iRiver H120 CF Mod Attempt - Success!

[Siar]

Aaaaa... A-Data 32Gb Newegg price - 131$

[scharkalvin]

Aaaaa... A-Data 32Gb Newegg price - 131$

The price is rapidly converging on my impulse buying point.
It's almost as low as the price I paid on my first 16gb flash card
less than 6 months ago.  If it keeps dropping at this rate I will probably
buy one in a month.  BUT, it also means that the 64GB version can't
be far away!!!!

If you don't want to mess with adapters and don't mind the price here are some other
options:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2013240636+1421330853&name=1.8%22

[LambdaCalculus]

It's getting to the point that I'm just thinking of getting a cheap Gigabeat F on eBay and getting an adapter. Gigabeat F64? Hell yeah!  

[scharkalvin]

It's getting to the point that I'm just thinking of getting a cheap Gigabeat F
on eBay and getting an adapter. Gigabeat F64? Hell yeah!  Wink

Technically it would be an F60 due to the base conversion round off.....

I just checked and there aren't any 64gb CF cards available yet, maybe
in a few months.  BUT I think I will upgrade my gigabeat 16 CF conversion
to 32GB real soon now.  Maybe the 32GB card will work better than the
16GB (some issues with read errors on boot up and not disconnecting from
the USB disk mode when I unmount and remove the cable.... I have
to toggle the battery switch).  BUT seems solid once the unit is up and running
with music loaded.

[larry_llama]

Hey guys,

I started researching CF conversions on a whim, because card sizes started climbing recently, and I remembered somewhere in my brain hearing that CF cards use essentially an IDE interface. I have had an H120 and more recently an H320 running rockbox for many years, however I am always very scared about even putting it on a table too hard because it seems like the older a hard drive gets the more likely it is to fail miserably upon a slight impact. So at first I considered putting a CF in the H320, but I have to say that I find the interface of the 320 kind of lacking. Rockbox seems to be very slow and unresponsive on it. Particularly when skipping tracks, it seems to take forever to respond. It's also really large by today's standard so I thought downgrading in size might be kind of neat :-)

So then I discovered that you could mod an ipod mini -- normally I am 100% dead set against ipods, but with rockbox, flash memory, and all metal body, I think an ipod mini with 32GB CF is a great idea.

Now I have just read about the gigabeat and I am interested in this idea as well.

My question is for anyone who has used any or all of these (iriver, toshiba,. mini) with rockbox... which ones have the fastest UI response? Will the mini respond to button presses faster than the iriver? Will switching from HDD to CF speed these up due to the elimination of drive spinup etc?

I guess I'm looking for guidance in regards to an upgrade... I think I could sell the 320 and get enough out of it to get a 32G CF card and a used (possibly broken) ipod mini. The gigabeat seems harder to find.

Any opinions about doing a CF upgrade to a mini versus a gigabeat?

Thanks!

[scharkalvin]

The gigabeat player has the fastest cpu of the bunch (300mhz arm IIRC), and it is quite responsive.
The disk access time being the major drawback.  Note that the CF will improve seek time greatly,
but file read speed is slower with the CF than with the disk.  This doesn't cause skipping on playback
but WOW is file download from PC to player slow with CF!!!

I also converted an iPod mini for my wife and it is quite responsive as well.

Up until just after the holidays there were a ton of like new gigabeat players for sale on ebay.
I snatched up an F10 for about $70 in "A" condition and converted it to CF.

I also have seen "broken" iPod mini's on ebay from time to time.  Look for one with a "dead battery"
or "folder icon", these are easy to fix.  The iPod mini is very easy to perform surgery on, they open up
very easily.  They also don't need an adapter to use CF since they are set up for it by default.  The
A-Data brand CF cards work fine.  I haven't heard of anyone using the 32GB size yet, but as it has similar
spec's to the 16GB (which I've used) I suspect it will work fine.  Be sure to get a new battery for the iPod,
since it would be a crime not to replace the stock battery with a larger capacity one as long as you had
the patient opened up.  A tip .... use a small dab of hot melt glue and a scrap hunk of wood to pull the
plastic end caps off the mini without damaging the body.  Then when the glue cools it will just peel off
the plastic caps without leaving a mark.

I like both of these players.  I think the gigabeat has a better user interface than the iPod (IMHO).  Also the
color screen is nice ... I have converted some utube videos to mpg for use on the player.  BUT the iPod is a bit
smaller and lighter weight (for those with small pockets).   Cases for the gigabeat are hard to find, but for the
iPod they are a dime a dozen (almost).  The iPod comes in more colors.  The gigabeat battery lasts longer.
So it's 6 of one and 1/2 a dozen of the other.......

