Sorting out information from (old?) desinformation gathered from the internet...

[mcc01]

Hi,

This is my first posting into this forum. I am no native english speaker.
I have read about ROCKbox in the internet. Some sources were older some newer.
Partly they were contradictionary.
I own a iriver T60 4GB and found a link to a T60 port of ROCKbox ... but really more
as just this link and soe details of my T60.

IS there a working port or isn't there any?

A couple of othere questions:
Concerning the group of Sansa Clip (+,1,2,ZIP,...)-family of players:
Is it possible to do a timed record of the FM radion of the players?
And if yes: Does the player need to be 'fully ON' til that point of time?
Where can I get reliable informations about what player to buy
of the Sansa Clip *-fmaily of players in regrad to their sound quality,
radio reception quality and ROCKboxability?
And: Is it possible to get replacement LiPOs for that players other than
by sending the player to Sandisk fpr repair?
Thank you very much for any help in advance!
Best regards,
mcc

[saratoga]

http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/TargetStatus#New_Platforms_Currently_Under_Development

[mcc01]

Hi Saratoga,

thanks for the link!

After reading the partly outdated (dead links) informations
about the T60 the following questions remain unanswered to me:

Concerning the group of Sansa Clip (+,1,2,ZIP,...)-family of players:
Is it possible to do a timed record of the FM radion of the players?
And if yes: Does the player need to be 'fully ON' til that point of time?
Where can I get reliable informations about what player to buy
of the Sansa Clip *-fmaily of players in regrad to their sound quality,
radio reception quality and ROCKboxability?
And: Is it possible to get replacement LiPOs for that players other than
by sending the player to Sandisk fpr repair?

Thank you very much in advance for any help!
Best regards,
mcc

[Serenity]

Hi!

As far as I know, the Sansa Clip family of players cannot be set to record at a certain time (a scheduled record time). Once recording, you can specify the length of the recording (you can start recording an FM broadcast and program the player to stop after an hour, etc.).

I can't find replacement batteries for these players, but they should be available. It's likely they're soldered to the mainboard, though.

I have a Sansa Clip Zip, and I'm very happy with its functionality and sound quality in Rockbox.

[mcc01]

Hi Serenity,

thank you very much for answering my questions.
I think I can replace an old battery by a new one via soldering
(I solder a lot ... the only "problem" is getting hands on a new battery
itsself without spending half the price of the player or more. I HATE to
dispose """not working""" electronics only because the battery
is old. I HATE it!

Sorting out the scheduled recording "problem":
I read over the Sansa clip zip manual and it says there is a
kind of alarm clock to wake up the player itsself. This /sounds/ like
(ok, I am talking like a blind person of colors here) the basic
hardware requirement (a sleep/idle mode from which the player
can be waked up based on time) is there.
Am I wrong if would state, that scheduled recordings are a
(fixable) "problem" of the software instead of being impossible
due to missing hardware features (Sansa Clip Zip)?

(PS: THIS IS ***NO*** IMPLIED CRITISM IN DIRECTION
OF THE ROCKBOX DEVELOPPERS!!!)

Have a nice day!
Best regards,
mcc

[Serenity]

Hi MCC!

The only mention of a clock I can find in the manual is a countdown time (or sleep timer) and a stopwatch, but both have to be used while the player is on.  I couldn't find mention of an alarm timer that actually turns the player on, but I'll admit I'm reading pretty fast through it.

As for the battery, there's a photo on the Rockbox site that I had to dig for here: http://img.dfkt.tk/images/15460629326576860729.jpg

It should give you an idea of what to look for and what voltage you need to power the player. Looks like it is indeed soldered to the main board.

Good luck!

[mcc01]

Hi Serenety,

Thanks fpor your reply !

...on page 79 of rockboxsansaclip.pdf ("Date and Time") I found mentioned

Time related menu options. Pressing Long Select will voice the current time if voice
support is enabled.
Set Time/Date: Set current time and date.
Wake-Up Alarm: This option will make the player start up at the specified time. Use
Right and Left to adjust the minutes setting, Left and Right to adjust the hours.
Select confirms the alarm, and Power cancels setting an alarm. If the player is
turned on again before the alarm occurs, the alarm will be cancelled.
Alarm Wake Up Screen: This option controls what the player does when it is woken
up by the alarm.
Time Format: Choose 12 or 24 hour clock.

