Third Party > Repairing and Upgrading Rockbox Capable Players

240GB mSata in iRiver H320

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michaelbowe:
I have had success upgrading my iRiver H320 with a  Mushkin Atlas 240GB SSD mSATA SATA3 MKNSSDAT240GB-DX mini-SATA PCI-Express Mini (to give it its full name).

Unlike the Toshiba 128GB mSATA, I tried previously, this unit is SATA 3 not SATA 2. It shouldn't have made a difference because the Mushkin SSD is backwardly compatable with 3GB/s. I used a mSATA to ZIF card to mount the SSD and then connected it up with a ZIF to 1.8" Toshiba converter (these are again available  on eBay).

I initially had trouble booting Rockbox with the bootloader, a modded 1.30K, when I tried it so I started clean and loaded up Rockbox using the 1.29K original firmware. On initial start up, I kept getting ATA -42 errors. On reboot, these would become ATA -11 errors ("insert USB and press any button"). I reconfirmed everything was tight and secure in the case and tried again. Same ATA -11 problem.

After some thought, I came to the conclusion that there may be a problem with power draw on start up. The other issue that became apparent is that the error message will not clear unless the original firmware is booted into, then the battery needed a little charge time. After shutting down gracefully the H320 would boot up into Rockbox OK.

Rockbox was fairly unstable though and would hang, requiring reset, reboot into the OF and shutdown. The battery on this unit is pretty old and Rockbox was a lot more stable with the charger inserted. Interestingly, in USB mode, transfer is not very stable and the unit hangs after about the first GB or so. All of which I put down to power handling. So a new battery is my next step.

Peak current use on the Mushkin is 1.0 A, or a power use of 3.3W. Although not large, it is 83% greater than the Toshiba mSATA  I was using before, and it could be a possible problem for the iRiver H300 especially with an old battery. For future larger capacity upgrades, I will be keeping a close eye on peak power use.

The H320 is very nice with this upgrade. Database consolidation seems to be almost instant. USB transfer for a 10MB file is 24.6 MB/S (write) and 25.4 MB/S (read). Write speed drops to about 14 MB/S for a 1 GB file but read speed remains the same. And of course, there is plenty of storage capacity. There is  223GB usable storage.

All in all, the Toshiba 128 GB mSATA SSD upgrade was far more robust but this little Mushkin card should be good after the battery is replaced.

michaelbowe:
Just an update: I think that there is more than a battery issue with this mSATA drive. I get consistent ATA -11 issues or the occasional ATA -42 error (what is that?). The drive and the associated card get quite warm even when there is no apparent activity. Rockbox remains very fragile when I get it to run, for instance, when it is playing a file, if I pause then the "playing now" screen remains on instead of reverting to the files view and I cannot resume play. Also it will hang sometimes while loading files.

I have changed over the adapter, the player (to an H340 with a good battery) and the boot loader to see if there is a any connection issue. The bootloader generated automatically by Rockbox (current release) is still the most problem free with this mod.

So, the problem seems to be the mSATA. Surprising when I consider how easily the conversion to the smaller Toshiba mSATA 128GB SSD went. I wonder if the problem is similar to the issues that Torne dealt with on the iPod recently.

Is there a plan to incorporate Torne's mods into Rockbox more generally (or for the iRiver H300/H100 more specifically)?

wodz:
What do you mean by "The bootloader generated automatically by Rockbox (current release)" exactly? H300 bootloader from git HEAD is considered broken for quite some time.

Torne's work is strictly PortalPlayer based DAPs related so this does not apply here.

I suspect that power draw is the root of problems. HDD can take more then 1A but usually only for short period during spinup. DC/DC converters in DAPs of that era were usually rated around 1A. However without actual measurements this are only speculations.

michaelbowe:
I didn't use an older bootloader (such as r17607m which works well on the Toshiba mSATA upgrade), instead I used Rockbox utility and pointed it to the iRiver 1.29K firmware.

Torne has been working on an mSATA modification to iPods http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,42523.0.html and I thought that there may be some relationship between the two problems - possibly PIO mode.

If the issue is around power consumption then I will need to select my next mSATA candidate very carefully. I'm curious that that the Toshiba should work so well and the Mushkin SSD not.

wodz:
I am pretty much aware on what Torne is working. As I said his work is irrelevant here as H300 is based on MCF5249/50 and not PortalPlayer chip. Sure you can tweak IDE timing on H300 as well but since we have datasheet for the 5249/50 chip we are pretty sure to be within specs.

The thing about power consumption is ONLY my speculation. This should be confirmed with proper measurements to be sure.

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