Is there a way to re-initialize a Philips GoGear HDD6330?

[philden]

Hi. I recently bought a Philips GoGear HDD6330, to make a change from playing with iPods. It is a nice little device, but restricted by natively only playing mp3 and wma files. So I plan to install Rockbox and ideally replace the 30GB hard drive with flash memory, if that is possible.

Before I do anything, I'd like to ensure I have a way of re-initializing the device, either with a new flash drive, or if I have any problems setting up Rockbox.

I am a Mac user, but have virtual installations of Windows XP and Windows 7, and a 'Bootcamp' installation of Windows 10.

I know that the HDD6330 will not communicate with MacOS, except possibly by MTP mode in 'MacDroid'. I doubt if this would allow me to re-initialize it.

When I connect the HDD6330 to Windows 7, the file system mounts OK. I have tried several versions of 'Philips Device Manager' and 'GoGear Device Manager' in my virtual Windows and the Bootcamp Windows 10, but none see the HDD6330. I haven't found a way to install Windows XP using Bootcamp, I suspect it is too old.

So, I'm wondering how anyone else manages their HDD6330? I haven't found a GoGear forum or anywhere more specific to ask this, a the device is rather old.

Is there a way of copying the entire HDD6330 disk in Windows (or any other OS) that would allow the system files to be installed on a new drive?

An old post on here suggests that copying files in the 'System' directory might be enough, but the Windows filer window shows this as empty...

I'd be grateful for any helpful information!

Thanks, Phil.

[philden]

Replying to myself with a slight update...

I have borrowed a very old Compaq laptop that runs Windows XP. The files that are still available on the Philips website for the HDD6330 do run and appear to allow reinstallation of firmware, etc. Now I've ordered a second cheap unit to experiment with.

[philden]

Adding some more results of my experiments...

Unfortunately both disk drives died in my HDD6330s, so surgery was performed. I had hoped that an iFlash Quad might work with some big storage, but it does not. The interface is the same as the early iPods, but there must be a compatibility issue. I tried both the iFlash 4th gen board, and an iQuad with the converter ribbon cable. I had a green compact flash adapter board, and this does work, but only with 32GB of microSD storage. I tried 128GB and that did not work.

I also had an old 40GB disk drive from a 3rd gen iPod, so played with that to take flash storage out of any problems, formatted with a 30GB FAT32 partition. Installing Rockbox via the installer failed, but manually was OK. There is a problem with the HDD6330 version, though, as it expects 'ON' and 'OFF' buttons to be present, which do not exist. This is requested when setting the time, etc.

I cloned the disk drive to the 32GB microSD, and it still works. Usage for me is limited by the 32GB capacity, so I don't really need it to run Rockbox, I'll treat it as a curiosity.

I can load music either via the Windows Media Manager or the Filer, under Windows XP. Oddly, if I copy files under MacOS the player does not find them.

The odd thing is I cannot make the original firmware display the album art. I've tried various embedded file formats, and separate files, checked the settings for the transfer, etc. I assume the player is expecting something that was standard about 16 years ago, but hard to guess now. It is possible to turn off the album art display, or just get an image of a CD case. One nice thing is that all of the artist/song title/album title scroll if they are long, which the Apple OF does not.

There is not much on the web about these players, so I suspect most people gave up on them.

[philden]

Talking to myself again...

I have discovered that for the original firmware, the album art must be a separate file called 'album art.jpg' in the same directory as the music files. I only have 50% success at displaying this so far, so there must be some jpeg type or file size limitations.

It took a lot of Googling to find that information, maybe this posting will help someone else. There seems to be no documentation for this, I doubt if Windows Media Player would ever create that file. Maybe, when new, there were demonstration files on the player to help users work it out.

[dconrad]

I would just like to throw out there, if a jpeg doesn't want to display no matter what, it's probably a "progressive" jpeg - you need to convert it to "regular" type. Gimp or imagemagick or the like can do that for you. I've run into this issue on multiple player firmwares.

[philden]

Thanks, dconrad, changing 'progressive' to 'regular' jpeg did fix my non-displaying art.

[philden]

Adding some more of my experiences to this old topic, in case it is useful to anyone...

I have found an SSD solution that works to dual boot the OF and Rockbox. Unfortunately it is an obsolete KingSpec 32GB CF/IDE SSD, which are hard to find these days. I found that a CF adapter with microSD card worked for the OF, but not well with Rockbox. I tried iFlash adapters too, but Rockbox kept freezing.

I used the Utility to install Rockbox to two original HDD6330s. This caused a problem which sounded like the hard drives had died, exactly the same on each. However, I could use the Philips software to restore both. Installing Rockbox manually was successful, with one caveat. Sometimes, the hard drive equipped HDD6330 freezes on the Rockbox splash screen. Rebooting to the OF and then going back to Rockbox results in successful operation.