So I hope not to be wrong here...otherwise I ordered the wrong device... ;/

Battery:
I know this little beasts: There are allwhere and nowhere I can buy them (except
on ebee...but I do not have an account there...)

Have a nice sunday!
Best regards,
mcc

[Serenity]

Ah! I was reading the wrong manual! 

In that case, it might be possible, but this is a feature you may have to write code for yourself unless someone has already started. All current features exist because someone was passionate  enough to program them in.

Thanks for pointing out that section in the manual--I may have to try the wake-up alarm on my Clip Zip, now that I know it's there!

[mcc01]

Hi Serenity,

I am happy I could of help by asking for help    <<<---- VERY BIG FRIENDLY SMILEY!

...an I am happy that did NOT order the wrong device. I didn't have looked into
rockboxs code...but if the hardware is there and the code for setting to sleep/idle
and wake up is there (which could be very hard to figure out how to program
that especially on embedded systems) I /think/ that (read: "I really dont know whether")
it could be not THAT hard.
It would be very nice to be able to record interesting FM broadcasts at times one could not
listen to (at work or at night for example) them.
We will see...
I aleady set up a development environment (cross compiler and rockbox code) and
recompiled the current code to something which looks like a firmware...
(I still have no device, but I have ordered one).

Is there a way to boot the ROCKbox firmware from SDcard?

Best regards,
mcc

[Serenity]

I don't think it's possible to boot Rockbox from the external MicroSD card. That's probably something dictated by the bootloader, so I doubt you'll be able to adjust that in the Rockbox firmware itself.

Good luck programming!

[mcc01]

Hi Serenity,

Uhhhmmmm...oh I think I have the wrong picture of the control of
the boot process in my head...

I /thought/ that the CPU jumps at a certain point of system flash
(block 0 for example) and executes the code there ... the bootloader,
which in turn reads some buttons to decide whether to boot OF or RB.
If decided the according FW is executed.
I /thought/ the bootloader is part of RB and therefore changeable...
So - for my wrong? point of view - the bootloader "only" needs to
pull the RBFW from the sdcard instead from system flash.

Where can I read about the real, the TRUE ... the one and only
BOOTPROCESS ?

"May the rockbox be with you, Luke!" = Clip Zip Kenobi
"I am your bootloader!" = Darth Loader

Best regards,
mcc

[Serenity]

I'm not a programmer, so you would have better knowledge of the process than me. As far as I know, the bootloader is also open source, but trickier to compile.

"You've never heard of Rockbox? It's the firmware that made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs." --Zip Solo 

[gbl08ma]

Your idea for how the boot process works is more or less correct, I think. The problem is that to make the bootloader load Rockbox from the SD card, you'd need to modify the bootloader source code and compile it - there is no user-accessible option to select the "boot device", and I doubt the developers are willing to support two different bootloaders (one for internal and another for SD boot). Depending on your expertise (and on how trivial the changes to the source code turn out to be) following this approach may not be easy. And from what I know, you would end up with an unsupported build of Rockbox.

[monoid]

If I am not wrong iRiver H1xx allows in RB to run one of two instances of RB. One from flash (where bootloader and firmware is) and one from flash memory where song files are. User could somehow select desired version of RB during boot.

So, there is sort of precedens of two different locations for RB. So, I guess one could be also on memory card. I am not telling, it would be easy to implement (I have no idea) nor it is sensible idea...

Just telling, loading of RB from two different locations have been implemented in at least one bootloader.

[mcc01]

Hi monoid,

Oh yeah! Sounds very interesting!
The reason why I am asking that question is: If one is changing the code
to implement something new, which needs the real hardware and not
"only" (not meant negativly!) a gui simulator, s/he may temporarily introduce bugs
in RB, which lead to a couple of new features...one may the hang of the device
for a unknown period of time.
If one is able to simple pull off the sdcard in question and the bootloader
then falls back to something which is known to boot cleanly...TADA!
And minimizing the counts of write accesses to the internal flash seems not a too bad idea to me, too

Have a nice evening!
Best regards,
mcc