CF to SD flash modded iPod 4G Color poor battery life with Rockbox

[woodensoul]

I recently flash modded using the cheap green board, iFlash CF to SD adapter and a cheaper no name 64GB micro SD card.   The battery life in Rockbox is terrible at maybe 2.5 hours while the original firmware gets about 10 hours.  I am running a daily build from 8/22/23. 

I'd really like to get this resolved as Rockbox is superior in so many ways.  I have searched these forums and tried some suggestions but none seem to work.  Please help.

[eicca]

Bumping this in hopes that there's some news, but I have the same troubles with my iPod Mini 2G CF-SD setup. RockBox battery life has been absolute trash but stock firmware is quite good.

[7o9]

I have no experience with this combination, but why not try a current daily build instead of one that is over a year old?

You are not going to get much support on the version you have, many things have changed/improved since.

Backup your current build if you want to keep it, just copy the Rockbox dir.

[eicca]

I have no experience with this combination, but why not try a current daily build instead of one that is over a year old?

You are not going to get much support on the version you have, many things have changed/improved since.

Backup your current build if you want to keep it, just copy the Rockbox dir.

I've been trying daily builds for years now hoping for some improvement with this issue but no dice.

What I don't understand is why the stock firmware has no such problems. What does the stock firmware know that Rockbox doesn't?

[speachy]

I've been trying daily builds for years now hoping for some improvement with this issue but no dice.

If you've not seen _any_ change then you've not been trying daily builds "for years."

(Because if you had, you'd have definitely noticed better battery life, combined with massive drive corruption.  Take your pick.)

What I don't understand is why the stock firmware has no such problems. What does the stock firmware know that Rockbox doesn't?

The Apple firmware doesn't (1) ever completely power the iPod off, and (2) perform writes when you're not performing iTunes synchronizations.

The bottom line is that those ATA<->SD adapters don't support the *mandatory* ATA commands that ensure all writes are safely flushed (ie "safe to shut down") and _also_ fail to recover properly if you issue the shutdown command they they (illegally) don't claim to support.  Compounding this, many (most?) SD cards are quite power hungry even when completely idle, so if we can't power them down, we're going to end up burning more power than even the old spinning rust uses.

[eicca]

Rockbox 4.0 appears to have solved this and solved it big.

Before using 4.0, I could never get my iPod Mini 2G with CF-SD adapter and 256GB card to burn less than 12-15% of battery per hour, resulting in a max of 7 hours playback.

I've been letting it play all morning and now it's only using 3-4% per hour. On track for at least 24 hours of playback, an improvement of over 3x.

This is HUGE and I think needs more recognition than just a bullet point in the release notes.

Good job and major thanks, Rockbox devs.