iHP 120 on Rockbox 4.0 / how to permanently get flash and ROLO right

[JoeMS2025]

Hi all,

just got word from Hackaday that Rockbox 4.0 is out! A good reason to fire up the good old iRiver iHP-120 and see if I can get it back working with the latest software.
So I did and mostly it works, but I'm running into the same issue over and over again, same as in all these years before. It seems I can't get the latest firmware to go somewhere permanent. The installation with Rockbox-Utility worked fine, eventually giving me the instructions to restart the original firmware to flash the latest firmware. Unfortunately, the original firmware is no longer present, and the "original" firmware can only be one of the Rockbox firmwares already present on the device. While it is possible to use the latest rockbox.iriver file from the .rockbox root directory on the device to start Rockbox 4.0, I cannot get it flashed to the EEPROM. There just doesn't seem to be a way.
The older releases gave me a lot of headache, such as not letting me record anything because it claims it is out of disk space when more than half of the 64GB are free. Or giving warnings like "dir buffer full". I was hoping to get these resolved with later versions.

The picture attached shows the boot menu giving me three options:

• Boot from disk -> fails because an SD card is there in place of the original HDD, and I no longer have the HDD. Once in this mode, the device can only be recovered with the reset button as it is not possible to operate or even switch it off
• Boot RAM image -> starts Rockbox r18607 from 2023-09-08
• Boot ROM image -> starts Rockbox r19757 from 2013-01-09

It seems odd that the 2013 release number is greater than the one from the 2023 release but meh, that does not need to be an actuial issue. And I can't remember what I did in 2023 to successfully flash the image of that time into ROM.
In any of the RAM or ROM modes, I can go to Files -> .rockbox -> rockbox.iriver (and push the NAVI button on this file) to launch ROLO / Rockbox 4.0. However, I would like to go to Rockbox 4.0 immediately at powerup, so the best solution would be to skip the boot menu entirely and run 4.0 from flash.
I have spent hours trying to find a solution but haven't gotten any wiser. So it's time now to ask for assistance here.
Thank you so much!
Happy Easter!

Cheers,
Joe

[speachy]

While it is possible to use the latest rockbox.iriver file from the .rockbox root directory on the device to start Rockbox 4.0, I cannot get it flashed to the EEPROM. There just doesn't seem to be a way.

There's the 'iriver_flash' plugin that's supposed to be for that purpose.

....Flash at your own risk, of course.

[JoeMS2025]

@speachy: thanks, this looks like what I need. However, I can't get it to work. This is what I do:

• select ROM image in the bootloader preface screen
• select rockbox.iriver (version 4.0) from the files to have ROLO load the latest image
• after restarting, select the same file again and hold the NAVI button longer to show the context menu, then select 'open with...' and select iriver_flash
  

This is what I get (same as in the picture, sorry about the cracked screen, I took yesterday's photos from the 'naked' device and then re-assembled it):

Code: [Select]

Flash: V=00bf, P=2782
SST39VF160
Size: 2048 KB

Aborting: incompatible bootloader
The same is happening when I select rombox.iriver, and there are no other .iriver files around, and nothing else that looks like it might contain an actual bootloader.
Sorry about the dumb questions but until now I was rather on the user side, not the developer side...

[speachy]

• select rockbox.iriver (version 4.0) from the files to have ROLO load the latest image
• after restarting, select the same file again and hold the NAVI button longer to show the context menu, then select 'open with...' and select iriver_flash

...You need to flash the file 'rombox.iriver'

Aborting: incompatible bootloader

The actual bootloader is installed separately, downloadable from https://download.rockbox.org/bootloader.  Follow the instructions in the manual to install it, or use the rockbox utility.  It was last updated a few years ago (after 3.15).

[JoeMS2025]

Sorry, but this is becoming even more obscure. I downloaded the bootloader file from here: https://download.rockbox.org/bootloader/iriver/8.0/bootloader-h120.iriver
Then put it in the root directory of the iRiver's drive which didn't work. Found out by looking up in the source code of iriver_flash that the file needs to be renamed to bootloader.iriver in order to be usable by iriver-flash. Eventually, that way, I finally got the flashing process to succeed but there is still no difference in the boot menu. I can still select RAM or ROM and am still getting the outdated versions as shown in my initial post, no sign of version 4.0.
Then looked closer at the manual about writing a bootloader and tried fwpatcher.exe (downloaded from https://download.rockbox.org/bootloader/iriver) to manually create a pached ihp_120.hex, and put that in the root folder. Still no change.
The manual at https://download.rockbox.org/daily/manual/rockbox-iriverh100/rockbox-buildch2.html#x4-60002 claims that the device needs to be restarted with the NAVI key being pushed down to get to a point where the new .hex file is consumed and flashed. As I'm getting a boot menu first that offers me two versions (both outdated), I think the process needs to be a little different here. But even if I select RAM or ROM and then keep the NAVI key down, it only leads to the Files context menu. Same as when the system started regularly, the Files item is the one initially selected, and doing a long NAVI push on it brings up the context menu. Unlike the manual says, there is no Firmware upgrade option anywhere. I think that is because the versions that I can start from the boot menu are vastly outdated, but they are the only ones I can initially start.
I also tried to use ROLO to load Rockbox 4.0 from one of the older systems (Files -> navigate to rockbox.iriver and pushing NAVI to load) and then keeping NAVI pushed down while v4.0 starts up, only to see the same effect and no Firmware update menu anywhere.
I'm now wondering if what I'm trying to achieve here (basically followig the manual) isn't the same as selecting the bootloader.iriver file and opening it with iriver_flash, like I did in the first place? Which told me it succeeded, however with no effect?
Eventually I also tried to use Rockbox Utility again to do a complete re-install, including the bootloader, and still no luck. Even wiped the entire .rockbox root directory and any .bin/.hex files from the drive first. Despite the process completing everything, the boot behavior remains unchanged.
I would even go back to the iRiver original firmware if I could to do a clean restart of everything but that's not possible without the original HDD which I have lost. The Rockbox Utility Uninstall function just doesn't appear to do anything.

