Sandisk Clip Sport

[saratoga]

Otherwise, no sense being bothered if you're not going to do something about it.

Well, if Rockbox only exists for developers who are willing to only use hardware built in the previous decade, I guess you're right.

Rockbox exists to run on whichever devices people want to port it to.

[[Saint]]

Well, if Rockbox only exists for developers who are willing to only use hardware built in the previous decade, I guess you're right.   

Is this another "everyone else but me should do the work that I want done" rant?

Sure seems like it.

If everyone took that attitude, this project wouldn't ever exist.

Fact is, Rockbox developers work on what they want to, when they want to, because it interests them. They're not here to meet demands or be chastised because they're not currently working on <insert_device_here>.

If Rockbox on a Clip Sport is so dear to you, make it so, and then come and tell us we were wrong.


[Saint]

[Astrogoth]

The Zip and + are out of production. When sources of used/referb Clips dry up you will then see interest in porting RB over to the Sport. That should be shortly.

[asim0]

The Zip and + are out of production.

I don't think so:
http://www.sandisk.com/products/music-video-players/

And my guess is they won't be anytime soon since they are still best sellers on e.g. amazon (in particular the +)
http://www.google.fr/url?url=http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Electronics-MP3-Players/zgbs/electronics/1264866011

[[Saint]]

While I'm not taking any particular side here, I feel I should point out that:

"Is currently available for purchase" != "still in production".

It would not surprise me one bit if SanDisk had a mountain of these little turds sitting in a storage unit somewhere.
In fact, they're obliged to, to honour warranty claims.

You should also note that the _overwhelming_ majority of the devices in the Amazon link you supplied are factory refurbished models. While that doesn't necessarily imply they're out of production, its a far cry from even reasonably recently when refurbished devices were virtually unheard of. Now they outnumber new devices (at least as represented from third party sales) by an order of magnitude.

I don't think its safe to say that these devices are still in active production, at all.


Regarding the Sport, the sources of new/used/refurbished devices drying up isn't going to have an appreciable impact on porting to this device.
It really says something when all of our interested active developers look at it and jointly decide that a port is infeasible.

Actually, it really says the most when SanDisk had to absolutely butcher their original firmware and strip it back to the bare metal in order to get it to run on the device.

At the end of the day, it comes down to the fact that a port to this device, if it were even possible (and there's a debate around that) at all, would be a MASSIVE amount of work for a sub-par end result. This device doesn't have (as far as we're aware) the capabilities to do very much with Rockbox at all.

If we humour ourselves and assume this is possible, Rockbox on this device would be a VERY different creature to what you're used to.

I posit theme support would be non-existent (we would overflow the known available resources with a single bitmap backdrop, let alone the two fullscreen bitmaps the theme engine keeps in RAM full-time).
Album art (embedded or otherwise) would likely be completely out of the question also.
I'm not certain but its possible that we'd lose the ability to do realtime playback of several codecs.

The long and the short of it is that at this stage no one is interested in undertaking several hundred man hours work to come out with something that is largely inferior when there are many other much more interesting and capable devices to work with.

You are of course free to discover this yourself, and you are encouraged to.

I shall be looking forward to your submission proving me wrong.


[Saint]

[newuser11]

wow this really sucks. ive been using this shit for like 6 years. if i had any developing skills id be working on this. all i really care about is the sound options. i went to replace my clip on warranty and this is all they had left.

[Strife89]

wow this really sucks. ive been using this shit for like 6 years. if i had any developing skills id be working on this. all i really care about is the sound options. i went to replace my clip on warranty and this is all they had left.

SanDisk - and only SanDisk, from what I can tell - seemingly still has new-in-box Clip Zips for sale - remnants of the "mountain" [Saint] mentioned. EDIT: Annnnnd they're gone, but some might still be in circulation.

The sad truth is that smartphones have almost totally sent dedicated PMPs to the fate of the dodo, and I wager that most of us have accepted that the used market is the best bet for replacement units - whether they run Rockbox or not.

[Astrogoth]

Agreed, with one small issue. The current Android spec doesn't include Micro SD cards and therefore neither do most Android hardware makers. My own Moto X has no MSD slots and I sure miss them. Until that changes there won't be a big swell in HiFi music on phones or tablets. 

[saratoga]

Agreed, with one small issue. The current Android spec doesn't include Micro SD cards and therefore neither do most Android hardware makers.

There is no spec (one way or the other) for sd cards, but I think more devices than not support them.  Its mainly just moto and nexus devices that don't.  Buy one that has SD if you want it.

[[Saint]]

The Internet is my sdcard.

Fact is, physical sdcards in mobile need to die. The next thing that needs to die is emulated sdcard support in Android for legacy support. This, in time, will happen.

Best to get used to that now.

I really don't want to get into a heated discussion in a thread that has no business hosting such a discussion, so I guess you'll just either have to take me on my word that its a hilariously bad idea for a number of reasons, or...don't.



[Saint]

[greatjack]

Sorry to bring this up again, but i saw in irc that wodz has been working on atj port. I though such a thing was not possible due to ram constraints, can someone clarify?

[saratoga]

ATJ is a family with a large number of processors in it.  wodz was probably talking about a port to a device with more memory than the clip sport.