H320/340 Car compatible custom bootloader build. (Update: Added cradle support)

[XavierGr]

Does the latest one has the RTC wake up alarm function enabled?

Thanks for your work, I will put one of my H300's in my car, with the power cable always plugged in. That way when the engine starts (and the power cable set to on) the player will start automatically and start playing music.

Edit: Just saw the patch, it seems it is not enabled. Against which revision of rockbox is your patch?

[pwhodges]

USB bootloader mode doesn't work for me either in this version, but the patches themselves work as advertised.

Paul

[fatoldpig]

Pretty sure I used the second link.

However, now my h340 refuses to get past the voltage reading with a normal start (just hitting play, no cables).

Hopefully my HDD isn't starting to die.  Might have something to do with the cold weather though.

EDIT:

Righto, managed to get it into rockbox by booting it holding A-B as well (no cable though).
Then reflashed with the second link just incase and it seems to work now 

Hopefully it stays working.  I'm guessing it was getting stuck in a loop or something previously as the hard drive would spin up and keep spinning constantly but didn't boot.

EDIT 2 (29/7):
Seems to be doing it again.  But:

I think I've narrowed the problem down.  The USB boot works fine except when the player has been shutdown by the "Idle Power-Off" timer.  After Idle Power-Off it just keeps freezing at the Voltage display regardless if I start it by plugging in the charger, USB cable or just normal power-on.

To fix it, I booted into the original firmware, plugged the USB in to connect it to the computer, then unplugged it and turned it off.  From then the USB booting works fine again.  I might download the code and have a look.

EDIT 3:
Yep....it seems to be a problem with the Idle Power-Off setting.  Maybe it's just my iriver doing it.  I'm getting the most current Rockbox build just incase it was fixed.

i'm having the same symptoms. my h140 won't power up anymore so i'm trying to use my h320 and i only use in my car.

[fatoldpig]

i can't boot into roxbox anymore with this firmware. it just freezes on the voltage screen. i really like to be able to boot to rockbox with the car adapter plugged in. please help!!

[lwizard]

it seems that the problem is not in the patch but in the new bootlader svn.
Why noy appling the patch to the official firmware release? (v5)

[larry_llama]

My trusty car unit died (rockbox'd ipod mini) and I've dug out my old 320 to use it in the car - does anyone have these patches still? the links are dead. I would love for the unit to boot on power on. I had my ipod mini set up this way and it was just fantastic.

Also, my battery is completely dead in this unit and it's hard to boot it up since it tends to dislike booting rockbox when the power is applied. It seems like if I unplug it and hold power on while plugging it in then it works. It's kind of a pain though. In a perfect world, I would have it automatically boot to rockbox upon applying power, and when power removed it would pause and then shut down within 10 seconds (I get maybe 30 seconds of playback on this battery)

Any help is appreciated - if you have the patches or better yet the old patched bootloader that would be just great.

Thanks!

[massiveH]

My trusty car unit died (rockbox'd ipod mini) and I've dug out my old 320 to use it in the car - does anyone have these patches still? the links are dead. I would love for the unit to boot on power on. I had my ipod mini set up this way and it was just fantastic.

Also, my battery is completely dead in this unit and it's hard to boot it up since it tends to dislike booting rockbox when the power is applied. It seems like if I unplug it and hold power on while plugging it in then it works. It's kind of a pain though. In a perfect world, I would have it automatically boot to rockbox upon applying power, and when power removed it would pause and then shut down within 10 seconds (I get maybe 30 seconds of playback on this battery)

Any help is appreciated - if you have the patches or better yet the old patched bootloader that would be just great.

Thanks!

I found my old H340, dusted it off, and it had the patched firmware still in the root    It appears my post on the wiki about this seems to have been removed for some reason...  I can't believe this functionality was never added to the official build, maybe people just didn't care...  Oh well, here is the file.

h300.hex with mod MD5: c4c8e80a5cc89c80aa306060118fb519

[larry_llama]

Thanks! I'm going to give it a try. I'm very excited you were still monitoring this. I thought it was a long shot...

[guzzi75]

Thanks also, i looked to your mod unsuccessfully until now.
I wanted to give it a try.

[larry_llama]

I tried it and had some problems - namely the boot froze at the battery voltage line.

Then I used the rockbox installer to re-install the current stable build. But your patch must have remained because it does boot upon application of power now.

Occasionally I get an error such as i0b:line-f at bootup. If I turn the machine off and then plug the power in again, it seems to boot fine the second time. I can't discern a pattern yet of what causes that error.

Thanks again for putting this together. I'm assuming development of this target has slowed to a stop but if any devs are listening, it certainly would be nice for the official bootloader to allow for boot-on-power-connect 

THanks again!

[massiveH]

Glad to have helped.  That link should remain, didn't use crappy rapidshare this time...

[larry_llama]

So - I get that error every time I start up if the player has been off for more than a few minutes. If it's only been powered down for a short time, the wake-on-power works fine. I'll look deeper into this when I have more time to spend on it :-)

[galapogos01]

I realise this is a bit of a thread mine, but will try my luck anyway as it's the most relevant thread.

I did a similar mod to this firmware a while back, to get the H340 to direct boot and restart playback when the ignition was turned on in my car (i'd connected an appropriately wired charger to the DC input of the H300).  It's worked well for approx 10 years.

I recently got a new head unit with USB functionality, and would like the H300 to start up, charge and present itself as a USB disk when power is applied.

• With the stock firmware, the device starts charging and requires you to hit Play to get it to boot and present as a drive.
• With a v5 rockbox bootloader, the device boots straight into USB bootloader mode, which does not charge.
  
• With the firmware in this thread, the device boots into Rockbox *but does not charge*.  The charge indicators do not appear unless you unplug and replug the USB cable.  I am using Rockbox 3.12.  USB Charge setting has been tried on Enabled and Forced.
  
• With the SVN firmware the device is semi-bricked on a white screen.  To recover it, I hard-reset the device with HOLD enabled and a DC charger plugged in (this was found via trial and error in a desperate attempt to bring it back to life).
  

Any ideas on the best way to achieve my desired outcome?  I think this firmware is close, but need the rockbox build to correctly enable the charge function on bootup.  Alternately I could try to hack the USB charge function into the bootloader, but as the svn bootloader is busted this wont work.

Cheers,
Jason

[galapogos01]

Long story short;

I found this post -- http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=24215.15 -- The previous known ok bootloader: 19309.  To check out this revision using git,

git reset --hard 815998c6693998b7d7a3a523058ff0988e735d27

I then edited the bootloader to call usb_charging_enable(true); right before the USB bootloader loop; this allows the device to charge successfully! 

Calling it before handing off to Rockbox did not resolve bullet point three above; Rockbox must be resetting the GPIO pins, causing the charge mode to disable if USB is inserted when Rockbox boots.  Bug?

Cheers,
Jason

[galapogos01]

PPS:  If you brick your player with a bad SVN firmware, this trick worked for me to get back into the stock firmware.

Plug DC input into player, boot player to hang, enable hold, then hit reset button.