iPod Photo (4th Gen): Trouble Booting

[Tron]

Hello All,

I hope this is the correct forum for, well, sort of a hardware question. I love Rockbox and try to use it on a 4th Gen. iPod Photo, which is basically not the problem. Rockbox boots and plays - perfect. However, switching the player off from within Rockbox switches it off completely, if I'm not mistaken, whereas the original firmware only places it into a hibernation mode.

The problem I have is that after that shutdown the device often does not want to boot. I sometimes get a symbol depicting a battery with an exclamation mark in a triangle, but not always. The battery as well as the HD-controller have been replaced recently. So, when I try to reboot the device it proves stubbornly unresponsive, taking several minutes and tens of tries until it starts up again. As long as Rockbox is running, everything is fine. All keys are responsive, so I don't think it's a broken key.

Needless to say, when using the original firmware, the device reliably goes to sleep and wakes up again, but with Rockbox it's just not acceptable to try to start it (I use it on my motorbike, and my pals are waiting to ride on...)

So, what's your guess? Faulty hardware? Bad code for shutdown/bootup?

[dreamlayers]

I think that's the following bug:  http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/task/10107 .   The patch there provides an effective workaround.

[Tron]

Hi!

Yes, that was exactly what I was looking for, somehow that thread has eluded me. My problem was the mentioned "bug" and I got me the 3.3 sourcecode, patched it, and it compiled cleanly, runs fine and does no longer lock up on boot. Thanks a million!

I just wonder why that patch hasn't found its way into the "official" builds yet...

[dreamlayers]

I feel that the patch is a workaround or kludge and so I'm not sure if it's appropriate for me to commit it.  Comments from more experienced Rockbox developers are welcome.

[Tron]

Well, yes, of couse it's a workaround. But if, as mentioned in the bug report, "most people here believe this is a bug in Apple firmware in flash, and not a bug in Rockbox", and the fault is really in Apple's firmware, what can you do about it except using a workaround?

I suppose that many users, who run Rockbox on their iPods, experience the same nuisance. And not everyone is able to compile his own Rockbox version from source.

Anyway, thanks again for your quick and competent help and for Rockbox in general.

[Llorean]

Yes, it may be a workaround. But some workarounds are good, and some are bad. A "kludge" usually denotes that he feels its a bad workaround that could possibly be done better.