ipod usb charging: Rockbox vs AppleOS

[ryran]

I'd especially love to get some official (heh) info from any devs on status of usb power capabilities of Rockbox for the ipod, as someone (Paul?) mentioned recently that it doesn't draw as much power as the default firmware... however, as far as I can see there's nothing anywhere in the wiki (or the forums) about it.

[Yotto]

Don't know about the wiki, but I know that it's been mentioned in the forums.  And it's a fact that everybody knows about.  Rockbox only uses half the whatsit thingy to charge, so charges half as fast.  In fact, with the backlight on constantly on my Rockbox, it drains faster than it charges.

[lini]

already pointed out in a different thread

I personally have explained it more than once.
To summarize: In Rockbox, the iPod only draws 100mah. In the iPod firmware it draws the full 500 that USB carries. We can't fix this yet. So, if your Rockbox is actually using a lot of power, it may even slowly decrease while chargin in Rockbox.

[ryran]

Yes. I know it's been said.
It's NOT something that I think everyone knows about though. As far as I can tell, it's not mentioned anywhere in the documention. My point is to get some insight into how big of an issue it is for the developers. That was just Llorean talking--I want to see if anyone has actually looked at the issue and has any ideas/plans/hope for a future resolution.

[Llorean]

As far as I'm aware, the USB controller is completely undocumented as it's part of the whole PortalPlayer thing, so until someone figures out how to deal with it, there's not much hope of improvement.

My personal guess is that we'll see better charging somewhere shortly before, or shortly after, we learn what's necessary to start working on our own USB mode, because either one requires investigation into how the USB properly works.

[Suntiger]

It's funny, but I actually do notice that my Rockboxed iPod 5G charges a *lot* faster and better than the Apple OS ever did.

In light of the mah difference, I don't know why that would be, but it definitely is. Maybe the iPod OS uses more power?

[ryran]

Okay whoa. That's bizzare.

[senab]

What about from the charger? Is it still limited to the 100mAh?
One thing about Rockbox is also the 80% trickle charge, it's takes about 20 mintues to charge upto 80% but to get to 100% it takes about 45minutes.