Hello Rockbox community,
I thought I post my experiences with updating my ipod 5.5g to Rockbox 3.8 where I had some troubles and hope the information is somehow useful to other users.
When I saw, that a new version of Rockbox was available, I plugged my ipod to my computer and launched Rockbox-Utility 1.2.8. I checked the box to make a backup of the existing installation and chose install stable rockbox version. After finishing the installation I safely removed the device and when it tried to boot a white screen with "data abort at ...." in the upper left corner appeared. Only a hard reset could power it off, but the data abort message appeared again on the next boot attempt. But I could boot the apple firmware and checkdisk gave me no errors.
So I connected the device to my computer again using the apple firmware and tried to reinstall the bootloader and rockbox again using Rockbox-Utility. After power on the rockbox bootscreen appeared and a text reading "scanning disc" appeared on the screen and then nothing. It stuck. Only a hard reset could power the device off again. Powering it on, the same thing happened. I tried to clear the settings by sliding the hold button a little bit later than when I want to boot the apple firmware, but it still stuck in the boot screen. But pressing "menu" when the apple logo became bright managed to successfully boot rockbox and my settings were still present. On more try to power off and on gave me the same result, but after three or four times booting rockbox booted normally without any button presses.
Then I saw, that the database was not ready and I let it reinitialize, but without success. The disk kept spinning, but the screen was black. A few attempts more (with hard resets again, because nothing else worked) and finally rockbox 3.8 works as it should. I am glad, that my ipod survived that many hard resets.
I hope someone finds this information useful. And sorry for this huge post.
Maybe someone can explain, what exactly happened here from the technical point of view.
Greetings c_k.