Philips HDD6330 - Some Observations

[soundman]

Hello. I'm new to using Rockbox, and after initially experiencing some frustration with it on this particular model, I've changed some settings and it now seems to be working fine with the exception of one issue.

The major problem I had was with the database. I was constantly getting the "database not ready" message along with panic crashes related to it. I resolved this issue by changing the "disc spindown" value to 180s. On this player (HDD6330), allowing the spindown to activate at all always caused database issues. Interestingly, it would occur even with music playing (disk obviously spinning) if the spindown parameter was set to a small value. Setting it to 180s, and then setting "idle poweroff" to an equivalent value of 3 min has resolved ALL issues I had with the database. Although it is a large spindown value, the disk does not sound (or feel) like it is spinning when music is not playing.

The only other issue that I cannot fix directly by changing settings is that the device occasionally "locks up" at the main menu and rebooting does not help. However, unplugging and reconnecting the headphones followed by a reboot always clears the problem.

I'm really enjoying Rockbox on my HDD6330, and hope this post helps others who would like to use it on their Philips.

[soundman]

Just an extra note. The HDD6330 cannot be turned off while charging (both with factory firmware and Rockbox). Thus, the database issue reappears if left idle (beyond the disk spindown timer setting) while charging. However, upon reboot the database will be intact. I think the real problem is not corruption of the database, but a timing issue where the RB software gives up too soon in accessing the disk after "spin down" occurs and sets a flag in RAM (and/or database) that the database is not ready and must be initialized/updated. Once this happens, you have to reboot. If you stay inside the spindown window, all is good. If exceeded, it all starts over again.

[soundman]

Finally, this model still has quirks with the headphone jack and file system using the most recent firmware update. I wish Philips had followed through with another update for this model. I'm not a coder so I don't know if it's even possible for RB to patch its way around them.

[b0hoon]

I'm investigating the "lock up" thing. It's a hardware issue associated with the switching I2C bus to the cradle while you plug the cable.

This bug can only be triggered in OF, by just plug in the cable connector to the player and then unplug it. You don't have to be connected to the PC.
Unfortunately, there is nothing i can do about it. You can reset the player with the headphones connected, or wait patiently until Rockbox will turn off normally.

Everything else is working fine on my GoGear (database, etc.).

[soundman]

I'm investigating the "lock up" thing. It's a hardware issue associated with the switching I2C bus to the cradle while you plug the cable.

This bug can only be triggered in OF, by just plug in the cable connector to the player and then unplug it. You don't have to be connected to the PC.
Unfortunately, there is nothing i can do about it. You can reset the player with the headphones connected, or wait patiently until Rockbox will turn off normally.

Everything else is working fine on my GoGear (database, etc.).

Thanks for the tip about the connector. Out of curiosity, is yours labeled "HDD6330/17" on the back? I've been playing with mine some more this evening, including a disk format, then just creating a "system" folder with factory firmware (then upon boot it creates everything else), and then installing RB manually. I copied one folder of lightly-tagged FLAC files, but still had the issue where I had to increase the spindown parameter to avoid error messages and panic crashes.

I'm using the latest build for the device, so just wondering why there might be a difference. It's a lot of work for an old player, but it outlived my iPod by a couple of years and now having FLAC ability, I can get pretty much everything I want on it in lossless format.

TIA and thanks for Rockbox!

[soundman]

Another thing I noticed.. not sure if this is supposed to happen or not, but when it's updating the database and showing the count progress, pressing the play/pause button increases the database update speed dramatically without causing an error. Really speeds things up.

If there is one thing I could change about how RB interfaces with the device, it would be to decrease the sensitivity/speed of scrolling through menus. It's nice that you can tap the scroll bar to select, but I always seem to overshoot the desired item by one or two items.