[larry_llama]

Great! thanks for the replies. I think I was searching ebay completely wrong for the gigabeat. I was searching gigabeat F and gigabeat X when I guess I should hav eput the drive size in there as part of the model number.

I just buy-it-now'd a working ipod mini for $50, and will resell the drive once I get a CF card in. It will probably end up going to my girlfriend. If I like it, I'll get my own or maybe try the gigabeat.

The H320 is nice but it's really kind of huge, and I find the buttons to be a bit crumby.

I will keep my old h120 for recording purposes though :-)

Thanks for the tips; I'll be sure to report back with any new info/successes once this new project is underway. Man.. 32GB (soon 64gb?) with rockbox in an ipod mini sized form factor... killer!

[scharkalvin]

I don't think I've EVER seen a Gigabeat "X" for sale on ebay.
I think they were only sold in Europe and "oz".

[larry_llama]

So is the official model name (for searching) "gigabeat f10" (f20 f30 f40 etc)?

By the way, I have found that when searching for ipod minis, you can often find working ones for the same money as broken ones (or less). That's the route I went, and I guess I'll try to sell the functioning drive to offset the CF card purchase ;-)

[AlexP]

I don't think I've EVER seen a Gigabeat "X" for sale on ebay.
I think they were only sold in Europe and "oz".

Australia and Asia

[scharkalvin]

So is the official model name (for searching) "gigabeat f10" (f20 f30 f40 etc)?

That should do it.  Gigabeat F10, F20, F40 and F60, though I've NEVER found any
F60's for sale.  They probably didn't make many of them.

BTW if you are doing a flash conversion just look for a good F10, no sense paying more for
the HD that you will be removing anyway.  The F10 and F20 machines are about 3mm thinner
than the F40/F60, though the difference is only in the back cover (to make room for a thicker
hard disk).  The only advantage of converting an F40 would be that you MIGHT be able to
fit an extra battery in there next to the CF adapter.   If you get the cradle note that the
F10/20 cradle WON'T fit the F40/60 players (there are TWO sizes of cradle).  You don't really
need the cradle, though it does provide a line out function for playing the unit through an
external amp (maybe a better impedance match than using the headphone jack.)  I'm not
sure if the player volume control varies the line out level. (haven't tried this yet)

To open the player up to swap out the HD just pop off the bottom plate, remove two screws and
then slide the back down and lift off (it has a bayonet like latch holding it on).  The HD is wrapped
in a soft rubber jacket that holds it in place.

Here are two F10's on ebay now
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270205522252&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1123
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170187486427&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1123

[johnson4]

how is the gigabeat's response to rockboy doom and mpegplayer? is it noticable in any way to using a HD?
thanks

[scharkalvin]

how is the gigabeat's response to rockboy doom and mpegplayer? is it noticable in any way to using a HD?
thanks

I haven't tried putting any videos on my converted player yet.  Maybe I'll get to do that over the weekend.
I have a few youtube videos (bugs bunny cartoons!) converted to mpegs on my HD F40 I can transfer to the
"F16"

BTW the CF card on the gigabeat needed to have scandisk run on it as the directory got corrupted yesterday and my config file disappeared.  (scandisk fixed this, but then I had to rebuild the database.  don't think I lost
any music files though).  Does linux FSCK work like scandisk with fat32 file systems? (ie: can you USE fsck with a fat32 file system?)

[GodEater]

Does linux FSCK work like scandisk with fat32 file systems? (ie: can you USE fsck with a fat32 file system?)

You'd use "fsck.vfat"

[larry_llama]

Cool, thanks for the tips re: toshiba. I got the mini on Friday and with the original 4gb drive it's snappier with rockbox than the h320. The gigabeat looks great but it's physically comparable in size to the h1x series irivers... I like the idea of the metal body and size of the mini. I hate ipods but this form factor is pretty slick I have to say.

The only problems so far with the mini have been related to booting it. It's very awkward to get it to boot into disk mode, maybe I'm off with my button timing. And if I boot into rockbox while it's plugged into USB, it just repeatedly reboots.... weird. Occasionally it doesn't recognize me hitting the play button to start it up and i have to do a two-finger salute (reset) to get it to power on.

I am going to test it out with my 512 CF card this week and if all goes well, I'll try to get a big kahuna CF (32 or if I can't find it, 16).

Newegg doesn't ship to Canada unfortunately. However I am going to vegas in a week and a half, incidentally does anyone on here know of a store there where I might find one (save myself some tax and shipping). It's a long shot but it can't hurt to ask!