Am I the only one having problems?

[jorj]

You didn't answer what your "File View" setting is set to. This is very probably the answer to your "I can't find my files" problem.

Please, calm down, take your time, and try to describe your problems clearly. "Losing audio" means "The volume goes to mute" or "Playback pauses" or "Every indication on the screen suggests audio is still playing, but I hear nothing"? How do you "restart" the song? By re-playing it in the database or by manually stopping playback and then selecting "Resume Playback" from the menu (the database isn't really a 'menu', it's the database, so your use of 'menu' leaves me uncertain as to what specifically you're referring to there). It helps if you try to describe things much more clearly, so I can actually know what's going on, and please, try to answer all of my questions if I ask them, as I usually ask for good reason.

Sorry, didnt answer the "File View" question because I am too new to realize that there was a menu option called that. After checking that, you were completely correct. Somehow that got changed perhaps in the strange menu that sometimes appears when pressing the menu button while a song is playing. Appreciate that suggestion would NEVER have thought to look there for that type of problem, guess RB is more flexible that I realized.

Loosing audio = Play symbol present, I hear nothing, the track progress stays at 0 and the graphic never moves.. Pressing pause changes the symbol to the pause symbol then play changes the symbol only.
this one can be reliably reproduced by attempting to play a previously played song. I press the prev button twice and loose all sound.

I realize that the database is not a menu thats why i specifically stated database. When sound is lost (as above) I can sometimes get it back by going through the menu and selecting database then traverse back to the song and select it to play. I have found no way to resume from where it was - but that would be irrelevant to what I was attempting to achieve.
Stopping playback with the pause button and then play just continues with no audio. Pausing playback (I assume that you are not saying that there is actually a stop playback button or menu item) and then selecting resume playback from the menu does not affect the lost audio.

Updated to the newest (at the time) RB yesterday (r17218-080422). At first I thought the problems had gone away, no such luck. But it played correctly for almost a half hour before it started doing the same things as before. A reboot did not give me another half hour (used same playlist as a benchmark). After several reboots all results the same -- cant get all the way through one song before skipping songs in a loop. Have determined that it really is thinking that a button is being pressed by going to a menu while it is misbehaving -- the results of this is it automatically selects submenues and even took me to parts of the menu I had never previously seen. While doing this in a menu I would have thought that it would have started playing whatever song was last "auto" selected, but it did not. As usual a reboot was the only way to get control back. Are there any debuggin log files I should enable or look at or attach?

[pondlife]

It does sound like a hardware fault to me.  Weird that it will seem to start working ok, then get progressively worse.  When it's acting insane, does a reboot cure the problem or does that only happen if you shut down the device (and maybe leave it for a short while)?  (I'm wondering if something is overheating slightly...)

Also, have you tried resetting your settings to default?

Rockbox doesn't have any dynamic memory allocation (no malloc), so memory leaks are unlikely.

pondlife

[jorj]

It would sound like a hardware fault to me if it ever happens using the OF.
A reboot doesnt cure anything, just lets me try again
Overheating a little WOULD have sounded likely to me yesterday, but...
I left the unit on over night, it was locked up this morning so I rebooted it. It played without incident for almost an hour when I had to leave (I left it playing). Was locked up when I got back several hours later. I rebooted it again and have been listening to music for over 2 hours so far. I have been browsing the menues and changing options to see if I can cause it to start flaking out - I want to see what happens if I lock the buttons while RB thinks someone is pressing the buttons. I am assuming that the buttons cease to function when the switch is "off" because RB is checking the switch, if that is the case, then RB "should" not execute the keypresses when off. I also noticed that the keyclick (set to moderate) does NOT click when it screws up even though it accepts the presses and shows still set to moderate in the menu. Nice to have it working for a while anyway although I wish it would mess up a few times to let me test several ideas I had. I took your suggestion to reset config files (should have been one of the first things I thought of) so if it never goes insane again I will assume that something was wrong there.

[pondlife]

Did you reset settings to default yet?  I would particularly turn off the keyclick as the beep/click code doesn't work properly on PortalPlayer devices (including iPods) and there's a small chance it's corrupting things... be interesting to find out...!

pondlife

[Chronon]

I took your suggestion to reset config files (should have been one of the first things I thought of) so if it never goes insane again I will assume that something was wrong there.

[jorj]

Turning keyclick off did not appear to help. But some other testing was interesting...

1) Played a playlist in RB until it started going insane.
1a) Locked the buttons out while going insane.
2) Played for 18 Hours until I shut it down - no problems.

Conclusion:
  Must be a hardware problem with the buttons pressing themselves.

3) Played the same playlist in OF with the lock button in the unlocked position to see this hardware error happen there. played all night and all day while at work
Was STILL playing when I got home. I have listened to it for several hours with no adverse effects.

Conclusion:
  Previous conclusion was wrong.

Guess:
  Perhaps the OF handles the debounce of keys differently. Mabey this phantom keypress is normal for this model and the OF can spot the difference.

Final Conclusion:
  I now know how to get RB to play my songs and playlists. Even though it is cumbersome to have to remember to unlock it each time I want to make a change in the somg selection, skip a song, adjust the volume, It is not a severe enough problem to make me go back to the OF full time. The only REAL problem now is that if the phantom keystrokes happen to be hitting when I unlock it -- who knows what it will select or what menu options it will change? Anyway, I'll live with it this way until a change is implemented that squashes this bug. Dang! Looked like it really was a hardware problem, but a hardware problem that only exists under a single firmware makes the firmware at least a little guilty.  Like microsofts java bug, many of the other browsers had to impliment the "bug" to be compatible..

-- Preciate the quick and usefull responses I received here. Great forum. When things slow down for me a little - might download the source and see if I can track this thing down on a more technical level. Assume it is written in C, C++, or another language that I already know? - Later

[yapper]

might download the source and see if I can track this thing down on a more technical level. Assume it is written in C, C++, or another language that I already know?

If you do decide to take the plunge, you might start looking at button-1g-3g.c (at firmware\target\arm\ipod within the source). In particular there is a delay that was tweaked from 250 down to 50 compared with the ipodlinux code, which appeared to be fine (presumably on 'good' hardware) but this might be making it more prone to the issue you describe. The original value of 250 was described as causing the wheel to stop working when spinning it real fast, so the optimal might be < 250 and > 50.