Rockbox General > Rockbox General Discussion

Battery life - a suggestion

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baobab68:
I originally mentioned that I was using norbu's build from over at MR, but I think I edited that out when I was trying to make my post more clear, sorry about that.

Rincewind:

--- Quote from: baobab68 on October 09, 2006, 08:12:24 AM ---My ramblings on battery life as it relates to disk spinups and dircache...

The firmware flashing feature is only for iRiver H1xx's at the moment, am I correct?

--- End quote ---
I have a 120, I don't know if it works for H3xx series as well. This should be mentioned on the wiki page.

--- Quote ---Rincewind, I too am curious what you mean about it being able to hibernate!

--- End quote ---
Hibernate means, that with firmware in flash, rockbox knows if the player was in usb-mode or not after the last dircache scan. If the contents of the disc haven't changed via usb, then dircache doesn't need to scan the whole disc at boot, it reads the dircache from flash instead -> less disc access at boot.

--- Quote ---Also Llorean, out of genuine interest, does Directory Cache use more power because it takes a little while to build/check each time you boot up (I can live with that if it's once per listening session), or does it use more power because it has to maintain the Cache in RAM and uses processor cycles to manage it?

--- End quote ---
I don't think that the few cpu cycles matter much. The only thing is, with dircache in RAM you have slightly less codec buffer, but I haven't tested how much this matters.

--- Quote ---(I see Rincewind has replied in the meantime to the flash question, I'll read that page)

--- End quote ---
Hm, I answered you question anyway (I should read to the bottom first, then post  ;D)

The Rec-button to view playlist thing looks like you are using my patch, but I don't think it has something to do with it. Other people can test this behavior when they go to context-menu->playlist->view current playlist. I can't say something to that question, I don't use long playlists.

Llorean:
Rincewind: Dircache will still have the negative effect of using some of your Audio Buffer to store the cache in while Rockbox is active I believe.

Rincewind:
Yes, I mentioned that, too. But I don't think that 500kb of about 30MB Buffer matter that much. If you save two or three disc spinups by using dircache, then it possibly already paid for itself. And it makes navigation faster, too.

Llorean:
Well, you said "If you have an iriver and put the firmware in flash, the dircache can hibernate, so then dircache shouldn't have a negative effect on battery at all." and this is untrue if it doesn't save any spinups. If you have resume on startup enabled for example (say if you're Me and just listen to a full playlist of your whole collection) then Dircache does have a negative effect.

And how much difference it makes depends on how much RAM you have free, for example someone on an H110/115 has less available to use.

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