[speachy]

Are you trying to use the 3.15 release?  If so, you'll have _far_ better luck with daily builds with SSDs.

[philden]

I've seen the same behaviour with 3.15 and the most recent builds.

[speachy]

...You need to be extremely specific about what the "same behaviour" is.

Because 3.15 is known to massively corrupt filesystems with SSDs on PP502x-based devices (which includes numerous ipods and these philips devices), and semi-recent daily builds do not.  As far as I am aware, there are *no* SSD-related data corruption problems (or battery life regressions) with the current code.

(There is an outstanding issue with the ipod6g that appears to be due to data alignment, but that's being actively worked on)

EDIT: spelling

[philden]

I should have been more precise, so today I took the GoGear apart again and did some more tests. I used a Windows XP laptop with "Philips Device Manager" (PDM) installed, and downloaded the latest Rockbox build, rockbox-gogearhdd6330-20241110, fonts and a theme.

In each case I tried to get the Original Firmware working before adding Rockbox.

1. First I tried a green CF board with a 32GB CF card. The PDM detected and repaired this, but the OF would not start, it stuck on the "loading" message. I repeated the PDM repair process, but the result was the same.

2. Next I tried the CF board with a single CF to SD adapter and 32GB microSD card. The PDM set this up and I got the OF running. Then I installed Rockbox manually. The first time I started the GoGear, Rockbox ran but I could not select anything from any menus. I tried the file browser, theme menu etc. On reboot the system went straight to a Philips "Connect to computer" error screen. On connecting to a computer, the device was not detected by the PDM or in the Windows XP file browser.

3. Then I tried the same 32GB microSD card in a 2 microSD extreme CF adapter, with the green CF board. I had used this setup in the past to happily run the OF. I repaired the system with the PDM and then reinstalled Rockbox. Initially I could load a music file to Rockbox, and it showed in the wps with the "play" icon. There was, however, no sound or play progress. The FM radio worked up to a point. I could tune manually and scan for presets. On exiting FM mode, I could not save or exit the presets, so had to reboot.
After the reboot, playing the same music file worked. I still could not load a theme or initialize the database. After another reboot, building the database worked. Trying to browse the database found 0 songs, and I had to reboot to reset.

4. Next I tried the 32GB microSD card in an iFlash Quad, connected via an iFlash 4th Gen iPod converter cable. Rockbox booted straightaway, but froze when I tried to play a file. Booting into the OF worked OK. I rebooted back to Rockbox and this time could change theme, but Rockbox froze when I tried to browse the database.

5. Finally I put the 32GB Kingspec CF/IDE SSD back in, and everything I've tried works as normal in Rockbox and the OF. The system responds quickly to all key presses.

My conclusion is that all of the other configurations have communication issues running Rockbox, though all but the 'real' CF card happily run the OF. I only tried one 32GB microSD card in the various adapters, but it ran the OF OK. It is a SanDisk Ultra, bought direct from Western Digital.

[speachy]

Thank you for the details.  To summarize, it appears that if you use a "real" CF card it works, but the SD adapters fail pretty spectacularly.  That is a significant observation.

Try this build:

   https://www.shaftnet.org/~pizza/hdd6330-exp1.zip

If it works with the kingspec CF card, try it with the SD adapters.

[philden]

Thanks for the quick response, speachy.

Your build worked fine with the Kingspec SSD, so then I tried the 32GB microSD in the double Extreme adapter in the green CF converter. Rockbox started OK, but froze when I tried to change theme. It started working again after a few seconds but did not change theme.
Trying to build the database resulted in a freeze, followed shortly by the attached Panic screen.
 

[speachy]

Your build worked fine with the Kingspec SSD, so then I tried the 32GB microSD in the double Extreme adapter in the green CF converter. Rockbox started OK, but froze when I tried to change theme. It started working again after a few seconds but did not change theme.
Trying to build the database resulted in a freeze, followed shortly by the attached Panic screen.

Ok, so we went kaboom trying to flush pending writes.  This.. sounds like the SD adapter isn't coming back out of sleep properly?

Got a second one to try:

   https://www.shaftnet.org/~pizza/hdd6330-exp2.zip

This one adds some delays after powering the storage up (roughly matching what we do on the ipods) and adds a bunch of debugging so that if it crashes the same way, we'll get a more detailed log of what the last few storage operations were.

[philden]

Thanks again, speachy.

This works fine on the Kinspec SSD. With the extreme double microSD CD adapter I could not change theme. The 'loading' message appeared, then went away with no change. Trying to initialize the database gave a Panic with the attached message.