Newbie Sansa C250 issues w/Rockbox 3.3

[nerdrunner]

Outstanding software!  Thanks to everyone for an incredible resource.

I particularly like the ability to play MIDI files & the ability to speed up mp3 playback ("pitch" capability).  I can store a HUGE number of .mid files because they take up virtually no room.  I algorithmically construct special MIDI files to aid in sports training, so MIDI playback capability is really great.  I would, however, like to be able to adjust the master clock to control the overall speed of the MIDI playback from within Rockbox.

Also, there are a huge number of MIDI files disguised as "karaoke" files (".kar"); the Rockbox midi player needs to recognize the .kar extension, as well.  (Eventually, the Rockbox midi player should "play" the lyrics, too, but right now it would be trivial to at least play the music.)

"Pitch" is useful for listening to podcasts, as most podcasts are still understandable at 125-150% of normal speed.

I wanted to purchase a player specifically for Rockbox & was able to find a new c250v1 for the price of its new battery + shipping!

I wasted some time "upgrading" the standard Sansa firmware, only to find that the newer firmware doesn't allow you to access the c250's disk space directly.  So I had to find some old firmware & get it installed before I could communicate via the USB port & install the Rockbox SW.  ***You might put a warning about the Sansa "upgraded" firmware in the documentation so that others don't have to spend an hour or two figurating out how to do this.***

I.  My most urgent problem is that when Rockbox plays podcast mp3's from the uSD card (this is probably true also for mp3's on the c250 itself), Rockbox sometimes hangs 20-25 minutes into the playback.  The screen is still on, the title is still scrolling, but playback has stopped and none of the buttons do anything.  The only way to recover is to pull out the battery & reinsert.

My best guess is that this is related to some sort of _memory leak_ or _memory corruption_ issue, since it takes so long for the problem to make itself evident.

II.  Rockbox needs to handle "delete file" better & automatically clean up its playback buffers & database.  For example, both the Motorola ROKR cellphone mp3 player and the "pTunes" for the Palm Treo are capable of gracefully handling deleted files.  Both of these players check to see if the file being deleted is the file that is playing (the _most common_ scenario!), and if so, they stop the playback & do the right thing to delete the file from the file system and the database.

I hope that these two problems (especially the first) are relatively easy to fix.

nerdrunner

[Chronon]

Welcome.  

The issue about MSC mode missing from some versions of the original firmware is mentioned in the FAQ for the Sansa. 
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SansaFAQ#My_c200_doesn_t_have_an_MSC_Mode

Dealing with a frozen player is also mentioned in the FAQ:
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SansaFAQ#My_unit_is_frozen_do_I_have_to_r

I. You might want to verify whether the same problem occurs for files stored in the internal storage.  Also, does this happen with other codecs as well?  Does a file system check (like chkdsk or fsck.vfat) return errors when you scan your uSD card?

II. Can you describe more clearly what problem you're having with deleting the currently playing track?  I just deleted a track that was currently playing (it had already been buffered) and had no problems.  The file is really gone from the file system.  Do you have your database set to automatically update?


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By the way, you should be able to open an unassociated file type with a viewer by choosing "Open with" from the context menu.

[nerdrunner]

I tracked the uSD card playback problems to the uSD card itself.  Somehow, the card had become corrupted.  I tried reading the files on the card using the PC and an SD card reader, and found that many files could not be read.  I transferred from the uSD card to the computer all the files that could be read; then I reformatted the card & copied the files back.

Things seem to be working now.

In the process of testing, I upgraded to Rockbox r21884-090715.  The upgrade itself didn't affect anything, but reformatting the uSD card did.

I don't think that this lets Rockbox off the hook completely, because many of the files that were corrupted were files that I had previously tried to delete using Rockbox itself.

I guess for the moment I'm retracting the bug report unless I can reproduce the bug that corrupted the uSD card again.

It is also conceivable that the uSD card itself is failing -- I'll find that out if more files become corrupted without any action on my part.

[Chronon]

As I said, I have no problems deleting a file that's currently playing.  Inability to delete a file properly could signal already present damage to the file system.

[AlexP]

Files that are playing are deleted just fine.  They continue playing as they have already been buffered to memory, but they are gone from disk.  Whether they disappear from the database depends on whether it has been updated since you deleted the file.

[nerdrunner]

Since I have already upgraded to r21884-090715, I'll talk about that version.

It appears that the previous posting re playback hanging may not be Rockbox's problem.  My 2GB uSD card was not only corrupted, but apparently permanently damaged.

After trying a different 1GB uSD card, everything seems to be working just fine.

Rather than simply hang when Rockbox has trouble reading from a f ile, it might be nice to complain with some sort of error message.

Thx.

[saratoga]

Rather than simply hang when Rockbox has trouble reading from a f ile, it might be nice to complain with some sort of error message.

Usually hardware failure simply crashes the device, so its not possible to display an error.