Problems sometimes turning on 30gb Ipod Video

[DanTheMan]

So I did some searches and couldnt find anything about this but like 75-80% of the time to Turn my Rockboxed Ipod on I need to hold Menu+Select. While other times by just holding select it will turn on just fine.  The manual says Menu/Select so maybe I'm reading it wrong but that would be either or not both.  I read that the Pods can freeze during shutdown that would make it that i need to force restart to turn it back on.  Anywho just needing some clarification/help to fix the problem.

Cliffs- Normally need to force a restart to just turn it on
30gb Ipod Video
Newest Rockbox Installed with Utility
No real changes other than turning on Shuffle, Repeat, Database enabled
Will forcing Restart to turn on cause any forseeable damages.
Battery will still be like 75-90% charged battery level doesnt matter happens with 90% to 15%

[Chronon]

Does your battery drain while it's "off"?  This would be an indication that it has frozen without shutting down.  There also seem to be cases where Apple's bootloader will choke at boot time.  Forcing a restart shouldn't cause any problems, as that's Apple's own advice if their firmware locks up.

I don't have an iPod anymore.  But I would experience this sporadically with both the 5g and Nano.  I haven't had any such problems with the players I use Rockbox on now.

[DanTheMan]

sometimes the battery drains sometimes it doesn't.  I haven't really paid attention to it.  Also when I upgraded to v3 RB i uninstalled the bootloader and rockbox 100% via Utility then reinstalled it via Utility to see if that fixed it.  It hasnt.  Hrm any ideas on how to fix the freeze issue if that is the case? Maybe any settings changes someone might recommend?

[Chronon]

If the problems with booting stem from Apple's bootloader, then there's not much we can do short of writing our own in-flash bootloader and replacing their bootloader and emergency disk mode with our own.  If the problem lies in Rockbox failing to properly shut down, then this is something that we can address. 

I (and I think most others here) suspect Apple's bootloader of causing this failure-to-boot problem.  Any pattern to this behavior that you can detect would be helpful in deducing where the problem lies.

[DanTheMan]

Will watch it more closely for you guys.   Just tell me what you need me to watch/report.

[Chronon]

Well, you would have to show that the problem happens at power down (while Rockbox is running), not during boot time (when Apple's code is running).

[DanTheMan]

Right... no clue how to do that.  Anywho i'll least show try and log battery drain and such.

[Chronon]

I remember a few builds early on in the Gigabeat port that would sometimes hang while shutting down.  But this was easy to see because the LCD didn't turn off: The backlight goes off, but there's still an image on the screen.   However, according to my memory, the iPod offers no such behavior.  It always seemed to really be off to me.  Occasionally, my 5g and my Nano would refuse to turn on without doing the key combination for the hard reset.  But I didn't really have any indication that they were failing to turn off.  I never noticed battery drain while off, either.  For those reasons I have always suspected a flaw in Apple's bootloader.

Additionally, people who don't use Rockbox also experience problems with this sometimes.  Here's Apple's own support page for when your iPod won't turn on: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1383?viewlocale=en_US

One reason that you will see this behavior more often when using Rockbox is that Apple doesn't actually turn off the hardware.  They just enter a sleep mode.  For this reason, their bootloader will execute much more often when you use Rockbox than it would during normal usage with the Apple firmware.