Creative ZEN

[ChronoSphere]

Several days and boots later, no black screens here.

[Exether]

Hi there, I'm new member,

I decided to register and post to contribute and to thank everyone for the awesome Rockbox port to the creative Zen, and especially Amaury for taking care of this, despite lacks of time. Your work counts a lot for me, I really love my Rockbox Zen(s) !

I upgraded the bootloader with the last version, and the device (4Gb) encounters no more hangs at startup. As mentioned before, there is no more white splash screen also.

Black screen of death was my main concern versus the daily use of my device. It seems to be fixed now, hurra ! (yep, I feel enthusiastic !)

[benshepherd]

I can't install Rockbox on my Zen. I feel I am probably doing something stupid or missing a step. Here's what I've done, following the steps on the wiki page:

• Format my Zen as FAT
• Use the sendfirm.exe to send the firmware over
• Restart my Zen into recovery mode

On the Recovery Mode screen, I only have three options: Clear Data, Format All, and Reboot. Apparently there should be a Reload Firmware option, but I don't see it. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

[pamaury]

Hi,
you are doing things in the wrong order: first you restart the ZEN into recovery mode, then you select "reload firmware", then you use sendfirm to send the firmware and then you format.
I have never heard of a ZEN without the "Reload Firmware" option, maybe try to use sendfirm directly see if it works.

[benshepherd]

With apologies for the terrible quality:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3i8b3u65b0xaktp/Photo0176.jpg

The text on blue on the second line says "V1.04.01".

(Amaury Pouly) Edit: url tag was ill-formed

[pamaury]

Ok now I understand, you have the ZEN MX which is different from the ZEN. I have began some work on the ZEN MX but it's not finished/working yet and it uses a completely different install method.

[benshepherd]

Ah, I see - thanks! I was a bit confused about whether there was a difference; that's cleared it up. I'll keep an eye out for progress updates. Let me know if you need a volunteer for testing!

[tp11]

I tried the port and it is more stable than I thought. Apart from the screen "corruption" playing music seems to be working perfectly. I am not sure if my ears are correct but the sound quality seems to be better than with Creative firmware.

[pamaury]

Hi, thanks for the feeback. Can you be a bit more precise about this screen corruption (or take a picture) ? About the sound quality, this is absolutely possible since current we use the default audio parameters. The good news is that I have found a table on how to setup the audio parameters correctly so maybe I can increase the audio quality by using more correct settings.

[tp11]

Hi, thanks for the feeback. Can you be a bit more precise about this screen corruption (or take a picture) ?

Here's a video. And how to reproduce it: start the device, lock the screen (screen goes blank) and unlock.  I am using rockbox-creativezen-20140224.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4Ln7bDUo-4

[Exether]

Hello,

I have exactly the same screen corruption as on the video on a 4Gb Zen of mine.

[pamaury]

I have committed a fix for the screen, actually it's because I forgot to commit half of the errata by mistake last time. I hope it will work this time.

[pamaury]

Hi all,
I have committed the new frequency scaling code and enabled it on the ZEN (and XFI). I don't expect any major problem here except that when switching frequency the screen might flicker once. Unfortunately, I don't see a way to fix this without compromising the battery life or performance. If you run in any serious issues, please comment so it can be fixed or reverted depending on the severity. Also if someone feels like doing a battery bench (even if approximated since we don't have plugins at the moment), it would be greatly appreciated.

[ChronoSphere]

Thanks for the commits!
Do we have a battery bench of the non-scaling version? Or do we only want one of the one with frequency scaling enabled?
From what I saw, the non-scaling version manages approximately 10-12h with mpc@160kbps, but I'd be willing to do more tests.

An issue that was present prior to the display and frequency scaling commits, or rather, two:

- some covers either fail to display or only display in grayscale. Is there a size limitation for covers in rockbox? My covers are all 500x500 jpg@80% quality
- when going forward or backwards through the now playing list too fast, the controls sometimes hang and the player stops responding to any input. The music is still playing. After some time the commands are executed in very fast succession and the player is responsive again.

The two might be related if the code attempts to load the cover and fails, resulting in some kind of delay, just guessing.

[pamaury]

Hi,
ideally, I would love to know: OF battery life, Robkox battery life (before and after frequency scaling), if you have any such figures for the OF, please share.
About your issue:

• The manual documents some limitations: http://download.rockbox.org/daily/manual/rockbox-sansafuzeplus/rockbox-buildap3.html#x19-374000C
• That's new to me, my theory is that the code is looking up some tags or something and begins being responsive again when it has the data. I'll try to reproduce it.