My impression is that my iHP-120 is different from the standard in places that the regular toolchain cannot touch. No idea how that happened, and how to improve it. Eventually I know the way to go to v4.0 on each startup manually. It's a nuisance but possible to do. Maybe we better let it settle at that. Thanks for your help! 

[DTSyX]

Having done the update myself with a H140 today, I can share some experiences from that task.

- I used Rockbox Utility for patching the original h120.hex file (again). If you want to patch it yourself, make sure you use the fwpatcher from 2020 (https://download.rockbox.org/bootloader/iriver/8.0/fwpatcher.exe)! The one in the base directory (which the link you posted points to) is from 2006 and (according to this site https://www.rockbox.org/wiki/IriverBoot.html#TODO_list_for_the_upcoming_bootloader_revision) makes the hex file "suitable" for bootloader v6 and probably not working with bootloader v8, if my interpretation is correct.

- https://www.rockbox.org/wiki/IriverFlashing provides a good manual on how to flash the firmware but also especially the bootloader.

- Esp. before flashing RAM/ROM for the first time, make sure you make a ROM dump first to have a backup to be able to go back to the original ROM if necessary.

- For the update (of the the firmware), boot from disk, not from RAM or ROM!

- Set the file view to "all" to be able to see the .rockbox directory in the rockbox "file manager".

- Before flashing RAM or ROM, update the bootloader. In fact, you could update the bootloader before even updating the firmware, I guess, to be sure. But I don't actually know if older firmware versions can handle the latest bootloader, but I would assume that there should be no problem given that the bootloader boots the firmware not the other way around.

- For updating the bootloader, put the bootloader.iriver file (v8) into the .rockbox directory of your H120/H140, unplug the device and navigate to "files -> ,rockbox", in that directory, navigate to bootloader.iriver to "mark" that file -> long press the navigation button -> select "open with..." -> select "iriver_flash" (probably selected by default) -> press navigation button straight down or to the right -> if everything is ok there should be a popup asking to proceed by pressing the play button. If you're sure, press the play button (but that might also brick your device according to the link above!) -> let the flash process do its thing (4 steps iirc). Done.
You can see which bootloader is installed at the boot menu (which you can force if you active the "Hold" slider to interrupt the boot process. The bootloader version is displayed at the top of the screen.

- Maybe it's a good idea to reboot (from disk), iirc, to have the new bootloader being used for starting the system for the flashing of RAM and ROM.

- Flashing RAM requires to do RoLo of the the rockbox.iriver file first = selecting the file and short-pressing (or clicking to the right) on that file. That step is not necessary (or even possible?) for the ROM file (rombox.iriver). After having done the RoLo thing and the system "restarted" in v4.0, do the flashing thing: long-pressing the Navigation button - just as described for the bootloader update above.

- Flashing ROM: Do the second step just described for RAM.

This should conclude your update of the firmware, RAM, ROM and bootloader of your H120/H140 device.

I hope my memory didn't make too many / any big mistakes!

I, too, had some problems when updating, like getting "incompatible bootloader" when trying to flash RAM / ROM. But I think that was because I hadn't yet updated the bootloader from v7pre4 to v8.

Unless RAM/ROM are flashed they are still on the previous version and try to boot that. It booted "fine" for 3.15, but as v4.0 was installed, e.g. some entries in settings and other menu entries were missing - and others were not making much sense. Only after flashing RAM and ROM would both boot v4.0 without any issue or manual tricks.

Also, this is done on a H140 with ssd, so no original hdd needed (unless one would need a ROM dump and had no backup elsewhere - but I didn't need that at any point of the update procedures to Rockbox v4.0 / bootloader v8).

Also: I, too, read that manual entry where there should be some magic menu before booting when pressing the navigation button at start. I guess that's outdated or not applicable for iriver. Therefore it's confusing. Just ignore it. Same for the Firmware upgrade, which might only be applicable if you boot the original firmware when doing the "Rockbox install" for the first time.