3G Daily builds now available (with audio playback!)

[linuxstb]

Thanks to dan_a's help, the final bug in the ipod 3g audio driver has now been eliminated, and the 3g port now has audio playback.

So there are now daily (and CVS aka Bleeding Edge) builds for the 3g.

I don't own a 3g, but from dan_a's reports, there still seems a long way to go to a functioning port.  FLAC and WAV playback seem to work to some extent, but MP3 decoding is too slow - meaning buffer underruns and skips during playback.

But it's progress.  None of the core developers own 3gs, so it's really going to be up to existing 3g owners to like dan_a to help get the port up to speed.  But saying that, most of the 3g code is the same as the code running on other ipods (and other Rockbox targets), so all general improvements will benefit the 3g port.  It's the 3g-specific optimisations and bug-fixes that are going to be hard for developers without 3gs to help with.

[xtony]

Hello,

Recently, my ipod 3g's usb and firewire are just stop working. So, the only way i can sync my songs to the ipod is hooking its hard drive directly to my computer. I found out the way rockbox manages mp3 files and it's ideal for me. So, is there anything i could help, please let me know..

[xtony]

How can i test and debug a compiled code in ipod? do i need an emulator?

[bigflavor]

That's great news!  I'm no coder, but I'd be glad to help test builds.

Let me know.

[vdubski]

I have a 3G and would love to help test, but I do not know how to compile it myself. Can someone point me in the right direction?

[dan_a]

The simplest way to start is by installing one of the daily builds - there are instructions on how to do that here: http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IpodInstallation.  They are already compiled, but if you're wanting to try making your own changes then you need to follow the instructions in the Wiki on setting up a cross-compiler.

There are a large number of problems on the 3g at the moment, not least that MP3s frequently skip.  There's quite a lot of things that *can* be done if you're willing to attempt some programming (I hadn't really done any kind of coding before I started on Rockbox about a month ago.)  There are a lot of very helpful and knowledgable people on the IRC channel who can help you if you're willing to help yourself.

[xtony]

I'm willing to help on this project. But i have 2 projects in hand to finish. After finished these 2 projects. I'll look at rockbox code.

[vdubski]

dan_a, is your 3G scroll speed slow? I was wondering if it was a problem with rockbox or with my 3G. I've been using rockbox on it for about a week now, and since all I am using it for is flac it's pretty stable for me. It will either crash before the end of the first song it plays after bootup or it will play for hours, unless my battery dies of course. 

[dan_a]

vdubski, scrolling on all iPods seems slower than the Apple firmware at the moment because we don't have any accelerated scrolling.  There is a patch in Flyspray to implement this.

In addition, sometimes my scrolling slows to a crawl - most often on long lists like the plugins screen.  I've not even started looking at that problem yet.

Do you get an error message when Rockbox crashes, or does it just hang?  I've not had a single crash from using the CVS code since the audio playback started working (touch wood.)

[vdubski]

Weird, my brothers 2nd gen Mini scrolls like normal. I saw the patch to add acceleration, but from the forum post it linked to it looked like it was only for 5G's. When it crashs for me the screen locks up and stops updating. I am using the resume function if that makes a difference.

[zoglesby]

I installed the cvs version yesterday (26 Sep) and everything went well but I can not mount it on my computer (linux). I can see it in dmesg but when I fdisk -l it, I get nothing. Any ideas?