Question about e200R

[cothrige]

I recently noticed that Rockbox could be installed to the above series of players, and as I have an e260R I thought I would look into it.  I read the instructions specific to this player (http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SansaE200RBootloaderPatching & http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SansaE200RInstallation) several times to make myself familiar with what I was going to do, and then began the process.  This went without any complaints, and exactly as the instructions said it would.  Within twenty minutes of starting I was using Rockbox.  Needless to say I was extremely pleased.

I did find that my battery life is about half of what it is under the Sansa firmware (I have noticed this gets a lot of discussion) and that there is no album art capability.  I decided to test my battery life by starting with a full charge and playing it constantly with 128kb bitrate MP3s (audiobooks) and found that I got just over 10 and a half hours.  Battery benchmark reported 10:48:07 in all.  Because I would ultimately love to find a way to see better battery life and album art I was looking at threads and discussions about these issues.  This of course led to much discussion of things like patches and using the current build and so on.  However, because of what would appear to be a different method of installation possible on the e200R and other devices more fully supported, I really wasn't sure if such would be possible, and even how updates may go in the e200R series.

What I am wondering is how is "rockbox" different on my player, the Rhapsody version, than it would be on the standard e200?  I have seen that others have used other patched versions (Cpchan Build?) in order to improve both of these behaviours above, or so it would appear, but I am just unsure if such is possible on the R series at all.  Can one install a patched or custom build on such a device?  Or, at the present, would I have to stick with the standard rockbox linked to in the above articles for installation?

Many thanks for any information anyone can make available, and thanks to all involved for such awesome software.

Patrick

[scorche]

The only difference between Rockbox for the e200R and vanilla e200, is the installation method.  Once installed, it should be identical.

I also see that you ran into the issue with battery life.  As you likely saw in your searches, the PP SOCs are undocumented, and unfortunately, we don't know near enough about them to figure out what we must do to fix the issue.  I don't have any clue on what patches you are talking about that will improve battery life.  As far as I know, there are none.

Unsupported builds are just the .rockbox folder.  Installation is the same as a regular Rockbox build and it does not matter whether you have an R or the vanilla e200.

[cothrige]

The only difference between Rockbox for the e200R and vanilla e200, is the installation method.  Once installed, it should be identical.

Ah, good to know.  I had thought this may be the case, but before proceeding I really thought it best to learn for sure.

I also see that you ran into the issue with battery life.  As you likely saw in your searches, the PP SOCs are undocumented, and unfortunately, we don't know near enough about them to figure out what we must do to fix the issue.  I don't have any clue on what patches you are talking about that will improve battery life.  As far as I know, there are none.

I am sure I had misunderstood the post and references, though some improvement in battery life was discussed in relation to that custom build.  I fear it may have been secondary to some other change, or had nothing behind it at all, and it certainly may not have been any "patch" properly understood at all.  As I have not yet invested the time in learning the build process for rockbox, as I was not sure if I could even do so yet, I did not have the proper understanding to interpret everything I had read.

Unsupported builds are just the .rockbox folder.  Installation is the same as a regular Rockbox build and it does not matter whether you have an R or the vanilla e200.

This certainly addresses my confusion, and now I can begin learning about how to build rockbox and use other builds than the official one.

Many thanks for the help,

Patrick