Rockbox builds to the daily ones...

[Chronon]

Well, you can look in the Unsupported Builds section if you like.  It sounds a little like you are experiencing a similar playback bug to the ones that have been bothering certain of us nano users lately.  If it's the same one, then the problems began to appear somewhere around r13990.  I'm still hopeful that someone with one of these malfunctioning units will send their unit to an interested developer to look at -- as that seems like one of the only ways that someone with the skills to do anything will have the opportunity to look at this.  Currently none of the developers have a malfunctioning unit and none of the people who have a malfunctioning unit have the time/know-how to do much to fix it.  I only have this nano for 2 more days, so it probably won't be me.  

[hexed]

Mmmm...interesting - so you reckon there are actually issues (hardware?) with some Nanos? - issues that don't affect the Apple firmware but can affect Rockbox?  Weird...

I'll check out the unsupported builds section you mentioned...

[Chronon]

Yes, apparently not all Nanos have identical hardware under the hood.  Apple knows what hardware is inside of it and they have the documentation for it, so it's not surprising to me that their firmware doesn't suffer from this.