I guess then I have the iPod video (I used the Utility and it recognized it as 5th Gen) _ I just installed Stable release on it. Looks good.
I am confused by your use of the terms stable and beta, we don't offer any such thing. I believe you are taking these terms from Freemyipod/emCORE resources which are not applicable to your device at all.
We have
Release builds, which are ancient (over three years old) and which you absolutely should not be using (their stability was eclipsed by the development builds years ago), and the
Development builds which reflect the current state of development.
While there may be the occasional breaking change these (Development builds) are the builds you should be using.
If you are using the Rockbox 3.13 Release build, then I urge you, very strongly, to update to the Development build. This can be done with Rockbox Utility, and does not require you to wipe the device or reinstall the bootloader.
Actually, Rockbox Utility isn't even required at all. All a Rockbox "update" is actually doing is extracting an archive to the root of the device storage. There is no need to update the bootloader (this has not changed in years and years and years) unless specifically directed to.
If you feel confident enough to extract an archive to a destination manually, then you may use
this url (which will always point to the most current development build for your device) to download the build and simply extract it to the root of the device, allowing it to overwrite the original files when prompted. That's all Rockbox Utility itself is doing during an update, there's no special magic or anything fancy going on with the installation or updates of the Rockbox binary. All the complex magic goes into the bootloader installation, though honestly
that isn't difficult to do manually either.
I am a bit confused between the Gens, so how can I be sure which Gen I have?
As saratoga linked, you may use Apple's
resources to identify iPod models, but honestly it really doesn't matter. For our purposes the iPod 5G and iPod 5.5G are identical and treated as such. There are no user-facing differences.
There's a hardware variation in that the 5G has 32MB of RAM, and the 5.5G has 64MB of RAM, which depending on your use case can provide a marginal increase in run time by way of allowing for a larger audio buffer, which in turn allows for the HDD to be accessed less frequently during playback (the additional 32MB allows for approximately 20 minutes of LAME MP3 320kb/s CBR, or approximately 30 minutes of LAME MP3 320kb/s VBR).
However, as mentioned this (potential) benefit in runtime can be very easily negated by the way the device is used. If you're the type of person that regularly fiddles around with the device during playback or the type that is constantly skipping from one track to the next then the increased RAM and audiobuffer will offer little to no practical benefits whatsoever.
Would you recommend staying with Stable or going with Beta?
As mentioned above this terminology isn't applicable here, I believe I addressed the issue of Release vs. Development builds fairly clearly above though, so perhaps this helps you.
What are PROS and CONS of the DesignWare USB thingy?
In general? Or for you specifically?
In general, the goal is to make use of the USB controller in the iPod Classic 6G in a less generic fashion and to increase stability and throughput.
For you specifically, absolutely nothing. There are no pros and no cons here for you as this hardware is not present in your device and as such that driver will not be used.
PS: I used classic to mean Pre-Touch / Maybe I dont have the terminology down correnctly.
Yes, Apple really didn't do themselves any favors on this one. This is something that end users get confused by consistently.
For reference we use the term "iPod Classic" to refer to the iPod 6G variants specifically. All the other full-size iPods are referred to either by their generation number or less frequently by their common name, ie:
iPod 1st Generation / iPod 1G
iPod 2nd Generation / iPod 2G
iPod 3rd Generation / iPod 3G
iPod 4th Generation / iPod 4G / alt. iPod Color / alt. iPod Photo
iPod 5th Generation / iPod 5G|5.5G / alt. iPod Video
iPod 6th Generation / iPod 6G|7G / alt. iPod Classic
iPod Mini 1st Generation / alt. iPod Mini
iPod Mini 2nd Generation / alt. iPod Mini 2G
iPod Nano 1st Generation / alt. iPod Nano
iPod Nano 2nd Generation / alt. iPod Nano 2GPS: Additional information regarding release builds
It seems counterintuitive that our release builds are over three years old, but there is some method to this madness. However I don't believe we're doing a particularly good job of communicating this to the end user.
Basically, the reason there are no current release builds is because - primarily - there is no need for them any more. Secondarily, it is because coordinating a release takes a reasonable amount of time and effort for which the project simply doesn't have the manpower for any more.
We could put out another release build, but it would serve very little purpose at this stage. The development builds are all the fully supported devices are very stable. Anyone who cares about this almost certainly moved on to the development builds years ago, and those who do not are likely perfectly happy using the release builds and are probably fairly unlikely to update at this stage even if another release build was offered.
[Saint]
Rockbox Technical Forums
Topic: iPod Classic 5th Gen 60 Gig: Pre Rockbox issues and questions (Read 4672 times)